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TikTok: Female bus drivers and farmers challenging stereotypes

Liv with her local busImage source, Livrayment
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Liv getting ready to welcome some passengers!

Throughout the pandemic, key workers have been busy keeping the buses on the go and food in our supermarkets and now some of them are challenging stereotypes on TikTok.

Over the years, some jobs have been dominated by men and only 47 years ago, London welcomed its first ever female bus driver - 22-year-old Jill Viner!

Since then loads more women have become bus drivers but the industry is still dominated by men.

According to 2018 Office of National Statistics (ONS) research, there were 120,000 male bus and coach drivers, compared to 9,000 women.

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Image source, @Livraiment/TikTok
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Liv often uses TikTok to answer people's questions

Bus driver Liv Rayment, who is 20, shares her exciting and sometimes weird bus journeys on TikTok.

She thinks people are slowly becoming more accepting of women doing her job.

Liv bought her own bus when she was only 15 and now she works full time driving up and down her home town.

She said: "People can be judgemental, I get verbal abuse on the roads, they think I'm a young female that doesn't know what I'm doing.

"But on the whole it's not bad, the odd few people don't want to get on my bus but from sharing my videos online, it's been really good response, I get nice messages."

Women in the workforce

Before the First World War, lots of women didn't have paid jobs and those that did were employed in jobs that were traditionally associated with women, eg servants, seamstresses, secretaries, nursing.

During the war, women started to be employed in different types of jobs, eg factory work, replacing the men who had gone to fight in the war.

After the war more women had jobs but some people still continued to think different types of work are more suited to men or women.

Even now some jobs are seen as stereotypically men's or women's roles.

Over the last year on TikTok, women doing these types of role have boomed in popularity.

The hashtag #postwomen has reached 4.1 million views, #postlady 2 million and women sharing their experiences of life working on a farm hashtags #girlswhofarm has clocked a huge 28 million views!

Life on the farm

Image source, MissFarming
Image caption,

Jess talks about life on the farm to her 160,000 followers on TikTok

Jess, also known as Missfarming, spends her days looking after farm animals and uses her online platform to encourage more girls to learn about life on the farm.

She told Newsround: "I like to educate people that women can farm. I didn't know how many young female farmers are around and we've created a community from it.

"It's a male-dominated industry, but from my experience the men are supportive and they want young men and women to take up farming, and if you're a young girl who wants to be a farmer, just know that you can."