If I discussed an automobile mechanic without using the third-person pronoun, every reader out there — or a massive majority — would likely assume that the mechanic was male.
A woman wielding a wheel spanner is so much of a rarity that we blind ourselves to the possibility. For a good number of people, women donning the role of a backyard mechanic and carrying out automobile restorations as a hobby may not be revolutionary. But even they are likely to have difficulty processing the idea of a woman living by the wheel spanner, working fulltime in an automobile workshop.
Recently, a conversation with two female colleagues specifically on this gender stereotype got me curious about an initiative in Chennai that set about breaking it. Around 12 years ago, the voluntary group ANEW, which stands for Association for Non-traditional Employment for Women, introduced a two-wheeler mechanic course for women seeking skills that could fetch them a job. These women came from an underprivileged background and their earnings mattered to their families. When I contacted Vinodhini Sudhindran, president of ANEW, and asked her about the status of the project, I received an answer that I had anticipated. There were not many takers for the course and it had to be abandoned. Partnering with Khivraj, ANEW however managed to provide training to a few women. It however did not take too long for these women to abandon their newfound jobs as bike mechanics. They did so for a handful of reasons, the major one being that they did not feel accepted by customers. That was the problem cited by the majority. A few found the job taxing. A few others opted out, finding it uncomfortable to work in an environment that seemed all-male.
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The same women had no complaints after they were trained by ANEW to drive autos (and later, cars) and hit the road with their new skills. Vinodhini shared a case specific to the point. Two women mechanics were placed at a workstation set up in a women’s college, in the hope that they would get to attend to bikes of college students that were in disrepair. The response was lukewarm. Of course, allowance was made for the fact that many of these bikes were not too old and therefore did not require repairs. Yet, the response was far below expectations. These women mechanics were then imparted auto driving skills. Despite the profession of driving autos and cabs being non-traditional too for women in our country, the majority of the women who take it up are said to be comfortable with it. Vinodhini explained commercial cab services are open to having women drivers on board. There are customers who prefer women cab drivers.Can one expect a similar acceptance of women mechanics, in the future? Before answering the question, consider Bhavani — profiled by Petlee Peter in