Hate mail reinforces the gender divide in the car business

The car business is male turf, with women composing only about a quarter of the workforce. That figure won't be changing anytime soon judging by the reaction to a recent Free Press story I reported about sexism in the car business.

The responses, mostly from men, to the story, "Strip Clubs, stupidity: Boys club lingers in the car business," ranged from insulting dismissal to downright rage.

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The negative reaction isn't surprising. I've been reporting business news for more than 20 years. When I started covering the futures markets in Chicago in 1998, open outcry still reigned on the trading floors. I went daily to the trading floor in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to write a market report. It was nearly all men there, and while I met some of the best and most professional men of my career, I also met some of the worst. It was a hotbed for harassment. Two years later, I covered Wall Street in New York and dealt with a similar crowd.

So when one of the emails I got in reaction to my Free Press story patronizingly told me to: "Try to up your game, baby cakes," I chuckled. The sexist insult was mild compared with what I experienced during my "Wolf of Wall Street" days. Still, I wonder how the man who wrote it would feel if some man spoke to his daughter, sister or mother in that vein. 

When I started covering the car business in 2004, I braced for sexist behavior. While I did run into a few bad apples, I was fortunate to work overwhelmingly with men who behaved professionally.

Over the years, I have seen an increasing number of dealerships, manufacturers and other car businesses develop more female leadership. It culminated with General Motors naming Mary Barra as CEO four years ago — the first and so far only woman to run a carmaker. Earlier this month, GM appointed Dhivya Suryadevara as its new CFO, the first woman to hold that job at GM.

Despite those strides, many auto-related companies remain female-unfriendly with some male leadership still practicing sexist or inappropriate behavior. 

For example, the story I wrote arose from reaction to news that an arbitrator ruled that auto supplier Visteon had reason to fire its former CEO Timothy Leuliette for downloading pornography and soliciting prostitutes on his work computer. 

While behavior such as Leuliette's is "not really sexual harassment," said Jody DeVere, CEO of AskPatty.com. "Can you imagine what his leadership is doing to the company culture?" 

Askpatty.com offers women car-buying advice and trains and certifies dealers on effective communication with women.

Data show diversity in a business is good for the bottom line. People of different genders and ethnicity bring unique world views to the table to solve problems and drive innovation.

Look at the evidence. Global Management Consulting Firm McKinsey & Co. studied diversity in the workplace for several years. In its report released in 2015 called "Diversity Matters," it examined proprietary datasets for 366 public companies across a range of industries in Canada, Latin America, the United Kingdom and the United States. It studied financial results and the composition of top management and boards.

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Diversity helped the bottom line in nearly all cases. In the U.K. in particular, it found greater gender diversity on the senior-executive team corresponded to the highest performance uplift in the entire data set: For every 10 percent increase in gender diversity, earnings before interest and taxation rose by 3.5 percent.

Likewise, in 2012, Credit Suisse did a similar study on 2,400 companies. Large-cap companies with a value of more than $5 billion that had at least one woman on the board outperformed rivals with no women on their boards by 26 percent over six years.

Lingering sexist attitudes

Still, the car industry culture remains tainted by lingering sexist attitudes and behavior, it's just more subdued than it was decades ago because of increased anti-sexual harassment and discrimination training, DeVere said. 

One man wrote in response to my story: "Women make up only 27 percent of the auto industry and that is a good thing. Most women really don't know jack about a car. When was the last time you saw a women change out a camshaft in a classic car or truck? Does not happen often! As for the parts and service end of the business, 98 percent of women don't want to get their hands dirty and are concerned about breaking a fingernail or their makeup!"

Well, he's right in that women compose a small percentage of the service techs at car dealerships. But not because they worry about breaking a fingernail.

Many women go to a vocational school to learn the trade, but they can't get a job in the largely male service shops, DeVere said.

"They’re told they wouldn’t fit in. That’s a cultural problem," said DeVere.

The numbers of women car mechanics have been inching up. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in 1989 there were 880,000 automotive service and repair technicians, women made up 0.7 percent of them. In 1999, there were 837,000, with women being 1.4 percent. Last year, there were 904,000 automotive service techs and mechanics with 2.4 percent of them women.

Here's another email from a man who said he works in IT for an automaker where female managers "dominate" the department: "Many of the women I work for/with are ... idiots who get promoted and moved along for the simple fact that they are women. And it is killing our company."

On the flip side, I received this note from a woman:

"I have observed or experienced all of what you wrote about. However, you missed the most pervasive problem: Annual reviews and word of mouth innuendo slanted against women and minorities.

"Every comment can be made positively or negatively: for example, using the word 'aggressive' versus 'assertive.' Every comment affects the overall perception of employees, and their pay and advancement opportunities."

The story I wrote was based on data and expert sources. Yet some male readers refuse to hear it. Sadly, an "us versus them" mentality has never helped society progress.

The most effective way to transform culture and mute divisiveness is through continued constructive dialogue. For that reason, I suspect there will be more to come on this topic.

Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com or 313-222-2149.