# Women as auto mechanics? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 25, 2016, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317 "2016-06-25T13:09:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/41 "2016-06-26T02:52:19Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > :dubious: Obviously **MoonMoon** wasn’t referencing that isolated sentence itself propositionally, but rather its particular placement in the extended discourse of the OP. > It’s so obvious that it’s gratuitous, hence **MoonMoon** ’s question. > > On this message board, you’re allowed to read beyond the sentence level. > [@kaylasdad99](#): > > It’s discernable as a non-serious post BECAUSE the difference in skill level between the two jobs is so stark. The thing reeks of condescension. Hmm. And here I thought it was offered to clarify that while he had observed oil changers, and that made him curious about mechanics, he did indeed know the difference, and didn’t want anyone assuming otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/42 "2016-06-26T06:37:33Z")
Meh. If I’m mistaken, I’m mistaken. This thread coming so close on the heels of the “Women as Chefs” thread may have primed me to view it the way I did. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/43 "2016-06-26T08:33:14Z")
> [@Gary\_T](#): > > Hmm. And here I thought it was offered to clarify that while he had observed oil changers, and that made him curious about mechanics, he did indeed know the difference, and didn’t want anyone assuming otherwise. "Now I know that starting a thread cogently requires basic writing skills. But I want to ask, are you all seeing more OPs like this?" ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/44 "2016-06-26T11:18:04Z")
I think in some ways women can have an advantage because many times when you fix things you have to get your hands into tight spots or hold onto small screws and women have smaller hands and might be better at this. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/45 "2016-06-26T14:15:14Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Well yes they can get in the way. Many times you have to reach into things. I remember one maintenance guy for Xerox was showing us how to fix a particular jam and it requires basically hugging the machine and reaching in from both sides and one woman who was well endowed said she wouldnt be able to do that. You could say the same thing about a man with a monster gut. What’s your point? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/46 "2016-06-26T14:24:55Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I think in some ways women can have an advantage because many times when you fix things you have to get your hands into tight spots or hold onto small screws and women have smaller hands and might be better at this. Also, their tiny lady brains just are able to follow instructions in the manual without getting distracted by sports scores and porn. So, there’s that. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/47 "2016-06-26T14:48:39Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > You could say the same thing about a man with a monster gut. What’s your point? > [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Also, their tiny lady brains just are able to follow instructions in the manual without getting distracted by sports scores and porn. So, there’s that. > > Stranger Word. I have to shake my head at how frightening this new world must be for some people to have to inhabit it with the wimmin folk. Shuddery, amirite? ---
**Author:** ![purplehearingaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@purplehearingaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehearingaid)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/48 "2016-06-26T15:48:10Z")
Haven’t you ever heard of Rosie the Riveter or seen posters for her? Women took over men jobs during WW2 . ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/49 "2016-06-26T18:50:18Z")
So transparent. So lame. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/50 "2016-06-26T19:02:43Z")
surprised no mention of Mona Lisa Vito? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/51 "2016-06-26T19:19:51Z")
[POST=19432622]Post #20: “Can you tell me, what would the correct ignition timing be on a 1955 Bel Air Chevrolet, with a 327 cubic-inch engine and a four-barrel carburetor?”[/POST] Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/52 "2016-06-26T21:27:36Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > I’m not sure if that’s really relevant here. A lot of women don’t WANT to be mechanics. A lot of women have never even thought of the possibility of being mechanics, because it wasn’t presented to them. Now it is being made available and quite a few are discovering that hey, power tools are COOL! ---
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2016, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/53 "2016-06-27T00:44:40Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > 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. I tried once to help move the doors and bring in the net on a friend’s boat and wasn’t much help. Your friend is strong, IMHO. I met ridiculously few women in trade school and while working in the shops, but the ones that I met were pretty good at what they did. It may be that being a mechanic is a profession that men can drift into but women may have to choose, so there may be some selection bias at work. