{"id":4735,"date":"2014-11-24T09:20:50","date_gmt":"2014-11-23T23:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=4735"},"modified":"2023-08-18T15:57:52","modified_gmt":"2023-08-18T05:57:52","slug":"misogyny-motors-and-mechanics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/driving\/misogyny-motors-and-mechanics\/","title":{"rendered":"Misogyny, Motors and Mechanics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear, oh, dear\u2026 do I detect a slight note of misogyny in my fellow blogger\u2019s post \u201cSomething Wicked This Way Comes<\/a>\u201d (a title that, incidentally, Ray Bradbury nicked from Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth)?\u00a0 The first example is a female P-plater, there\u2019s references to a granny driver and there\u2019s a photo of a woman who doesn\u2019t look that old in this complaint about bad driving.<\/p>\n

I have absolutely no complaints about the actual examples of bad driving.\u00a0 And it may be pure coincidence that the bad driver first mentioned happened to be female.\u00a0 However, there is a long tradition in motoring of misogyny and general sneering at woman drivers.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s the advertising tradition of putting bikini babes on the bonnets of cars for sale, car racing games that assume that the player is a bloke or comments like \u201cdriving like a grandmother\u201d or calling a particularly sizzling sports car a \u201cchick magnet\u201d, it\u2019s been going on for a long time and does make things a tad more difficult if you\u2019re female and a driver.\u00a0 Even those \u201cpink parks for women only\u201d that have appeared in some parts of the world are patronizing and annoying.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve also got the whole \u201cwomen aren\u2019t good with machinery and don\u2019t know anything\u201d attitude that can be taken by mechanics.\u00a0 This is best exemplified by what cropped up when I was trying to find an image for an earlier post of mine about women doing car repairs.\u00a0 The vast majority of images that Google popped up for me either showed a woman staring at an open bonnet looking helpless and hopeless, or else it showed some cheesecake babe bending over the bonnet (or lying on her back showing only a pair of trim bare legs) with sexily smeared grease on her face, skimpy shorts and a crop top.\u00a0 There are a few that do show women trying to look moderately competent but these are so obviously posed \u2013 you\u2019re not going to make me believe that anybody is going to wear a long-sleeved white top to tinker about under the bonnet or wear a swishy skirt, dangly hair or high heels.<\/p>\n

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Here’s hoping that the only reason why she looks horrified is because she’s got to do roadside repairs while wearing white rather than because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Hooray<\/a>

Hooray – there are some decent and realistic images out there!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Yes, I always wear a short skirt and high heels to fix my car, and my skirt’s not going to ride up AT ALL.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Long loose hair, crop top, short shorts… and not a spanner in sight. The perfect outfit for repairing cars.<\/p><\/div>\n

It gets worse than just popular images,\u00a0too.\u00a0 Fortunately, it hasn\u2019t happened to me, but you hear stories about mechanics charging women more than men for work done or giving poorer service. \u00a0You also get the impression that women don\u2019t exist if you go into your typical automotive supply shops \u2013 a patronizing \u201cwell, your husband would probably prefer this for his car\u201d sort of attitude.\u00a0 Hello?\u00a0 There are a lot of single, divorced and widowed women out there who have their own cars, thank you very much.\u00a0 And even the ones who do have a bloke of their own may be doing their own car maintenance.\u00a0 In some households, it may be the woman\u2019s responsibility (or just her turn) to take the car in for a service.<\/p>\n

Anybody can have a rant \u2013 and you\u2019re more than welcome to tell your stories about what it\u2019s like to be a woman taking a car into the mechanics\u2019 \u2013 but it\u2019s something else to actually do something about the situation.\u00a0 So, if you\u2019re a woman, here\u2019s some actions you can take:<\/p>\n