Really? Then there would be a complete black-balling them from any form of racing. Racing, after all, is the only sport where there is relative equality between the sexes. In fact, take Danica for example. She's been involved in two forms of single-make type racing leagues (NASCAR and IRL), she only scored one victory since entering either (Japan in the early 00's). I think this says something about this whole discussion when you acknowledge that a woman is only mildly competitive when everything from the mechanical stand point is equalized.
Have Your Say: Can Women be Competitive in Modern Formula One Racing?
- Thread starter Paul Jeffrey
- Start date
Really? Then there would be a complete black-balling them from any form of racing. Racing, after all, is the only sport where there is relative equality between the sexes. In fact, take Danica for example. She's been involved in two forms of single-make type racing leagues (NASCAR and IRL), she only scored one victory since entering either (Japan in the early 00's). I think this says something about this whole discussion when you acknowledge that a woman is only mildly competitive when everything from the mechanical stand point is equalized.
You think it's society that's actively dissuading females from Motorsport? Let me argue alternate causality here.
With rare exception, females (without any sort of external dissuasion needed) tend to intrinsically not to want to drive cars around in a circle, get dirty and maybe get killed - all for a million-to-one shot at the big time. This may simply prove they're smarter than guys.
What you're doing is projecting your own interests onto a different group. In effect, you're saying "Why would anyone not want to do this!" and then inventing some notional societal pressure to explain it away.
The answer is actually right in front of you. Hang out with women. Ask them if they feel like they didn't pursue a career in motorsports because society prevented them.
After you do that, ask why so many of them prefer handbags and shoes to pickup trucks, hunting dogs and changing their own oil.
My points are simply these:
Vive la différence. Let women decide what they want to do.
There's not a man inside every woman trying to get out.
Women are not merely "repressed men". Not every field is going to be as intrinsically attractive to women as it is to men. Recognizing this fact isn't being "sexist".
An example: There are vastly more male serial killers than female. Is that because "society" is actively dissuading females from serial killing?
Again: A highly competitive, race-winning female driver would be exponentially more valuable to any team than the male equivalent.
Also: Lap times don't lie. You might as well argue that the reason there aren't any female running backs in the NFL is because society is standing in their way.
There is quite a bit of projection in your post here. You're looking for an argument about points I never made.
Firstly, I never protected motorsport or shifted the blame to another group. In fact I attacked motorsport in this very thread, and have done so on a regular basis both here and on other forums for its treatment of women. So I am not protecting anything. Secondly, I never said that women should go into motorsport. I also never claimed men should either, for the same reason - it isn't everyones cup of tea. We tend to forget on forums that not everybody is a motorsport fan. Outside of F1 (In Europe) and NASCAR (In the US), most people don't even like motorsport. So to suggest anyone should do it, or question why they would not want to do it, is a ridiculous suggestion, and one I never made. However you should question why there are plenty of girls interested in motorsport until they get older. You should then be asking why people who ARE interested in it, become less interested.
I also did not claim that society is the major factor which turns females away from motorsport, simply cited it as a reason. Motorsport does not help itself what-so-ever. My oldest daughter used to attend motor races with me. When she was 8 years old she asked me why there were no female drivers (this was a BTCC meeting). I had no answer. She also asked me why the only girls there were holding signs and umbreallas. Again I had no answer. But a very clear message was sent to her - she had no place at this meeting unless she was wearing heals and holding a sign, looking good, and she certainly had no place around or in the car. She doesn't come to motorsport anymore. She hasn't turned to heals and hangbags, but doesn't like racing anymore. I wonder why? That is not ok.
This happens in society as well. When was the last car movie that came out that had a good solid female character that wasn't there just to be looked at? If it involves cars (or bikes - bikes are even worse), then a womans place is very much about looking good, rather than actually taking part. That is also not ok.
One of the posts you quoted from me is completely out of context too. I was addressing the claim that women do not have the physical strength, reaction times, or concentration levels to take part in high level motor racing. There was evidence from the US Air Force that contradicts it, but we don't even need to go that far. If Paul Dalla Lana and Juan Pablo Montoya can take part in motorsport at the level they do, whilst, lets be honest, being as overweight and unfit as they are, then any woman can to. These men are not an example of an extreme level of fitness, so lets not pretend all these drivers are so fit and healthy that no woman can possibly get to that level. This is a false claim, and insulting to women . The very idea they couldn't possibly reach the fitness level of an overweight man who loves cheeseburgers...
