Influential Iranian Women: Soudabeh Ensannejad (1976-)

Soudabeh Ensannejad is the first female cargo transport driver in Iran. Even as a child, when she was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she did not answer a doctor, pilot, teacher or engineer, but a “lorry driver.” This remained her heart’s desire and she fought for it many years.

“When I was playing in my neighborhood as a child, if I saw a heavy truck I told myself: ‘I wish I was a boy so that I could be assistant driver of one of these heavy trucks,” she says.

Ensannejad , 47, was born and lives in Maragheh, in East Azerbaijan province, and she drives a Swedish-made Scania heavy truck. She has a lot of memories on being on the road, both good and bad, and some of her stories are enthralling, like being trapped in storms while driving on snow-covered roads and the amazed look of travelers and passers-by when they see a woman repairing and maintaining her truck by herself: “Motor vehicles are unpredictable. Many times it stopped working in the 45-degree heat of Tabas Desert or the freezing temperature of other cities, leaving me helpless. But I have consented to this job and accepted all its hardships and dangers, and I have not complained even once.”

On the day of the driving test, Ensannejad was the only woman applying for a first-class international transportation driving license. And all these years she has withstood ridicule and discouraging remarks and has followed her own way: “I was not intimidated by the laughter and the ridicule of others. When I went to the center in Tabriz for the driving test, I told myself: ‘I am not afraid and I am not listening to what others are saying.’”

Ensannejad had been told that, although there were no legal obstacles, she was not going to receive a first-class international transportation license because no woman had ever asked for one: “Tabriz rejected my application on baseless excuses but I was not dissuaded. I went to Tehran and applied for the license. There was a lot of paperwork and they sent me from this office to that office and so on. I was giving up hope but then, a few days later, when I went for the response, I found out that my application had been accepted.”

Ensannejad’s application was accepted but the discriminatory treatment of her was not over. Because she was a woman, she was forced to make her way through a long bureaucratic maze and pledge that she would behave “properly” as a representative of Iran in this field: “This is how my license was ready after three months.”

“I have always obeyed traffic laws and that is why I haven’t had one single accident,” she says. “What is more, I have not been fined even once and, as of now, I have been selected five times as a model driver at provincial and national levels.”

After 20 years of doing this job, Ensannejad is still the only female driver in her category but she believes that more women can join her in this field.