The second Virtual Summit organized by Green Racing News, served as a space to highlight the advances in gender equality which in recent years, have been accentuated increased due to the emergence of sustainable motorsport categories.
Nowadays it’s possible to see the presence of a considerable number of women in sectors that were led by men almost entirely. Now, in the paddocks of some car series, sustainable or not, a lot of women are seen in different positions, from journalists and engineers, to project managers and department leaders.
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Struggling, Committed and Professional Women at the Service of Motorsport
Examples include Carina Munte, Co-Founder of the FIM E-Xplorer World Cup, and Nita Korhonen, Liaison Director of the International Motorcycling Federation. Both have managed to break down barriers that their gender, unfortunately, has endured for decades and they talked about their reflections in the panel “Bringing more gender diversity and sustainability in Motorsports – Conversation with Leading Women in Motorsports, hosted by Nathalie Capati, Chief Engineer of Evolectric, who was an amazing moderator of the panel.
“We women are amazing. Professionally, we bring complements and unique ideas, we think a bit differently sometimes. However, from my point of view, I believe that the best results are obtained when women and men work together equally,” Munte sentenced.
Munte has extensive experience in the motorsports environment. Several categories have been lucky enough to count on her talent and professionalism, so much so that she endorsed a promising and sustainable nascent category like the FIM E-Xplorer World Cup, an electrified extreme motorcycling division.
“For the last 13 years, I have been working on motorsports. Formula 1, WEC Championship. There, I had the opportunity to learn from great people, many of whom were women, by the way. Also, I was one of the first employees of Formula E and now together with two great men I am taking on a new challenge, a brand new electric championship.”
On the other hand, Korhonen is at the helm of a very big responsibility at the headquarters of the International Motorcycling Federation, doing an impeccable job to make sure everything runs smoothly. “I’ve been involved with motor sports all my life. At FIM, I am responsible for 115 national federations.”
“At FIM we have a 50-50 split between men and women in our headquarters. There are actually slightly more female staff than male staff at the moment. In all 115 federations, we have five women presidents. It’s not a lot, but at the beginning of the year, we had only three, so the growth has been good and of course we expect to have more leaders in the future.”
“Now, I think the problem for the national federations is to point women to the FIM commissions. Many women are unaware of the possibilities they have in motorcycling, and that’s part of our mission, to tell them: ‘OK, you can do it, you are welcome in this world’. But there are also women who don’t think they’re ready to step up to an international level, and in a way, they’re held back even if they have all the skills they need…”
A series with diversity and equality at its heart…
FIM E-Xplorer World Cup
Written by | Ronald Ortega
