The first female driver of the Nekrasovskaya line, Svetlana Kostina, complained about hate from men

Svetlana Kostina started driving a metro train quite recently – in August of this year. She became the first female driver on the pink Nekrasovskaya line. Before this, women in the driver’s cab could only be found on the Filevskaya line.

It would seem like another step towards gender justice. But Kostina said that not everyone understands and accepts such changes. The girl heard hateful comments addressed to her.

“They wrote: “Why do we need a female driver, where have the men gone?” There were unpleasant comments, but I didn’t respond to anyone. I thought it was useless to convince someone – let everyone remain with their own opinion,” quotes Svetlana newspaper Metro.

Perhaps the haters don’t know that women have worked as subway drivers almost from the very opening of the subway. They won the right to operate the train back in 1936. “Woman, onto the locomotive!” – that was the slogan even then. And before the war, several dozen female drivers worked in the metro. Another ban was established only in the 1980s by a special resolution of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. And they began hiring women as machinists again in 2021 – just for the Filyovskaya line.

According to Kostina, women are often accused of being overly emotional, although she herself notes in her work that this is not only a female trait. “I worry before flights, but sometimes it even helps,” says Svetlana. And in two months of work, an emergency happened only once, when for some reason the tension was removed from the contact rail. The malfunction was quickly fixed, and the driver had to make up for being late.

Photo: press service of the Moscow Metro