- Dealer Marketing Magazine

OK, full transparency from me: I have a 27-year-old daughter who sells new cars at a dealership.

I can’t say that she has complained of any unfair situations at the dealership she works for. However, since I have been working with car dealers for about 40 years, I have seen some nasty things happen to women at dealerships over the years. I don’t want any of them to happen to my daughter, or to any other women in the automotive industry.

Automotive News just ran a great section called Project XX: The Career Path for Women in its October 23 issue. Some of the information is downright shocking in regard to how some women are still treated in our industry.

If you are an old-style dealership that still underpays women, allows “good-natured” harassment (which you think is OK), or simply maintains a “good old boy” culture where women are secondary, you better stop it right now. It’s not OK.

This type of culture is not only wrong, it’s going to cost you big dollars in the future, and you will deserve what happens to you. Women in the automotive industry are great at everything men are great at.

Ten years ago, I was writing articles urging car salesmen not to ignore the woman shopping for a car with her husband. It’s the very best way to lose a sale.

Ten years later, it’s still a problem. If you own a car dealership, start hiring more women for every job, and pay them exactly what you pay men in the same job.

Save yourself some pain in the future, and do a culture check and a policy update at your dealership. Put aside any built-in assumptions you may have because you grew up in the sixties and seventies.

Heaven help the dealer who mistreats my daughter. You should be afraid of me, but you should really be afraid of her because I didn’t raise her to take any you-know-what from men, and all of her college friends are now lawyers.

Women in Automotive Conference: Palm Springs, CA, December 10–11

The third-annual Women In Automotive (WIA) Conference, co-sponsored by Dealer Marketing Magazine, is having its convention at the Omni Ranch Las Palmas December 10–11, right about the time you’re going to wish you were in Palm Springs.

The conference, founded by Christy Roman, president of automotive digital agency NowDigital, Inc. — and an accomplished bowler — has been growing since its first event in 2015.

From the WIA Conference description: “The focus of the 2017 conference will be on educating and empowering women and men in the automotive community on thought leadership and trends that impact employment and sales growth. The Women in Automotive conference educational content fulfills a gap in the automotive community. The goal is to move the automotive industry forward as it relates to the most influential segment of the market: women.”

To find out more about the conference, to make reservations, and to sign up, visit the WIA website at WomenInAutomotive.com and click on “Conferences,” or call WIA at (407) 412-9988.