Women mechanics face Mad Men moments at work

“I’ve had colleagues say they want to have sex with me,” says Jennifer Ferrari, buffing the rust off a Toyota Camry brake pad. “There’s the constant having to say no. It makes you cautious.”

I’ve asked Ferrari for her most Mad Men moment — the eye-popping sexism that feminism stomped out of most industries in the 1970s and 80s. Though not the automotive service industry.

She gives me three.

“Two guys decided they didn’t want me to be their team leader. They stole my tools and moved my tools around and took parts I was working on,” says Ferrari, 42. “That’s how sexism works. They don’t like you to have power over them.”

Ferrari. Yes, that’s her real name. Isn’t that perfect? She’s a veteran automotive technician (what they used to call a mechanic) at Yorkdale Toyota’s dealership, near Dufferin St. and Lawrence Ave. W. For the first five years, she was the only woman on the 17-person bench. Today, there are four.

That makes Yorkdale Toyota one of the only service garages in the city where you can roll in and be guaranteed a woman’s hands will change your oil or pick apart your engine to replace a warped gasket. It has become a safe haven for women and a role model for an industry that still largely believes women should be sprawled on the hoods of cars dressed in as little as possible, not beneath them in bulky coveralls.

The manager, an immigrant from Guyana, has garnered a reputation for giving the few women technicians entering apprenticeship programs a chance. Most garages won’t even call you back if you are a woman, Ferrari says.

“There’s a lot of moving on in this industry. Men have the option to move to another dealership. For me, even if I wanted to, I knew it would be very hard to find a place to take me. It’s crazy.”

This shocks me. The sexism I grew up with was much more subtle — a job’s prescribed long hours being incompatible for motherhood, for instance. I feel like I’ve slipped back in time 60 years.

“My mom was one of the first women border officers,” says Eve Kobayashi, a 19-year-old apprentice in the shop. “The manager used to give her $5 and tell her, ‘Go get coffee, sweetie.’ I can relate to that. It’s not that extreme. But they are very tough on you because you are a girl.”

There’s a simple numbers game here. Most garages haven’t had to leave the 1950s because few women are applying for jobs there. Out of 30 students in Kobayashi’s class at Centennial College, 27 are men.

She was the only girl who would venture to the automotive wing in her high school, she says.

The women’s theories for this abound. Women don’t like cars. Women don’t like to get dirty. But I agree with Ferrari’s take on it: girls, when they are little, still aren’t encouraged to tinker with tools like their brothers are. So they don’t fall into auto mechanics — they have to seek it out, which given the macho culture, requires an iron will.

How has a woman’s touch changed the culture at Yorkdale Toyota?

Manager Quaison Parris says foul language has decreased. Veteran mechanic Manny Neves says the atmosphere is friendlier.

Ferrari says she no longer feels lonely. She has a crew to vent to and strategize with. She is no longer an exception, but the norm.

The clearest sign that women are here to stay? A women’s change room has finally been built. It means Tara Parsons, a self-described diva technician who likes makeup as much as wrenches, will no longer have to use the customer bathroom to change into her work clothes.

Before I drive away, Parris tells me some male customers get incensed when they see a woman lift up the hood of their car. “I tell them, ‘That woman will do a better job than a man,’ ” he says. More than half his customers are women.

So why don’t we demand that a woman work on our cars? That’s what I plan to do from now on.

Revolutions, though sparked from within, can be flamed from the outside. This one needs to burn.

Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Catherine Porter