Female Business Ambassadors in the male dominated motor industry are important role models who have the ability to make their business more female friendly for women customers AND females who choose a career in their footsteps.

To date women in the motor industry remain a rare species and many have a cultural work challenge on their hands. To remain female and all that is good about being so in a male dominated and often testosterone driven world where 80% of all employees are male and female customers and employees often feel ill at ease in overly macho garage and dealership environments.

All women want equality of course when it comes to jobs, opportunities and pay but we also want respect from our male colleagues and to be treated as women.

The temptation is that after working so hard to be accepted in a man’s world that women learn to beat them by outplaying them at their game – in so doing becoming tougher than they would be in a female workplace or if allowed to be and valued for being themselves.

Which is a shame because male and female sexes are designed to work well together be that in the home or at work. We each have abilities, talents and skills to complement the other and when respect is there, it works well.

Where they can, I’d like women to do more to make the motor industry a more female friendly and welcoming place for women. To encourage more females to consider the motor industry as a rewarding industry to join. And so that wary women customers feel more at ease in garages and dealerships and even enjoy their car buying and car servicing trips in future. Women trust women of course, and they are likely to be the domestic spender. Given a choice, they’ll spend more in a business that recognises their needs, will think better of the industry and will tell their friends.  Makes business sense to me!

There are some fantastic role models who do this naturally of course and one of the best is surely Sarah Sillars at the IMI leading a well balanced gender team and doing great work to encourage young men and women into the motor industry. And there is some excellent work in the pipeline by a team of Automotive Careers Champions who have signed up to do their bit and spread the word about the exciting career opportunities in the motor industry.

But there are many women who still think that the only way forward is for women to be better, tougher, more ruthless than men; as a result they don’t appreciate why Mums work flat out to be able to leave on time, why they need holiday time off with their children and who need time off to cover child/relatives illness and essential visits to doctors and dentists. In my experience, the good workers make this up by truckloads of hard work afterwards because they need the work and genuinely value their employer’s flexibility and humanity.   This isn’t because working Mums are less capable or committed workers – it’s because they are often juggling more responsibilities than most others when it comes to homes, children and careers.

And there are some women who can’t understand why we might want to elevate reluctant women in some commercial instances or why we might need to make dealerships or garages more female friendly places. Some women who have fought their way upwards don’t see an alternative journey or want to help others have an easier climb.

However I’m delighted that networks like FOXY’s and the industry infrastructure is in place for the motor industry to be a much more female friendly place. What we now need to do is to make sure we promote motor industry jobs to women. As things stand, more by accident than intent, job specifications are often written by men and for men, placing ads where mainly men will read them; hence the self fulfilling male multiplier recruitment model.

And we need to make sure that male dominated businesses become good and female friendly employers in terms of their working conditions – sadly I know of women joining leading dealerships who don’t stay long. Knowing the quality of the businesses I am tempted to say that perhaps they were the wrong recruits but when it doesn’t work out it tends to dampen the equality fervour – it’s easier to revert to what you know best.

Never mind training women to get on in the industry, how about training men to understand what women can do for their business?

FOXY
IMI Automotive Careers Champion – champing at the bit to encourage more women into the motor industry because it is the right thing to do…

“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women”
Madeleine Albright
64th US Secretary of State