Women In Racing

Women in racing

TDC

Kevin Cameron

As I WALKED DOWN FACTORY ROW AT THE Laguna Seca World Superbike races this summer, seeing the familiar team tractor-trailers, awnings, racebikes, mechanics and riders, this question flashed into my mind: Would I ever see the exact gender reverse of this?

That is, teams consisting entirely of women, from the sponsors through team manager, riders, mechanics and tire go-fers? In these imaginary teams, the only visible men would be riders’ fathers, husbands or boyfriends-the latter sitting disconsolately at shaded tables covered with fresh fruit, leafing through popular magazines. The boyfriends would be good-looking fellows, fashionably dressed with obvious intent to show off those good looks.

Is this impossible? Not far away, across the lake in the peppermint-colored tents of Vendor’s Row, was an outlet dealing in motorcycle clothing specifically for women riders. All the motorcycle manufacturers have found it in their interest to support “Women in Motorcycling” conferences. Significant percentages of new-bike sales are to women. I see increasing numbers of women riding all kinds of motorcycles, large and small. There are women racing motorcycles for the fun of it-not as a novelty or publicity stunt. Something good is happening. Stereotypes are being broken down.

So far, I have only seen two women working as race mechanics, but I note many advertisements for firms of women carpenters, house painters and other trades. More women are determined to do something for themselves, to see what they can accomplish in areas traditionally closed to them. It is pointless to discuss whether or not this should be so. When a large number of people in society want something, they generally get it. Women-the other 51 percent-are going to get what they want.

Now, it may be that male hormones have some role in competitive behaviors. It may turn out, for example, that men have some kind of self-induced craziness that can help them to perform as combat soldiers. How would we know? There is no real basis for comparison. Or, it may be possible that activities such as motorcycle sport make sense to males but are nonsense to females. I’m not counting on it. Why are some women working so hard to be accepted as combat infantry or pilots? I want to see what happens when lots of little girls get minibikes and have the opportunity to grow up with riding, wrenching or racing as an option-as many boys do now.

Gender-role pressure begins with the pink or blue gifts at birth and never lets up. Boys get trucks, girls get dolls. Again, maybe this is nature, but how would we know? In school, it’s even hard for boys and girls to be friends except in prescribed, role-playing ways, so they grow up separately, the guys in sports, the girls somewhere else. As adults, we have no end of trouble bridging this gap, but that’s another story.

When I was a boy, I wondered why men did engineering and other interesting things, while women were pictured in white aprons, presiding over houses filled with gleaming, labor-saving cleaning equipment. In Popular Mechanics magazine, sometime in the 1950s, I saw a photo of a smiling young woman standing under the nose of a Lockheed Constellation. The caption said she was the lead engineer in a recent redesign of this aircraft’s nosewheel-retraction mechanism. “Okay!” I thought. “This is more like it.” She chose the truck instead of-or possibly in addition to-the doll. And made the choice stick.

This morning, a friend reminded me of Tillie Schilling, an Englishwoman who raced motorcycles in the 1930s and ’40s. During WWII, she solved the carburetion problem of British fighter engines that cut out when aircraft were suddenly pushed over into a steep dive at negative g. After the war, she analyzed and explained the previously mysterious phenomenon of tires aquaplaning on wet pavement. She followed her interests where they led her-onto the track, into the research lab.

The first people through a social barrier are criticized as nuts, misfits, freaks. That’s exactly what it takes to break traditions and stereotypes: an armor-piercing projectile. Once the barrier is down, we can all see just how artificial it was. It was that way with women gaining the right to own and dispose of property, the right to vote and many other activities once regarded as improper or impossible for women. These things are now accepted simply as rights of persons, without regard to gender.

I’m talking about choice here, not obligation. Not everyone runs for public office, but any citizen may. Not everyone cares about motorbikes, either, but I hope that anyone who is curious about them is free to satisfy that curiosity, unconstrained by obsolete gender roles. I sincerely hope that no one’s childrenmale or female-will be injured in sports or war, but young women in increasing numbers want to show that they can do whatever others can. Choice.

I see the strong new interest in women’s sports, and I think it will widen, driven by young women’s natural desire for self-sufficiency, self-determination and self-respect. Do men take up sports because they’re boring? I see no reason why women can’t do as well on motorbikes as men do. It isn’t a matter of size-top drag racer Angelle Seeling weighs less than 110 pounds and there are plenty of women larger than Kenny Roberts or Miguel Duhamel. Watercraft racer Karine Paturel has emerged from women’s classes to win races against allmale fields. Why not? She does what any person has to do to win: She moves the controls with appropriate skill, she doesn’t wheeze out and she isn’t intimidated. What else? Toughness, mental or otherwise. Who’s tougher-in terms of staying the course, of somehow providing what’s needed, than a single mother?

Motorcycle sports are an opportunity for women because motorcycles reward stamina and intelligence more than they do size and strength. Women can do it. It’s a matter of choice. Whatever women want to do in motorcycle sports, they will do. U