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2016, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/54 "2016-06-27T05:27:25Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > One thing I notice about the female mechanics that have worked for my company. A much higher percentage of them are willing to use the books when performing repairs. This has been an on going problem with the male mechanics for a long time. That’s true with many other jobs; some of it has to do with the quality of the manuals as well (apparently a woman is more likely to be willing to slog through mountains of irrelevant stuff in order to find the tiny relevant bit, or as we call it in my family “look under the socks”\*), but part of it is [dyslexia](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2739722/) (more prevalent in males, more likely to be bad in males, and often undiagnosed). One of the biggest difficulties in my job is the documentation, and part of it is because we often have documents which will be used by mechanics but which need to be approved by finance. The formats the two groups find easy to work with are very different (sales makes three). I’ve been in some projects in which it was OK and even expected to have a document for “process approval” and then a different one as the “work manual”: having the documents in a format the actual users have been able to verify and reject/request tweaks/approve really helps. - from the question when my brothers would complain about a lack of clean underwear. They’d opened the drawer, seen a bunch of socks and whined without searching further. Being easier to arrange flat, the briefs had a tendency to be under the socks. ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2016, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/55 "2016-06-27T15:16:54Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > 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. UrbanRedneck said nothing about ability; don’t try make it look that way. How can it be different from dentistry? Well as near as I can tell from a few Google searches is that the ratio of women to men in dentistry is 30/70. Whereas women working as Automotive Service Technicians and Mechanics only comprise about 1.2% of the workforce. So I’d say it’s a lot different; especially as it applies to the OP’s question: “are you all seeing more female auto mechanics?” UrbanRedneck; no I am not seeing more female mechanics; but like others have said, it doesn’t really surprise me. ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2016, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/56 "2016-06-27T15:37:26Z")
> [@Enright3](#): > > UrbanRedneck said nothing about ability; don’t try make it look that way. I disagree. > [@Urbanredneck](#): > > **Now I know doing oil changes requires much less knowledge and skill than doing full on auto mechanics.** > > But I want to ask, are you all seeing more female auto mechanics? (bolding mine) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2016, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/57 "2016-06-27T19:33:47Z")
**Urbanredneck** made no explicit statement about a woman’s ability to be an auto mechanic, sure. But there was subtext in the inquiry itself and in his tone no less than if someone had asked about a black lack accountants or Native American doctors. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2016, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/58 "2016-06-27T19:54:45Z")
My sister was a master VW mechanic in the air-cooled days, later a service writer and service manager for a major dealership. These days she’s a craft furniture maker. If she had the writing bug the rest of the family did, her book on “watching men do stupid things, then stepping in and doing the one correct thing they hadn’t figured out while their balls shriveled and their jaws hit the floor” would be a best seller. Oil changes can be done by a chimpanzee with ADHD and a hangover. IME, most are. ---
**Author:** ![spamforbrains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@spamforbrains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spamforbrains)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2016, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/59 "2016-06-27T20:27:54Z")
> [@](#): > > I think in some ways women can have an advantage because many times when you fix things you have to get your hands into tight spots or hold onto small screws and women have smaller hands and might be better at this. my brother and dad used to call on me quite frequently to perform car-related tasks for this very reason. I don’t see how breasts could possibly get in the way. Put on a tight sports bra or just squash/move them; easier to move out of the way than a guy impeded by a huge beer gut, which can’t be shifted to one side or compressed down. I did once see a hilarious youtube video of a guy getting his long beard caught while trying to perform some car work, something unlikely to happen to a woman. During very early childhood most girls are strongly discouraged from being interested in cars and boys are encouraged the opposite way, so it’s obviously just a sexist thing that most mechanics are male. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2016, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317/60 "2016-06-28T11:29:38Z")
I was in high school in the late 60s/early 70s. All girls were required to take Home Ec and all boys had to take at least one shop class. Girls could not take shop and boys could not take Home Ec. Period. I already knew how to cook and sew, but I wasn’t allowed to learn how to build a birdhouse or fix a car. It just wasn’t done. At least our 9th grade science teacher wasn’t slave to that thinking. When we studied the 4-stroke cycle internal combustion engine, he had each of us tear down and reassemble a small engine. I loved that stuff!! And I loved that class. Who knows what path I might have followed if I hadn’t been burdened with that kind of gender-role thinking… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-as-auto-mechanics/758317.md?page=4)