Women prove themselves every day

Kirstin Stone has spent a lot of time explaining to people that she is not a receptionist.

She was working in sales and marketing for a race car performance products company when she first had to make clear to the mostly male clientele that she was passionate about the products her company sold.

"There was this whole process of building credibility before I can answer a simple question," she said. "They want to ask me what I drive, how long I've been racing. 'Do you really wrench?'"

The men in her office did not face the same grilling.

"It was always a joke that it took me substantially longer to get into technical calls the first time that I dealt with a customer because I had to prove that I knew what I was talking about before they would let me talk about it," she said.

Women responding to the Automotive News Project XX Survey said they regularly are questioned by automotive clients, customers and peers about their expertise and credibility. No matter how high their level, many women regularly have to prove their skills and knowledge.

And often, men will ignore a woman with more experience to address a less-knowledgeable man. Here are some comments that stood out:

"Many times I am not sought out for information in my expert area," one respondent said. "They assume I am my male counterpart's assistant. When both of us are in the office, colleagues will walk past me to ask him questions instead of approaching me. I sit in a way that in order to speak with him, people must walk right past me."

One woman who is an injection-molding expert said that at least once a year, someone rolls his eyes when she talks about how to reduce scrap or troubleshoot a problem. "I have been recognized as a technical expert in my company and have given technical papers at conferences, and still there are colleagues or other superiors within the company who choose not to follow my recommendations."

One woman has a gender-ambiguous name and said that she gets more respect when she communicates with new business associates via email. "As soon as we meet via telephone or video conference, I feel like I am starting at square one with proving I can do the job and know what I'm talking about." And several times, people have asked her to identify herself once a video conference starts because they were expecting a man in her place.

There are many reasons for bias, so it's "hard to pin down which is the root cause," said Cheryl Thompson, CEO of leadership training group Lead One Lead All and a retired Ford Motor Co. engineer. "Women generally don't have as much confidence, so we show up different."

A male manager once told her: "Men are all bullshit and bravado." He said if he asked a man to take his seat tomorrow, the man would jump at the opportunity with full confidence even if he wasn't ready. A woman, however, likely would be more cautious and say she wasn't ready, which would give a manager little reason to put confidence in her, he told Thompson.

Many women are "almost creating that evidence that reinforces that perception that we're not as good as our male peers," Thompson said.

About a decade ago, auto companies gave their leaders diversity quotas, encouraging them to hire and promote women. Those quotas led to resentment from men when women got the desired positions.

Those resentments still linger, Thompson said.

"I've often thought, 'Wow, they're going to think I just got this job because I'm a woman.' Or I question myself," she said. "Did I get this job because I'm a woman or did I really earn this?"

Sandra Bouckley, president of the board of directors at SME, previously called the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, said that in her four decades in the auto industry, she has had to prove her credibility in each of her positions. There are still men who have never worked with women, or who rarely work with women, and she said those people often have preconceived notions about her skill level.

"It's like you're starting with a zero balance in a bank account and I have to keep making deposits to show that I'm competent. I have experience that's relevant. I have education that's relevant," she said.

After six to nine months, they'll stop thinking, "It's that woman they hired," and instead think, "It's the new vice president of manufacturing engineering who maybe knows a thing or two," she said.

Men and women have to start candid conversations to alleviate the problem, said Thompson. When she was in the audience of a panel discussion about women in manufacturing, she asked the panelists what they saw as the barriers to women getting into leadership positions, pointing to the large number of women in the audience as evidence that there are women willing to take on bigger roles.

A male executive from an automotive company responded that he thought women wouldn't want leadership roles because those jobs are hard, Thompson said.

She could have brushed off his comment as sexist, but she embraced the conversation.

"If we don't know what they're thinking, if we don't know what that story is in their head, we can't change it," she said. "We can't challenge that assumption." There has to be a platform for men and women, she said, to share their views and "challenge those old stories."

While some women bristle at proving their credibility time and again, others use that energy as motivation. "It has pushed me harder, to prove things to myself and to others," said one survey respondent. "I want to be in this industry, and I won't be ignored just because I am a woman."