Automakers Put More Women at the Wheel

In her second year as a manufacturing engineer at General Motors Corp. in the early 1980s, Mary Sipes had to get a toolmaker to change some of his equipment. He replied that he was not going to take orders "from some little girl."

Today Sipes is in charge of all full-size sport-utility vehicles for GM. She is one of a new generation of female executives making their mark in the auto industry, slowly changing a male-dominated culture just as the marketplace is shifting around them.

Women represent about half of all licensed U.S. drivers, up from 44 percent in 1972, and they account for a significant and climbing percentage of new-vehicle sales.

Automakers are catching on, nowhere more intently than at GM and Ford Motor Co., as Detroit's two wounded giants try to reconnect with alienated U.S. car buyers. Women now run three major brands -- Saturn and Hummer at GM, and the Volvo North America subsidiary of Ford -- and are increasingly present in such male-dominated areas as vehicle engineering, design and manufacturing.

As a result, the products on American roadways are beginning to change. Female auto engineers say they are trying to expand the appeal of each vehicle, making them suit women and giving men more than they expected at the same time.

"We don't do pink trucks," said Sipes, who as vehicle line director o

more: washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/ (92)

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