I also never claimed inside every woman there is a man bursting to get out, however I think comments like "this may simply prove they are smarter than men" are unhelpful to the discussion. And please drop the "hang out with a woman" thing. I'm married to a motorsport fan and have 2 daughters. If anything there are too many women in my life at times
These sort of comments are just putting up walls, when threads like this should be about bringing them down. I am not interested in separating people more - there is already too much of that in the world.You also make the assumption that I am claiming it should be a 50/50 split in genders, which I never said. However I believe women should be given the choice to do things in life (this includes outside of motorsport), but the world often does not allow them. You only need to look at pay gaps, board room gender numbers and even just observe how women are treated in the work place to see that things are not equal. Aris story is a perfect example of this in motorsport. All things being equal, I do not think everything would end up as a 50/50 split, but I do believe that we encourage certain things from genders (this also applies to men), and sway the numbers more than they would naturally be.
To sum up my view so there can be no confusion, no misinterpretation and no projection:
I never claimed that it should be a 50/50 split.
I never claimed that every woman has a man bursting to get out
I never claimed that men and women are equal in every way
I do claim that women should be given an equal opportunity to take part in motorsport
I do claim that women should be treated as people and not props in motorsport
I do claim that with an equal opportunity, the numbers would change (but not to 50/50)
I do claim that any woman could be as good as any man at motorsport
I do claim that purely on numbers, it's going to be significantly harder to find a good female driver
I do claim that the world in general is not setup in a fair or equal way
Edited for many many spelling mistakes.
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That guy, horrifically inconsistent as he was, actually won a race in F1 - a fact which I had until recently completely blanked from my mind. I wouldn't have wanted to share a track with him, for sure, but he had pace when he was in form.
Is many F1 drivers like Maldonado, DiRsta, Palmer Stroll who shows...No they can't. If any says...Motorsport is dominated by the man I said - footbol was too and...Let's try first best women team play with...Juve, or Bayern which can not play in LM Final. If womens team win i said...Ok maybe they can drive F1 so quick like...well...Maldonado in Top form
I still can't tell if Pastor was the modern day version of de Cesaris or if de Cesaris is a old version of Pastor...
I guess the world may never know!
That drive in the Spanish GP of 2012 showed that, on the right day, good old Pastor could drive as well as anyone. If you look at interviews with F1 drivers over the years, almost all of them mention that achieving consistency is the thing that separates the Adequate from the Good, and the merely Good from the World Champions.
Still, the way he retained his composure during the closing stages of that race as Alonso bore down on him and his tires started to go away...
It's really hard for me to make fun of someone who could do that. Holding him up as some kind of exemplar of "Male Privilege" in motorsports is really a bad choice, even if it was meant to be funny.
The problem is... Women have special periods, you know? What if a race correlates with that thing. Would be painful to drive. They can definitely race in F1, but for the top? I highly doubt it.
Flammenjc
hydr.eSport
Of course women CAN be as fast as men, but the reality is, the majority aren't. Whether it's a biological thing, I don't know. So far the number of female drivers to compete with even a slither of genuine talent is very very small.
I mean there's only been one female driver of all time that's truly worth mentioning, and that is Michéle Mouton. Yes, Claudia Huertgen, Ellen Lohr and Sabine Schmitz have made very decent dents on motorsport, but by some margin Mouton is the most successful of all, I mean, 2nd place in WRC during the golden age and a Le Mans 24h victory can only be achieved by someone who is VERY good.
I mean there's only been one female driver of all time that's truly worth mentioning, and that is Michéle Mouton. Yes, Claudia Huertgen, Ellen Lohr and Sabine Schmitz have made very decent dents on motorsport, but by some margin Mouton is the most successful of all, I mean, 2nd place in WRC during the golden age and a Le Mans 24h victory can only be achieved by someone who is VERY good.
What kind of question is this? "Have your say" Already it´s a kind of loaded question... It is up to the racedriver itself to prove their worthyness regardless of being a female or male
Patriarchy, male privilege etc. are just postmodernist concepts that have no base in reality whatsoever. Until sociology and genderstudies majors start usiing the scientific method instead of just referring to what Focault said in 1967 etc. nothing they say should be taken seriously. From a scientific biological standpoint, women have some traits that would be advantageous in motorsport, and some that would be disadvantageous
+fine motor skills
+consinstency of repetitive motion
+greater ability to focus on specific tasks
-poor depth perception
-lesser spatial awareness
-lesser physical endurance
-adrenaline surge in endocrine systems decreases precision of motor functions, rather than increases it as it does in males
So women have some significant disadvantages compared to male drivers. I would say that the poor depth perception and spatial awarenes are the major factors.
