Break down old structures. Become a role model!
“She must be made of steel, the way she can stand anything without complaining.”
That is what cameraman Carl-Axel Söderström noted about Clärenore Stinnes, who wrote history as “Europe’s most successful female driver”: In 1928/29, together with her companion Söderström, she was the first person to drive around the world: 46,758 kilometres, 25 months, 23 countries. From Frankfurt via the Balkans to Siberia, through the Gobi Desert to China and Japan, across the Andes, through the USA and then back to Europe by ship.
Of course, a lot of things went wrong during that journey. But Clärenore surprised her companion and all observers again and again with her courage, strength and her spirit of adventure. Characteristics that were not often attributed to women at that time. Even today, not so many people would consider those characteristics as typically feminine.
Before her trip around the world, Clärenore Stinnes was a successful racer and won a total of 17 competitions until 1927. She was followed by Annie Bousquet, who entered the motorsport stage in 1952 — you can learn more about her in a blogpost written by my colleague Anja Hendel. Since then, the history of female motorsports has been continued by many inspiring, strong women who tidied up with outdated gender stereotypes. One of them is Christina Nielsen, who was the first woman to win a major full season SportsCar Championship in North America.
It’s been nearly a hundred years since the first female pioneers broke ground in motorsports. Still, the automotive sector is widely dominated by men, ignoring the fact that women contributed to its development early on, not only in sports, but also in engineering: For example, it was inventor Mary Anderson who developed the first functioning windscreen wiper system in 1903 and made driving safer.
Women in MINT — why can only MIT do it?
I’m an engineer and I’ve been working for years in the automotive industry. In my profession, industrial engineering and management, the situation is not quite as dramatic as in motorsports, but also not really rosy. Although the number of female first-year students is developing positively — in the winter semester 2017/18 it was 25%, five percent more than in 2010/11 — it increases very slowly, but still not in all MINT subjects. While an above-average number of women enrol in biotechnology (55%) and health technology (45%), only 22% do so in industrial engineering and management. In mechanical engineering, only one in ten students at German universities is female.
As a pioneer in many areas, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) once again shows that things can be different: At the renowned university, about half of the engineering students are female.
And that is most probably because of MIT’s self-reflection and their determination to make a fundamental change: For a long time, the Institute of Mechanical Engineering was also considered a male domain at MIT.
To attract more women and thus lower the inhibition threshold for MINT studies, they rethought their recruiting and made clear: Our mechanical engineering course is by no means only for men. For example, they turned enrolled female students into testimonials that showed what campus life and teaching look like.
In a sense, these students became role models in the same way as Clärenore, Annie and Christina. They all clear up prejudices and show other women: If I can do it, so can you!
Break down old structures!
What we can learn from the MIT (among many other things) is that the interest in MINT subjects is not a question of gender. It’s not the girls and women, but the old, encrusted structures that discourage them to follow this career path. The only way to resolve this gender inequality is training and education: On the one hand, of course, it is necessary to encourage more women to follow their passion for MINT and take a job in the tech sector. The equation is very simple here: We can only have more diverse leaderships teams in tech and automotive companies when there are more qualified women to take management positions.
On the other hand, there is an enormous backlog demand on the executive floors of companies. Especially managers need to learn new ways of leadership: rethinking established structures, working models and the corporate culture — to support flexibility, agility and lifelong learning. To facilitate creativity and to motivate us, the employees, in the long term to give their best. From my point of view, that is the framework for a company’s future success, strengthens the employer brand in the War for Talents and, in the long-run, enables innovation.
From blue collar to white collar: We need to rethink work, culture and leadership
In my view, companies can no longer afford to answer “no” to any of these questions. But such far-reaching changes require a fundamental rethinking — not only at management level, but throughout the entire company, from blue collar to white collar. An important prerequisite for this is diversity — in addition to the declared willingness to change. Diversity is accompanied by new perspectives that can open up completely new ideas. That’s why Women in Tech and especially Female Leadership are not an end in themselves, but help companies in their transformation. We all have to change and move — we better do it together, in a team, surrounded by qualified, smart minds with different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. When we bring them together, we can get a holistic view of problems within our own companies as well as at customers and partners.
If this reasoning is not convincing to you, let me add one more thing: Companies with a high proportion of women in management positions are also more economically successful.
If they can do it, you can do it!
So, ladies and gentlemen, be open to change. Embrace it! And, ladies, take a closer look at inspiring women like Clärenore Stinnes and Mary Anderson. If they can do it, you can do it! The automotive sector does not have to be a male preserve, that much I can tell you from my work and great colleagues at Porsche AG and the Porsche Digital Lab.
If you are interested to learn more about Female Leadership: In the next weeks, we will have a series of guest contributions that take difference stances on the topic — so stay tuned!
Articles already published
- “New Work: People x Technology x Collaboration” by Judith
Gabbert, Porsche Digital Lab - New Work: Networking and Knowledge Transfer — the Digital Transformation in the Automotive Industry by Alicia Metz-Kleine, Tandemploy GmbH
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A contribution by Thea Feuerstein, Buyer Motorsport Porsche AG and Winner PANDA Automotive 2017. Please find more about inspiring men & women on Twitter and Instagram.
