The FIA and VW have announced a partnership series called FIA Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup, which will be for young female racers using cars powered by natural gas technology. Guess which of these two unique selling points ended up being the bigger topic of discussion.

If you guessed "natural gas technology"... ...your thinking is laudable from a technical perspective but you would be wrong. 

This blog entry started life as a comment at F1 Kate, which was in response to that announcement. The FIA is serious about doing something to encourage more women into racing, so it seems a good time to cover the obstacles that it faces in achieving that goal.

There are a number of barriers to women participating fully as drivers in motorsport. Removing them would benefit everyone. It wouldn't take affirmative action but it would take a lot of effort, and unfortunately for the FIA it can't directly make many of the necessary changes.

It's already broadened the age range in which one can transfer from karts to cars (it's now about 14-18 instead of being about 16-18), which indirectly resolved the problem where the initial swapover was at a bad time for young women hormonally (men have a similar effect in their late teens but by then they've generally got a working base from which to establish a career - or at least funding).

Overscrutineering is a problem, but that is likely to resolve itself as more women enter the system and succeed. Everything that is new and different gets extra scrutiny in the beginning, and a time will come when women are seen as neither.  

The biggest problems are the perennial issue of funding (which is even worse for women than men because companies perceive them as more of a risk due to lack of previous successful women) and societal attitudes, primarily at the family/close-friend level. Even places where broad societal expectation tends towards equal rights and responsibilities, individuals frequently do not live up to their society's expressed ideals in their day-to-day attitudes.

Men frequently find this statement strange. This is because male and female social circles, particularly in the pre-teen and early teenage situations, are very different. Prior to that age, girls and boys often mix to some extent, so the ambience of a friendship group tends to be more a reflection of who is in it than of any broad stereotype. However, at a certain point the two genders drift apart and form new social groups, partly composed of whoever of their own gender was in the friendship group before and partly with "outsiders". This is the time when girls and boys tend to orient their thinking more towards what they believe is the thinking of (young) women and men. This is shaped by a complicated mixture of the group's dominant individuals, people's interests and their accessibility, the available attractive role models, biology, cultural norms (at the broad ambient "macrosociological" level and, more so, the local "microsociological" level) and what sort of future is on offer for people with given skills, connections and attitudes.

It is beyond the scope of this blog entry to say exactly how all of these promote and demote the possibilities of a given individual getting the necessary social support (or at least avoid sufficient social antagonism) to make a decent attempt at motorsports in the critical teenage phase. However, it is within its scope to say that the ways immediate social networks function is important - and often different depending on gender.

Social groups of young men tend to be  wired towards being tolerant of "specialisms". Men often require less direct social interaction than women and are more tolerant of divergence. This is not to say they don't need any socialising time or that "anything goes". It means they are more likely to accept shared experiences that don't involve constant conversation as valid forms of socialising, and that when they do speak they are more likely to be primarily interested in what each other did rather than how they thought or felt about it. Actions are usually quicker to explain than thoughts or feelings. Furthermore, provided that certain specific group norms are kept, they often instinctively accept each member of the group being quite different. This means they bring different actions, experiences and skills to the group, which means each member of the friendship group brings different "specialisms". Depending on the particulars of the friendship group, these may get more or less detailed, but at the very least, you are apt to get get the leader, the sidekick(s), the comic, the "techy" one, the "cool" one... ...which means there's more likely to be space for "the speedy one" or "the racing one".

A lot of young women's friendship groups are different. Their role models, as encouraged by the dominant force(s) in the group, tend to be a lot more similar to one another than for men. Women tend to expect more direct socialisation, for friends to open their hearts and minds to other women. All this tends to lead to convergence, settling around a comfortable kernel of shared beliefs over a comparatively narrow range of subjects. Shared experiences tend to have to enable and encourage lots of conversation - but only over the same few topics. Having an opinion on the appearance or scent of something, or the suitability of some young man to some equally young woman, takes rather more common and less specific knowledge than having an opinion on, say, whether it's better to take a corner wide or tight... ...and in the typical young woman's friendship group, less specialism means more scope for mass participation and bonding, and therefore more attractiveness to the group.

