I had a female friend once to whom I described a car problem. She quickly diagnosed it, went to the auro parts store, bought the parts and installed them in my parking lot. There is no natural reason why a woman cannot acquire all the necessary skills to become an auto mechanic, except that most do not associate with those kinds of activities in their formative years. So unless they had had it ingrained in them as children, they would be getting a late start on it as a career choice.
How can it be any different from dentistry, and the two best dentists my wife has ever had were both women.
The owner’s wife of the shop where I take my car is very knowledgeable about cars. However, I don’t believe she’s ever actually worked as a mechanic. She does the admin side of the business.
The Grease Monkey where I get my oil changed had a woman for a while, but not lately. I haven’t seen any increase in the number of women anywhere.
There’s a woman-owned and woman-run auto repair (not just an oil change place) around here.
Not all of their mechanics are women, but many are.
They do excellent work.
My wife worked as an auto mechanic during our separation and until our first child together was born. She is quite skilled, I believe. There’s nothing about having ovaries and boobs that disqualifies one from being mechanically inclined.
And a lot of women want employment. Maybe years ago, these women would have done something else with their talents because they didn’t want to catch shit going down an unconventional path. But current economic realities combined with less overt sexism have made it OK for women to pursue all of their interests, not just culturally-defined ones.
A lot of men don’t want to be nurses, but alas we are seeing increasingly more of them. We could throw out a bunch of speculations for this, but I’m guessing the most parsimonious explanation has something to do with males being encouraged to go into traditional female professions plus a job market that calls for open-mindedness with ones skillset.
I ran a truck shop for a lrge truck leasing company. I had one female mechanic under me and she was just as good as the average men we had working. Her strength was a little bit of an issue at times mainly because she would not accept help. I had to point out to her that the male mechanics also had to have help with certain things.
My girl friend has a CDL and drives 18-wheelers over the road. She can do whatever any trucker can do to meet routine road safety checks. She worked several years as a deckhand on a shrimp boat. She can also play the piano.