Westfield heiress Betty Klimenko: more girl mechanics

V8 SUPERCAR queen Betty Klimenko believes the fresh smell of burned rubber will inspire girls to get out of the kitchen and under a car.

Generation Success ... an initiative to focus on youth employment.

V8 SUPERCAR queen Betty Klimenko believes the fresh smell of burned rubber in the morning will inspire girls to get out of the kitchen and under a car.

The trailblazing Westfield fortune heiress — who is the first woman to own a V8 Supercars team — has called on schools to stop telling girls they can only be ballerinas, nurses and chefs by getting them onto the racetrack.

The Erebus Motorsport team owner believes the only reason women do not get involved in motorsport is because young girls are never exposed to it.

“We’re not taking it to girls in high school. We need to take them to the V8s,” she said.

“V8s should have, let’s say, 12 free tickets given away to schools so that girls and boys can come and have a look at the teams and see how they work.

“These tickets would go to kids who they think will go into the industry.”

The Bathurst 12 Hour event winner is fronting a nationwide Women in Auto Trades campaign together with Auto Skills Australia and the Federal Government.

Through a social media campaign and Klimenko’s star power, they are hoping to get more girls into overalls.

Despite a staggering 12.4 per cent of 15 to 24-year-olds being unemployed, there are 22,000 vacant positions in the national auto trades industry.

Only four women in Australia work as exhaust and muffler repairers. Out of 71,000 motor mechanics, ASA figures show only 834 are women.

Alongside plans to visit schools to inspire young women into the auto trades, Ms Klimenko has made herself a mentor.

She is now a phonecall away from women in auto trades who are being bullied or have reached a roadblock in their careers.

“Self worth is something that you find in a job that you love. If you can find a job that you love where you wake up in the morning and basically sing out the door, then you’ll be fine,” she said.

“Women can bring a lot of things to the auto trades if they are prepared to go in there and forget about their gender.

“The worst thing any girl can do is go in there and say ‘hi I’m a girl, look at me, look at me’.

“You’ve got to realise that you are going in there spending time with 60 men. You have to have the same mentality as them.”

Erin Fairman, 23, commutes for more than three hours every day to get to her job as a second-year motorcycle mechanic at Harley Davidson in Alexandria.

The Wollongong girl first got on a bike when she was three years old.

Under the guidance of her bike-loving father she learned the tricks of the trade and said she wouldn’t want to do anything else.

“I think some girls are scared to get into it — not because they aren’t good enough — but because there hasn’t been anyone they know who has done it before,” she said.

“There are a lot of girls out there who want to do it but it’s just that it is not common. Girls need to just go out there and show them what they are capable of.”

***News Corp Australia and Woolworths Limited have joined forces to launch Generation Success, an initiative to focus on youth employment.

The unemployment rate among those aged 15 to 24 is now 12.4 per cent — more than double the overall national rate.

Gen S brings some of the country’s biggest employers together to tackle the issue.

Woolworths, Leighton Holdings, National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Toll Group, Spotless, and Telstra, together employ more than 430,000 Australians.

As part of the initiative, industry, government and youth sector leaders will come together in April for a youth employment roundtable discussion.

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