Since the dawn of the automotive industry, it has been all too common to hear phrases like “woman driver” from behind the wheel. People have used this term to describe poor drivers for decades without realizing the negative consequences that result from such a simple action. This simple action, though, comes from a long history of sexism deeply rooted within our culture.
With the evolution of social media comes an uptick in sexist comments, some even being posted without realizing the inherent misogynistic tones. This can be seen with a trend that surfaced on apps like TikTok not too long ago. This trend, which had its rise in popularity around 2022, features videos of young girls driving poorly with the caption, “I did this, but I’m literally just a teenage girl.” In a TikTok video by user @mcrop8, the poster backs into a parked car with the end caption “but I’m just a teenage girl.”
While these posts can be funny, they can also be dangerous. Men use these videos to justify making comments like this themselves. User @g80_moe posted a TikTok video of a car mistakenly pulling out as he was driving. He captioned this video “I could hear her saying ‘I’m just a girl.’” A comment under this video left by user @Ming_Lee said, “They use ‘I’m just a girl’ to excuse doing things like this.” Seeing posts of young girls making jokes about the stereotypes of female drivers fuels men to make similar statements, but not as jokes.
Male drivers not only perpetuate these stereotypes with statements, but through their actions while driving. Driving as a woman means more exposure to road rage incidents at the hands of the opposite sex. An article on Refinery29 quoted a Nextbase study that said, “While half of women (49%) had experienced road rage from the opposite sex, just 37% [of men] could say the same.”
In my own experience, I seem to encounter more road rage when I’m driving my car alone than when I am either the passenger or driver of a male. When I’m driving alone, I’m met with tailgating, flashing high beams and even honking when I’m in lanes that sometimes aren’t even shared with other drivers. If I get to catch a glimpse of the culprit, most times it is a man twice my age. I’ve witnessed this happen in the passenger seat of other women’s cars as well. This kind of discrimination doesn’t just happen on the road, but starts at the root of how we drive: the automotive industry.
The automotive industry has been a male-dominated industry since it was created. Men were the first to buy, own and repair cars, and many didn’t want that to change. Women entered the industry during the second World War, a time when women were filling in for a lot of “men’s jobs.” This sparked the debate of change in the auto industry, a struggle that would be ongoing for years, especially with the decline of female auto workers after the war ended. Even now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “only 19,236 female auto mechanics were working in the field in 2018.” There’s more gender diversity than there used to be, but women still only make up 2.1% of all mechanics.
Two women who are working to change the number of women in this field, though, are siblings Amber Stout-Nebozuk and Kayla Burris, shop owners at Fuerst Automotive of Kent, Ohio. Both said that there was less pushback in becoming female shop owners than anticipated, but more shock and surprise. Amber, who worked as a service advisor for the business before becoming an owner, said she received a lot more negativity in that role than anything, which she said made it “a challenging role to be in.”
She recalled a lot of these remarks being, with great surprise, from women, usually of an older generation. One customer even said, “Let me talk to your male service advisor because he would know what I’m talking about.”
These comments likely come from a place of internalized misogyny pushed onto past generations. Kayla said her and Amber often receive the question, “Are you going to be able to lift this?”
Kayla and Amber, both Kent State Alumni, didn’t originally plan on working in the automotive industry. Kayla had started a career in hospitality management while working in conservancy at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, working on weddings and other big events for the park. Amber was working as a medical librarian at University Hospitals when they told their parents they wanted to take over their business. They had previously talked about opening an entirely different business together, but decided instead to start their journey as shop owners in their family business.
They both said they’ve received a lot of support from other women in the industry. “It’s becoming more prevalent, having women in the automotive industry,” Amber said. The pair also said they feel the presence of women in the industry has seen an uptick as of recently, compared to what they saw growing up.
Fuerst Automotive just hired their first female auto technician at their Broadview Heights location, who Amber said was shocked to find how helpful and nice all of the male technicians working for them were. Many of the males in her auto program at school weren’t very nice, mainly because she was one of the only females in the program.
Amber and Kayla said, as female shop owners, they feel pressure to prove themselves more than their male counterparts. As a woman in the industry, they said you have to “prove your worth and prove that you can handle it, and it can be a little intimidating.”
Amber said she works through navigating other people’s doubts by “just proving them. [We] just go in and get the job done.”
Fuerst Automotive plans on providing women’s car care clinics, helping women learn how to do things like change tires, put in windshield washer fluids and change out wiper blades. They plan to have this up and running around autumn of 2025. This is just one of the ways they are working to reduce the stigma about women in the automotive industry.
Dealerships are another place where women often feel singled out. Kayla Burris even states that “they have this mentality of ‘you’re a woman, you don’t know anything about cars, so we’re going to take advantage of you,’” especially when buying cars or needing parts replaced.
In a study done by Edmunds, they sent one of their male editors and one of their female editors to 3 car dealerships around Los Angeles to see how differently they were treated based upon gender. At 2 of the 3 dealerships, they were treated differently just based upon first impressions. At one of the two, the woman was completely ignored for the first 10 minutes of sitting there, while the man was greeted right away. This just goes to show that women are taken advantage of at many dealerships and outcasted based on their gender, making it intimidating for women to shop for cars.
While it might not be all dealerships or repair shops that single women out, it’s enough that it makes many women scared to even step foot in the door. Even though the stigma of women and automobiles still exists, people like Kayla and Amber are working to change the narrative for women all over. As long as people are working to change their perspective of women both on the road and behind the vehicle, less negative stereotypes will live on and plague generations of future women to come.
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