CHEMAX, Yucatan, (October 27, 2021).- In southeastern Mexico, the word “infrastructure” no longer forces us to imagine only men working on a construction site since the Maya Train is a project that has included the gender perspective as a transversal axis since the beginning of its construction, to ensure equal employment opportunities for women, as occurs in the Material Bank of Sisbichén, where 20 percent of the 130 people who work there are women.
In this regard, Viviana Cabrera Gómez, the head of the Crushing Area of the ICA company in charge of Section 4 Izamal-Cancún, said that this figure is significant since, in other works in which she participated in previous six-year terms, she was the only woman. However, now things are different, so she expressed her excitement to be part of this advance in terms of the inclusion of women in spaces traditionally relegated to men.
“As a professional, as a Mexican citizen, I am proud to belong to this great project of the Maya Train, because they give importance to women and also the responsibilities that they are giving us, not just being in the cleaning area, as before, or being in a position sitting watching that most of the work was done by men. Here they have given me the opportunity to grow and be able to coordinate so many colleagues, whom I understand as workers and as women, ” she said.
Cabrera Gómez added that she is fortunate to be part of an organization that gives the opportunity to demonstrate the capacity of each one because women are very organized in the tasks they perform as front-line chief engineers, site managers, and check-up coordinators, checkers, and operators of asphalt plants. However, it is a joint effort, since the support of their male colleagues has been fundamental to continue learning.
The Sisbichén Material Bank has two asphalt plants, a stabilizer and has an area of 41 hectares, of which 25 will be used to extract materials that will serve as a base layer to receive and cushion the fall of the ballast and cover the sleepers and railways; as well as making the body of dirt roads and paving along Section 4 of the Maya Train. The aggregates that are supplied there are subbase, hydraulic bases, subjacent, subgrade, and sub-ballast.
The Maya Train encourages the participation of women in all stages of the project, especially in areas where they have historically ventured to a lesser degree, to help close the inequality gaps that are evident from the classrooms, as according to data from the Faculty of Engineering of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), women represent 17% of the academic enrollment in engineering in the country.
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