+fine motor skills
+consinstency of repetitive motion
+greater ability to focus on specific tasks
-poor depth perception
-lesser spatial awareness
-lesser physical endurance
-adrenaline surge in endocrine systems decreases precision of motor functions, rather than increases it as it does in males
So women have some significant disadvantages compared to male drivers. I would say that the poor depth perception and spatial awarenes are the major factors.
A lot of people in this thread have gone all out to justify how women can be as competitive in F1 or any motorsport, but the results just aren't there to back up the claims. There are women driving now in various motorsports, but none of them are really winning any championships and some not even a single race. This does not bode well for the theory that they can equal men in motorsport much less F1.
Michele Mouton, 4 WRC round wins, 2nd overall in 1982, 9 podiums, everything in Group 4 and Group B machinery. Also important to note that she didn't win the rallies that "no-one" participated in, she won against drivers like Walter Röhrl, Henri Toivonen, Hannu Mikkula, Björn Waldegård, Timo Salonen, Ari Vatanen and Miki Biasion. Also with a female co-driver in Fabrizia Pons. Also, 6th over in Dakar, while in reality driving the service car for the main drivers in the team (carrying spare parts etc.)
Lyn St.James, three class podiums (and one win) in 12hrs of Sebring, two GTO class wins in 24hrs of Daytona, remember the GTO cars back then were cars with massive engines, 700HP, 1200-ish kg. ROTY at Indy 500 in 92 (her first Indy race what so ever), granted - she was the only rookie who finished, but as we saw this year ROTY is awarded for the whole Month of May, not solely the race. (Other rookies to note that year, Paul Tracy, Jimmy Vasser and Nelson Piquet). Also a 2nd place in the 24hrs of Nurburgring.
Ellen Lohr, while never being a world class driver, she was more than respectable, and over seasons beating drivers like Jacques Laffite, Franz Engstler, Uwe Alzen, Keke Rosberg, Yannick Dalmas and Emanuelle Pirro.
Anne-Charlotte Verney, 5 class podiums at Le Mans from 75-81, including one win, which along with three other podiums came while she was entered in her own team. Granted, when she did Dakar she got lost and went missing for five days having to be rescued by the military (queue women and navigation joke)
Janet Guthrie, 5 top 10 in 33 Winston Cup races in the late 70's (that's one less than Danica have had in well over 150 races)
Patsy Burt, first woman who won a British National title, 42 victories, well over 150 class wins and having sat over 20 British records, and quite a few international ones when she retired in 1970.
In the 20's and 30's you also had women getting good results, and setting records, but that's a tiresome research job, but Mrs Victor Bruce is a really good read! Good read is also the story about "The woman who got women banned from motorsport" after beating men in "men only" races. Joan Newton Cuneo.
That's just a sample of the women who drove when the cars were "proper, without aids, and only the best of the best could do well".
That's like saying Daniel De Jong, Alfonso Celis jr, Rene Binder, Keyvan Andres Soori, Damiano Fioravanti, Akash Nandy, Bruno Baptista, Zaid Ashkanani, Adderly Fong, Mitchell Gilbert and many many more are proof that *insert reason* will prove that *insert reason* cannot succeed in motorsport.
It will be interesting to see how Magda Andersson does this season, when she was 17yo she was 4th in the European Rallycross championship, Touring Car class, when she was 18yo, she was 2nd overall. This season, she is 19 and is in the European SuperCar Championship. It wasn't a success in the first event, but it will be interesting.
But then again, the sample pool is so small, take wikipedia, which is far from a full source, they have indexed 148 pages about "Female racing drivers", that's all from the obscure young kids racing in Latvia (!) to ladies that died in the early 1900's. From that small sample pool, we are trying to match up with the massive amounts of men, it's a bit like saying gay men cannot compete at top level motorsport, because the only gay F1 driver didn't manage to score points.
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If a female driver is fast enough then there's nothing stopping them except the same things that stop me and you... it's really ****ing hard and last I checked it takes many years of hard driving and countless wins to make your way to the top and even then it's hard to get noticed.
Being an F1 driver is not even close to achievable by 99.999999999999999% of every human on earth man or woman.