Specialisms in studying are rarely much of a barrier because the time lost to studying would be lost anyway; arranging a group shopping experience when those going are all meant to be doing GCSE Maths class is a recipe for disaster and the desire for bonding does not preclude the acquisition of common sense, even among its most extreme exponents. Specialisms involving hobbies, especially ones that can't be indulged properly in school, are a much bigger problem from the social perspective.

A young man who decides to race is likely to be tolerated by his friends. Given the cultural approval given to young men in particular going fast, many friendship groups composed of young men would welcome having a "racer" among the group. A young woman deciding to race is likely to be distrusted by friends for having a dangerous desire to do activities that make the conversation-orientated group bonding process common among her likely friendship group difficult. It takes a strong woman who doesn't mind sacrificing their entire social group, an atypical social group that is less interested in conversational sense/gossip-related bonding or some means of making motorsport make sense to the typical young woman's social group. Atypical groups are by definition rare and the first option isn't promising for reasons discussed below, so progress in equality of opportunity most likely rests on the latter option - with the note that "making sense" is a matter of persuading the unconverted rather than changing the sport's essence.

For those suggesting that all women should simply sacrifice their entire social group, note that friends of young racers are often key to getting sponsors from outside the immediate family that are based on that individual racer. Without that, sponsorship of racers often comes down to pure commercialism - and junior racing only offers benefits to pure commercialism to companies willing to take a fair bit of risk that they have a future star on the books. Even a very successful racer in, say, Formula Ford will get little coverage at that level. Many risk-averse sponsors fail to look beyond past patterns when it comes to gender, meaning they do not consider the possibilities of the young woman in front of them the way they would when considering the possibilities of an otherwise-identical young man. This isn't particularly fair - 99.999% of men who hold a racing licence don't make it to F1, but if Joe Bloggs in front of a sponsor has excellent results, a sparkling personality and clear skills in both racing and marketing, a company inclined towards racing as a promotional tool will likely take him on. The broad statistic doesn't matter because the company's only sponsoring one driver. If that driver is the next Sebastian Vettel, or even the next Yuji Ide, that investment will pay off bigstyle.

If Jane Bloggs is there with the same results, personality and skills, the sponsor might consider it... ...but history suggests they'll lower their expectations according to historical expectations and either not sponsor her or expect her to market herself at least somewhat "stereotypically". This makes it more difficult to be taken seriously in a realm where ability, bravado and credibility are vital, which then leads to a downward spiral unless the young lady is lucky enough to be the next Danica Patrick.

A sponsor introduced via a friendly peer circumvents all or most of that. A sponsor linked to a young driver through friendship is more likely to see that person as an individual and make the sponsorship decision accordingly, which tends to result in more sponsorship anyway and a disporportionately positive increase in all kinds of non-traditional prospects. Yes, people with sponsors introduced via parents are the mainstay of sponsors,  You'd be surprised at how many young men have benefitted from having that sort of help... ...which they got because typical male social circles are more welcoming of specialist concentrations. A young female racer may or may not lose such a connection by dispensing with their peer friendships, but it does show that certain advantages in the vitally important commercial sector are being lost due to unequal indirect access to sponsors. The front door is equally open to all, but many of the deals done regarding racing are done through the tradesman's entrance, and due to microsociological pressures, the emphasis remains inadvertently on the man.

It's difficult to make progress if companies are being risk-averse and consider proven prior gender success as more important than individual results. 

It's even more difficult when friends tease, bully and ostracise because the racer is more interested in racing than studies and social fripperies (male social circles, especially in youth, tend to be much more tolerant of specialised dedicated interests than female ones).

If the family refuses to fund a girl to the same extent as it would an equally-talented boy, perhaps due to implicitly understanding the aforementioned microsociological pressures... ...then that girl might as well forget about becoming a professional racer (she'd be better off trying to become an engineer, business manager or even a team boss because those emphasise strengths that current cultural mores are more likely to let a girl acquire for herself).

The FIA needs to try to persuade people, one family and one friendship cluster at a time, to be supportive of the ambitions of their talented youth on an equal basis. It's already had experience of broadcasting messages intended to change societal and individual attitudes through its road safety work, so it should be well placed to persuade people of the benefits of equal access to the world of motorsport filtered primarily by merit and what such an attitude entails.

 Good luck, FIA. It's worthy work with potentially rich rewards.