AURORA | Sure, they took college entrance exams, instead, the Smoky Hills High School all-girls automotive club took a different step toward figuring out their post-high school plans.
They headed to the garage.
On Wednesday, they gathered at Groove Mazda to speak with female leaders in the auto industry – Sierra Jones, service manager, and Kalie Vogeler, sales manager. The students also got to tour the Mazda and Ford repair shops, and hear from the technicians there about career paths and the auto repair industry.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women made up 17% of the automotive repair industry workforce in 2023. Comparatively, women made up nearly half of the retail industry, but 22% of women specifically worked in the automobile dealership.
And while women may be just muscling in to the automotive industry, they spend plenty on it.
Women influence 80 percent to 85 percent of all automotive purchases and hold the majority of U.S. driver’s licenses, said Jody DeVere, founder of AskPatty.com, a website that offers auto resources for women and businesses, according to a recent Associated Press story.
Women’s money in the industry has been growing for years.
At Smoky Hill, the club has only been in existence for a couple months. Emily Flynn, a junior and one of the club’s founders, said that the club was born from a desire to see more women in the auto industry.
Flynn has never been interested in makeup or fashion. She likes to get her hands dirty. She said that she had to take automotive class in high school so that she can learn the basics and not have to rely on a man to fix things. But the class soon sparked her interest in pursuing it as a career.
“I like getting under the hood and working on mechanical stuff,” Flynn said. She also said that she enjoys, “proving that I can do it and I don’t need somebody else’s help to do it.”
Raya Greenberg, who is also a junior and a club founder, said she wants to educate girls on their cars because women are oftentimes over-charged when they take their cars to get serviced. At the club, they help teach girls how to maintain and repair their cars, including identifying parts of the car engine, how to jumpstart a car and check tire tread depth.
After the tour, the club members said they were interested in going into the auto industry after high school. Greenberg said that she has a goal of owning a women-operated auto shop.
“As a woman who has been in the car industry for 14 years, it’s always fun to see new faces and those faces being women,” Vogeler said.
It’s not always easy. Vogeler and Jones said that there have been times in their career when customers specifically demanded to work with a man. When that happened, they both had to show they did know just as much as any man at the dealership.
When asked to give advice to the young female students who might face gender discrimination, Jones said, “Don’t give up. Every day is going to be hard…but the end goal is so rewarding.”
Voegeler echoed those sentiments and added that the girls should not be afraid of speaking up for themselves.
“We come into a male-dominated industry and we’ve got all these guys telling us what to do,” she said. “But we come in with our own knowledge…and our own way of doing things. It’s a good feeling standing up for yourself, especially if you got the knowledge behind what you’re saying.”