Car Companies Urged To Encourage Women To Join Auto Industry

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 9 (Bernama) -- Malaysian car companies are looking to provide sponsorship and training programmes to encourage women to join the car industry. "With women influencing the majority of the automotive purchasing decisions and a huge number bringing their vehicles to service centres for maintenance and repair, this makes creating career opportunities for them in this country more impressive," UK-based Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) said. "We need to encourage women to join this primarily male-dominated workplace; companies need to put in place training programmrs and financial incentives to cater for this group," its Southeast Asia Senior Manager, Matthew Stuart, said in a statement Thursday. He said a high percentage of the few women who work in this industry were involved in the backroom administrative functions or were relegated to the reception desk. "The IMI believes more needs to be done for women to be aware that they can pursue career opportunities from technical, customer service to management positions in this sector," he said. Stuart pointed out that an online car sales company, Carspring, had recently partnered with the IMI to launch a unique scholarship to fund two selected female students in their studies, along with two weeks work experience at their offices in London and Berlin. Meanwhile, Tekat Automotive Academy General Manager, Prasanna Vanugopal said women should be made aware that a career in the industry goes beyond the technical positions as they could also take up management and business roles. She adviced women not to be afraid to venture into this industry as new technologies introduced in this sector in the past years had resulted in more career and growth opportunities. --BERNAMA