Project XX Identifies Auto Industry Barriers to Women

Stories of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and worse have come cascading out from behind boardroom doors since the Harvey Weinstein revelations, prompting not only companies but entire industries to take a closer look at the treatment of women. Even before Weinstein, Silicon Valley and tech companies have been taking a hard look at discrimination and advancement of female workers and executives.

Automotive News has done the auto industry the favor of doing the examination for it. There have been a number of direct industry impacts following Weinstein’s ignominious professional collapse after allegations that he harassed or assaulted several women. For instance, Lexus cut ties with Weinstein’s TV and film production firm as a longstanding sponsor of Project Runway.

Automotive News had been working on a systematic evaluation of the role of gender in the car industry for several months before the Weinstein allegations. And its “Project XX” found “sexism [is] alive and well in the auto industry,” according to a headline.

The publication’s survey of nearly 900 women across the industry found “many women reported being asked inappropriate questions during the hiring process; women are routinely expected to conduct lower-level tasks, such as watering the office plants, despite having executive titles; women are excluded from after-work social networking (which sometimes still happens at strip clubs); and the majority of women say they’ve been subject to unwanted sexual advances from bosses, colleagues and customers.”

The publication’s survey also found that 65 percent of women working at new car dealerships had been subject to unwanted sexual advances during their careers, while 45 percent said they’d been passed up for new opportunities or promotions because of their gender.

To be sure, the elevation of Mary Barra to CEO of General Motors helped shatter the industry’s glass ceiling and galvanized a re-examination of gender equality in many quarters of the auto business, a process that continues.

But change has been too slow in coming in many quarters, not only at manufacturing companies that traditionally have been male-dominated but also at car dealerships that, typically, have comprised enclaves of men.

The days of “Baby, you can drive my car” are long gone—more women need to be running the companies that make them, and heading up the design, engineering and sales functions within them. TIME may have called Barra “The Mechanic” for breaking through the glass ceiling in Detroit, but there’s only so much one woman can fix without the support of her industry of fellow automakers.

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