Articles by Sandy Myhre

The news that 51-year-old Mary Barra has been appointed as the first woman in the world to head a car company (General Motors) is a surprise, not so much that it has happened because a woman at the helm of what is still a male-dominated industry been brewing for a few years now, but that Ford didn't get there first.Ford is known for promoting women.  Indeed, almost 30 years ago they were the first car company to appoint a woman specifically to oversee the wants and needs of women customers in the showroom and had roving executives visiting outlets around the world to train sales men (and they are still invariably men) in the delicate art of persuading women to make the final purchase decision.And yet General Motors, known as a kind of lumbering giant where its own decisions can take eons because of an all-pervading and archaic bureaucratic approached, has up and gazumpt its long-time Detroit rival.  Who would have thought?Ms Barra certainly has the creds.  Her father was a die-maker with Pontiac for nearly 40 years.  She studied electrical engineering at the General Motors Institute (now known as Kettering University) to obtain a Bachelor of Science degree before receiving a GM fellowship at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1988 and a Masters degree in Business Administration in 1990.  In that she represented the emerging academic trend of women studying both science and/or engineering while adding business for good measure.  So she knows how a car works and understands the industry.In February 2011 she was appointed Executive Vice President of Global Product Development with responsibilities for design and the global purchasing and design chain and less than a year later Forbes magazine listed her as the 41st most powerful woman in the world.  This new appointment, which starts in January, will no doubt see her move up that particular pecking order.She can be found on the company's test track putting cars through their paces and she will need to be up to speed to improve profits which see GM lagging behind Ford and Toyota and she will need to literally drive improvements in the company's product lineup.  In fact just hours after her appointment was announced, GM pulled the plug on manufacturing in Australia.  Ms Barra would certainly have played an insider role in that decision. So where is Ford in all of this gender equality?  Across the Atlantic is another American woman who has just been appointed as Chief Operating Officer of Ford Europe. Barb Samardzich is the third person appointed as COO of Ford of Europe in the past decade and both her predecessors have moved into top positions within the organization.It's known that Ford earmarks top jobs for those with corporate talent and like Mary Barra over in Detroit, Barb Samardzich has a background in engineering.  She was Vice President of product design before her October appointment as COO.  At a dinner to accept the trophy in the Women's World Car of the Year in Bonn in November she said she was 'surprised' at her appointment. “I didn't think it would happen so soon,” she said. “But the fact it has happened makes it tremendously exciting for women in the industry.”It is indeed, but whether other car companies take note remains to be seen. It's hard to see any Japanese, Chinese or Korean car companies appointing women to executive positions let alone Chief Executive, there just aren't any women in senior enough positions at the moment to progress that high.  And the fact that both Ford and Holden manufacturing will cease in this part of the world means fewer opportunities for women with the sort of engineering credentials that currently warrant them being given the chance.  If a woman is appointed to head up the new-look Ford and Holden in Australia she will likely have a business or accounting degree, not a technical background.Given the number of women in business schools and universities and the fact their numbers tend to outweigh men in these categories, it may not happen overnight but it's bound to happen.  After all it's only 130 years or so since Karl Benz invented the gasoline engine and made the first gas powered car.  That became known as the Mercedez Benz which was named, of course, after a woman.Sandy Myhre was the first woman motoring writer in the NZ Motoring Writers' Guild and is CEO of Women's World Car of the Year. 

Late last year the Mayor of the German town of Triberg introduced women-only parking spaces because, he said, women were worse at parking than men.The wider spaces are better lit, marked with a female symbol and not next to any concrete pillars. Mayor Gallus (rhymes with phallus) Strobel then revealed the real reason behind this considerate gesture. "While they're at it," he sold Der Spiegelmagazine "they can see the town's attractions."He suffered worldwide criticism when all he wanted to do was promote tourism but he was successful. Following his comments tourists flocked to the town to try out the parking spaces. His lateral thinking is catching on.A shopping centre in the Chinese city of Shijiazhuang built a car park with spaces nearly a metre wider than normal and just for women drivers. The parks were painted in a delicate pink and light purple and according to the manager Mr Wang (rhymes with bang) Zheng, these pretty lines would appeal to women's "strong sense of colour and different sense of distance." Furthermore, female parking attendants were employed to guide the female drivers into their berths.Given the reasoning applied to gender-specific wider parking spaces, surely having women guiding women drivers is the blind leading the blind? And women aren't the only problem drivers in China when you consider there are more than 200 road accident deaths there every day.It took scientists from a German university conducting research into the "spatial intelligence" of women to conclude that spatial performance (part of which involves getting a ginormous car into a ridiculously small space) is sensitive to hormonal fluctuations during the menstrual cycle. It means we're dangerous at a certain time of the month but it surely didn't need a collegial geek on a grant to point that out. Ask any bloke.Come to think of it, pedestrians need somewhere to park too. Maybe town seats sited in the middle of nowhere could be painted pink and purple so women with spatial difficulties and a fondness for colour could plonk themselves down after shopping and without scraping pillars. Better still, ban all women from driving. They do in Saudi Arabia and there's a reason for it. Blame the ovaries and upward thrusts of the pelvis.Yes, driving can affect not just a woman's child-bearing properties but her kids as well, at least according to a judicial advisor to an association of Gulf psychologists. Sheik Saleh bin Saad al-Lohaidan is reported to have suggested that if a woman drives a car not out of 'pure necessity' it would have negative physiological impacts."Functional and physiological medical studies show that (driving) automatically affects ovaries and pushes the pelvis upwards," he said. "That's why we find those who regularly drive have children with clinical problems of varying degrees," he added while not citing specific medical studies to support his argument.But the Middle East is not alone in singling out women drivers. A couple of years ago Bernie Ecclestone, the man who tacitly heads the sport of Formula One, scored an own goal when asked in a television interview if American driver, Danica Patrick, could make it to Formula One. "Women should wear white, like all the other kitchen appliances," he opined. It was probably meant as a joke but it backfired quicker than a car with fuel mix problems and the old adage about fools opening mouths to confirm their status springs immediately to mind.Motor racing is replete with such men of similar intellectual rigour. Former world champion, Mika Hakkinen, reportedly suggested he'd welcome women into Formula One "as long as they were pretty." Danica Patrick can sleep at night knowing this. This is the same man who drove a McLaren Supercar – which has two seats in the front and one for the driver slightly behind those. "Good design," mused Hakkinen. "One seat for the wife and the other for the mistress." Still, he exhibited more animation with this utterance than he ever did at his post-race press conferences.Then there's the driver of an historic car fussed over whether a female journalist should accompany his group from New Zealand on an overseas racing foray. "What will my wife say?" he whined, appearing to mistake one ancient profession for another and confirming that his line of thought pre-dated his racing steed. And this in a country where women were the first in the world to receive the vote.Sandy Myhre is a female motoring journalist of many years standing, and president of the Women's World Car of the Year organisation.