Chinese Teen Defies Gender Boundaries; Wins Car Repair Competition And Sets New Record

Gu Huijing, a 17-year-old student at a vocational-technical school in Shenzhen, China has become somewhat of a celebrity on Chinese social media for going against gender stereotypes. Gu is an aspiring car mechanic, a profession and industry that are typically male-dominated.

Last April, Gu beat the other male contests in an auto repair contest, participated by vocational school students across the entire Guangdong province, and came up on top. In the process, she set a new school record for fastest car engine disassembly and assembly, beating the last record by 30 seconds. Her achievement has sparked a fresh debate in the country with regards to gender boundaries when it comes to career choices as well as negative perceptions towards vocational education.

According to an SCMP article, Gu said that despite her “natural affinity” and obsession with vehicles since young, her family was not supportive of her decision to pursue her further education in the automotive field.

“Because they thought auto repair is useless for girls. They wanted me to learn something easy for girls to work on,” Gu was reported as saying, in the same article.

While Gu admitted there was an initial period of discomfort with the dirt and grease that come with the territory, she soon got over it because of her love for the trade. There’s no great secret as to why she won – in the months prior to the competition, she woke up at the wee hours of the morning to work until late into the night, so it was sheer hard work and determination.

One wouldn’t expect a provincial auto competition to grab the headlines, but the topic exceeded 200 million reads on China’s microblogging site, Weibo, and has garnered tens of thousands of comments, many of them voicing support for dismissing tiresome gender stereotypes.

Gender boundaries in the auto industry don’t just exist in China, of course, and it wouldn’t be surprising if they are the same across key auto markets around the world. Numbers provided by CATALYST showed that as of 2020, although women make up almost half of the US workforce, only one-quarter of the automotive workforce are women. The percentage of women who hold executive positions in auto companies is much lower still – one estimate places it at 8%. It was only as recently as 2014 when Mary Barra became the first female CEO of a major global automaker, that is General Motors.