It has nothing to do with male domination or any of that nonsense which is a very poor theory that only breeds toxicity.
Being an F1 driver is not even close to achievable by 99.999999999999999% of every human on earth man or woman.
It has nothing to do with male domination or any of that nonsense which is a very poor theory that only breeds toxicity.
Grand Tourist
Enjoying the beautiful world of Assetto Corsa
You don't see male tennis players vs females competing @ Roland Garros, Wimbledon,...
You don't see male football vs females in the same competition
You don't see male athletes vs females on the Olympics.
It will never happen for women to compete in bigger numbers than now at the highest level of racing, unless a whole seperate female division would be created. That is just how sports is and always has been and always will be. I didn't invent this, just look at history. This is not sexism, it's just a fact. Yes they CAN be competitive but no they will never be in large numbers, only the one like Danica and some other individuals. Now stop
Its a male dominated world, with people like Bernie controlling it. You really think women stand a chance? They wont let them, never. Thats why there is female tennis, female football, female whatever sport. Yes Venus Williams would wipe the floor with many male pro tennis players but they will never LET them. I am therefore saying in racing it will need to be the same if women will ever want to compete in great numbers at all levels of racing. Sorry dude, thats how it works. Not agreeing with this, it would be very very interesting and renewing and revolutionalising to have mixed sexes in all sports. It would really start equalizing women to men and competitions would be maybe less fierce but for sure more entertaining and automatically women will show more interest in sports. Imagine watching a football game or le mans 24h with your wives on the couch. I would love that, just not going to happen.
Mod edit, Do not do this in this thread, Consider this a warning, do not verbally attack another member please..
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Okay, so 5 women in the (distant) modern era. And that's all you could provide? How about in the past 10-20 years then? Not almost 40-50 years ago?
Doesn't this sort of prove my point? Doesn't this prove that nature plays a huge role in sporting ability in racing? This proves that in actuality that there is a 80/20 rule (more like a 98/2 rule) where 98% of the men are more adept in being competitive in racing, and only 2% of the women could be? Doesn't this prove that natural ability (given by nature) favors men over women in sports in general?
Again, I take nothing away from them. But Lynn St. James accomplished nothing in Indy racing. Also if history is any indication, a ROTY for Indy equals nothing (unless you're Graham Hill, a man, who won Indy in his rookie year...After winning the WDC in F1). Moulton is a heck of a racer, but she had only one good year (give her credit for the Pike's Peak win), but afterwards she gone from 5th to 12th to nothing...Not all that messianic of women in motorsport in that case.
Also, you keep through "this lady beat this man". But keep avoiding the context that they didn't win anything. They may have gotten points, they may have done decently enough, but wins and championships are what necessitates greatness, correct? How many of them actually won anything of note? Patsy raced in the 1960's, Gutherie in the 70's, that only leads to two drivers that even qualified for the question I asked (1980's-1990's). Then we get into the here and now, and who could you provide that did anything in the highest levels in the modern era?
Even in 40-50 years ago, while these women were great women drivers, they still weren't as capable as their male counter parts. Still proves that you match a Patsy vs a Graham, or a Mouton vs a Rohrl, and guess what happens, she gets dominated. Again, proves my point that your projection of "equality" mean nothing when nature takes its course.
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MoerasGrizzly
Premium
No.
Correlation does not imply causation. That there have been more men competing in motorsport now does not mean that women don't have the ability, just like that because there were more men riding horses up until the first world war doesn't mean men have a natural ability to ride horses (you may note that it's a woman's sport these days). The russians deployed women snipers in WW2, but it is less well known that they also deployed entire women batallions in WW1, which were universally loathed. Why? Because they were too hardcore, taking positions men wouldn't dare. Don't even get me started on Joan of Arc or the Persians.
If you want to conclusively prove that men are better at motorsport then women, you'd need to find a large batch of people, equally gender distributed, who were raised in exactly the same way. And that's not going to happen. It's the key point in the endless nature vs nurture debate: If you want to prove something is down to nature you first have to prove that something is not down to nurture, and you can't do that with motorsport: The simple fact that there are no role models in Formula 1 for girls to aspire to has already corrupted the results, and as @Ari Antero has already noted in this post, some of those role models were actively pushed out of the sport.
As a side note, saying that "Mouton gets dominated by Rohrl" is similar to saying that Fernando Alonso is an awful driver since he can't finish any races.
