Yesterday David and I went to the Autosport Show, on one of it's 'Trade Days'. As engineers and designers, we are most interested in the Engineering section of the show. That's where we can pick up on ideas, see the latest components and meet people who can be useful to our projects.
A three-page article, about our rocket powered car 'laffin-gas', had just appeared in 'Racecar Engineering' magazine, so we decided to attend in full team uniform to get maximum attention. David and I, at times, went separate ways in order to investigate as many things as possible for our new car. In previous years I had always attended in anonymous 'civvies' usually a suit with a skirt. I had found that, dressed like that, it was difficult to get the men on the stands to take me seriously or even bother to break off from talking bollocks with their mates to attend to my enquires. This time, in team overalls, and with a much higher profile, I expected things to be different. No chance!!
On one stand, that was promoting it's excellent shock absorbers, I wanted to let them know that the ones we had bought from them for our present car had worked out very well. I also wanted to explore the possibilities for shock absorbers for our new, 400 mph car. There were two men, in company shirts, sitting at a small round table chatting with each other. I went up to them and stood plainly in their line of sight. I was the only other person on their stand. They carried on talking. I waited. They looked at me and carried on talking. I waited a little longer. They carried on talking. At that point I said, in a voice loud enough to be heard over their conversation, "Bollocks to you then". They gave me a quick glance and carried on talking. Needless to say, we won't be using their shock-absorbers on the new car. Would they have done this if I'd been a bloke? I doubt it.
On quite a few stands, that were displaying things of interest to me, I struggled to get attention, and then my enquiries were constantly interrupted by comments like 'What you mean is...' and 'What makes you think this is what you want?'... So I took to having a copy of Racecar Engineering in my hand, open at the article on our car, just to get through the initial barriers and assumptions. In some cases that really helped. In others, the man on the stand would glance at it, not read a single word and start to tell me what kind of a car I was involved with. ' Ah a Top-Fueller' or 'Oh, a Jet-Car' or some other utterly erroneous assumption. Even when I said 'No it's a rocket' they'd tell me it wasn't a rocket and was something else. Me - rocket engineer (and driver) responsible for the only fast rocket powered car presently running anywhere on the planet, him - working for wages on the company stand. Not every man there treated me like an idiot. But most of them did.
As I walked around the engineering part of the show, I noticed almost no women on any of the stands. Oh - except for the numerous eighteen year-old dolly-birds in hot-pants. Where, I wondered, was the beef-cake in hot pants? I'm amazed that an engineering show in the 21st century, should still consider that the only proper role for females is to parade around mostly naked for the gratification of its customers.
I'm no rabid feminist, but this all really got me rather pissed off. No wonder I can't get sponsorship or be taken seriously by industry and government sponsored motorsport organisations. The motorsport industry is utterly and overtly chauvinist. The very fact that there is a need for a 'British Women Racing Drivers Association' proves the matter.
Here am I, responsible for the most radical and innovative vehicle to be produced in years, developing entirely new technology and being utterly ignored by most of the thousands of blokes in grey suits.
I'm sure that, when presented with this little diatribe, the powers-that-be in all the Motorsport Associations will deny these claims vigourously, point at the odd token woman, and say that they go out of their way to be inclusive. That reminds me of the Met denying the charge of 'Institutional Racism' following the death of Stephen Lawrence. Discrimination against women is utterly endemic throughout motorsport. It is so deeply ingrained that it the sport is not even conscious of this fact.
Wake up guys- there are more females than males getting engineering degrees these days. Of, course, the women will still struggle to be taken seriously by this male dominated industry, but in another generation, you guys may actually have to be good at what you do in order to keep your jobs.
