Ladies Class in Autoslalom

T.J. said:

In reply to thatsnowinnebago :

That doesn't make sense to me. Shouldn't the percentage reflect the portion of the population that has an interest in driving events? I venture a guess that it is not a 50/50 even split between the sexes. I don't think anyone knows what the right value is, so the whole idea of trying to increase it seems silly to me. Also, if a lot more males take up the sport and go to nationals the percentage of females may drop even if their absolute numbers go up if they don't get as many new women drivers.

I guess a better question would be "why are women so underrepresented in motorsports?" There's no biological basis for more dudes to be into cars than women. The 50% number is definitely aspirational, I admit. But I do think that is the "correct" number, if all things were equal. And hey, why not aim high?

In reply to thatsnowinnebago :

I don't know if I agree with your premise that there is "no biological basis for more dudes to be into cars than women". Clearly, men and women are different biologically and it's not a stretch that they could be into different things as a result of those differences. I did some reading on several comprehensive studies on the toy preferences between boys and girls and this article sums them up: Study finds robust sex differences in children’s toy preferences across a range of ages and countries 

In reply to loosecannon :

Interesting. I'd have thought kid's toy preferences would be more tied to nurture than nature but that meta-study potentially implies otherwise. Thanks for sharing it!