I am writing a paper on the stereotypes at SAE shops across the country. I would like to know how many girls are working at your shop and what they do. For example do you have a couple girls that belong to your club but they mainly work with business and the administrative things or do they work on the car. What I want to know is how many girls do you have in your club that actually work on the SAE car.

Also I would like to know how these girls are treated. Do you treat them like one of the guys or do you treat them like they have no idea what they are doing?

I know this has been asked before but it was a really old thread and I need some more recent information.

Thanks for all of the help!

We have two girls on chief positions, Brakes and ergonomy/aero, Also 2 more, on public relations and suspension.

Last year we had almost 8. Some related to tech issues on the car.

Im a girl working in the shop, so I can tell you some stuff. Well, at the beggining they are cool and normal, after you gain some time with them, then you became one of the "guys", you hear each and every discusting stuff they are talking about,you also know what they truly think about some girls, and there is the typical relationships and hookups.
But in general I´ve been treated well, I have nothing to complaint about. They make jokes and stuff, but nothing unusual or disrespectful.
it would be really stupid not treating well a girl if you need people working on the car, and future people to stay in the team. Plus, you need some eye candy!! hahahahaha you are around with the same guys 24/7,and you push away the girls of your team?? Not very smart for an engineer =).

(sorry if I misspelled something)

We have one girl on our team. Naturally she does the cost report/business stuff, but she's also in charge of driver controls/ergo. She has no idea what she's doing, and is treated exactly the same as any other member who has no idea what he's doing.

We certainly do NOT treat her as one of the guys. We make FAR too many sexist jokes in the shop to ever expose a female to that level of bigotry.

Our team is twelve percent female. One of them is our VP. She handles the cost report and all the school related paperwork, RSO, travel stuff, the whole nine yards. The other one just joined the marketing/ fund raising team, she works on the car as well. The shop is definatly a little more PC when the girls are arond, but for the most part they just fit right in with the rest of us.

...just to brag, my formula hybrid team is almost 1/4 female

that's about the same with Dartmouth and FIT (Florida Inst. of Tech) i think. Im guessing there are more female in electrical than in mechanical. Embry-Riddle F-Hybrid has at least 2 girls in the team.

quote:

Originally posted by RiNaZ:
that's about the same with Dartmouth and FIT (Florida Inst. of Tech) i think. Im guessing there are more female in electrical than in mechanical. Embry-Riddle F-Hybrid has at least 2 girls in the team.

So you're saying it's going to be a babe fest in New Hampshire in May?

I dont know about that ... female yes, babe ... well, that's too big of a word to define

Since i am posting under my real name i guess i have to be kinda careful.

We have two females on our team and of the most part they are involved in the things "that you would expect." One is our PR/business person, and the other is on our body team. To say the least they are not my favorite team members and don't contribute much.

Our business one does bug us from time to time to see if "we need help around the lab" and to be honest we avoid this. This is only because we have less then 100 days left and she is now asking this. We have male members like this and it’s the same story. At this point or any point i am not going to take the time to walk anyone through everything and then have them contribute nothing to the team.

We did have a female team leader back in 2001 (don't qoute the year) and from what i can tell she was good. She even published SAE papers.

Enough talk, where are the pictures?

billy, uh, we don't go to school in southern california...

It's a while since I did FSAE so I don't know if my story will be useful to you or not.

Racing became a massive part of my life during my time at Leeds Univeristy, in my first year I was a general gofer and sheet metal worker, I went to the FSAE and Formula Student competitions that year.

In my second year I was allowed to use the lathes and ended up doing the majority of the turning for our suspension and chassis inserts, often working 'til 3am plus all the usual car prep. I was also put in charge of the presentation for FSAE Australasia and Formula Student we earnt our best scores ever from that. I also made my first and only competitive debut in the Skid-pad event.

For my final year I was voted in as team captain, and looked after the final drive for the car. We had something of a nightmare year due to changes in the department and funding, however it all came together in the end and we had a successful event.

Throughout my time there were 2 girls on the team, I think on the whole we were treated as "one of the guys" both worked incredibly hard, pulling the all nighters with everyone else, I loved every minute of it. For sure there was the normal banter, but I think we gave back as good as we got.

Since then I did the MSc in Motorsport Engineering and Management at Cranfield uni, and hooked up with Team West-Tec for my thesis. I got involved with their team as a junior engineer and won 2 oval championships with them in 2005 and 2006. Last year I ran data for them for a club FFord Championship, and this year will be data engineering for a 4 car team in Spanish F3. They're a fantastic team, really professional people though many are volunteers.

For 2006/2007 I also worked as a mechanic for a GT team in British / Spanish GT and Le Mans, all amazing experiences (we finished both years and were 4th at Le Mans in 2007), but a completely different team structure. I got a lot of responsibility on the car, but never felt fully accepted by the rest of the crew.

Good luck with all that you're doing, FSAE was a fantastic opportunity and I can honestly say it changed my life - I've had some fantastic experiences since I've graduated that I wouldn't have got without my experience as a student.

I forgot to add that I combine all that with a full time job with an OEM..... working as an engineer :-)

thats hot

quote:

Originally posted by billywight:
Enough talk, where are the pictures?

Thanks for this post it made me laugh for ages.

We have a few girls on the team, some on the PR side and some on the electrical side. But they have all been in the workshop to help build things.

Hey guys! Thank you for all of your help. My paper was very successful the Professor enjoyed it a lot!

Once again thanks for the help!

One of our Co-Captains is a female, she is also the lead of our aero design (body, wings, diffuser, etc).

She is actually the LEAST P.C. in our shop...

She is also my girlfriend and we've had quite a few arguments over the cars, much to the amusement of the others in the shop. I will have the last laugh when a certain Enzo Ferrari quote magically shows up on her wings!

quote:

Originally posted by inamo:
and this year will be data engineering for a 4 car team in Spanish F3. They're a fantastic team, really professional people though many are volunteers.

Hiya.

Nice gig with West-Tec. Gavin Wills seems like a good guy, he's of course engineering the Essex Porsche in LMS on Dunlop. They always seem to do a good job though in all the Formulae they compete in. Hope you like our F3 rubber BTW :-)

Ben

Hi Ben,

Yep should be a good season, they won the class B championship last year. Gavin's very switched on, doesn't miss much. Will you be working with him in LMS? We've got Jeff Goodliffe working with us too, he's a very valuable "old wise guy" learnt a lot about tyres from him in the oval days. First test just over a week away, off to the workshop tomorrow to dyno a load of dampers and get new lap tops up and running for the F3 data.

Have you got any data for the F3 rubber? Would be grateful for anything you can share - think you should still have my e-mail address?

Helen