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Going off grid

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Where are you on the grid? P45.

Take a peek at the news, and it won’t be long before you’re presented with the shocking news that another public figure is being accused of taking advantage of women.

Harvey Weinstein. Kevin Spacey. Dustin Hoffman. Three men from the entertainment world that are just the tip of an unsavoury iceberg’s worth of famous names accused of sexual harassment.

Despite causing a Twitter frenzy when she wrote a column about the Me Too movement, author Margaret Atwood has suggested men need advice on how to behave. Would an etiquette rulebook help?

Just last month, a reporter from the Financial Times went undercover to investigate allegations about the same thing at The Presidents Club Charity Dinner. At the men-only, black-tie, event, she described being “groped several times”, and the club has subsequently been shut down.

Attendees included Nadhim Zahwi, the newly appointed Education Minister, who admitted he was there, but told ITV News he “left early”, so wasn’t there long enough to “really comment on the occasion”.

Someone recently wrote on Twitter that she wanted to point out that the vast majority of men are decent, reasonable, honourable people. Good to know, because right now it does feel like one half of humankind is under the intense glare of the spotlight, and fearful that anything they say or do could be misconstrued.

After a lengthy review, Formula 1 recently announced it was doing away with ‘grid girls’, the female promotional models who stand in front of cars with the driver’s race number on a placard, and line the steps to the podium post-race, amongst other duties.

In a wonderful piece of PR doublespeak, managing director of commercial operations, Sean Bratches, said “This custom does not resonate with our brand values and clearly is at odds with modern day societal norms”. Translation: We look like dinosaurs, and it’s bad for business too.

A statement from The Women’s Sport Trust encouraged other sports to follow suit, but was keen to point out this isn’t a “feminists versus models” argument, but because “global businesses are making a considered choice about how women should be portrayed in their sports”.

Whilst F1’s decision to replace the girls with kids who are budding racing drivers of the future is interesting and relevant, not everyone is happy.

Formula 1 legend Niki Lauda was amongst those to voice his disappointment, and 60% of fans polled by the BBC, when the idea of dropping the girls was first mooted, opposed the idea. But with the objectification of women a hot-topic, and society at a pivotal moment in sexual politics, continuing with the tradition of using pretty girls as an accompaniment to blokes in fast cars has become an anachronism.

Whilst it’s a positive move, and women are increasingly involved in motorsport, we’ve yet to see a successful female F1 driver. Is this because there aren’t any, or because they can’t get the breaks and support than the men do?

Next time we talk about girls are on the grid, let’s hope some of them are in the cars, and there because they had the same opportunities as the boys.

This post first appeared as the lead piece in my column/page in The Mail and the News & Star, on the 9th of February 2018, where it was re-titled as "Fast-track female careers", which really wasn't the point of the piece at all. 

 It was accompanied in print by a picture of a grid girl holding a sign for Timo Glock, stood in front of a Toyota... so 2008 or 2009, then!

(CD A-Z: Midge Ure's covers album, ironically from 2008, "10".)

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