Safety Glass Ceiling?

For eight years, Faith Barnese has been part of a running joke that typifies the plight of many women working in Southern California’s automotive industry.

The national sales manager for Grant Products, a Glendale maker of automobile accessories, Barnese in 1990 met with a group of warehouse distributors--all men--at a trade conference to tell them about her company’s product line.

She bumped into one of the distributors on her return visit to the conference the following year.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” the man said.

When Barnese asked why, the man replied, “I didn’t think a woman would last a year in this business.”

The two have seen each other at the conference every year since, and Barnese never misses a chance to playfully remind the man of that conversation. “This year when I saw him,” Barnese recalled, “I told him ‘eight years and counting.’ ”

Here in the cradle of the car culture, women like Barnese have ceased being an oddity, but they nonetheless continue to feel some backlash of being female in what is still a predominantly male industry.

“The auto industry is not as progressive as other industries like legal, medical and real estate,” said Courtney Caldwell, a Santa Monica marketing consultant who specializes in reaching female car buyers. “It is getting better, but a lot of the guys don’t want the girls to play in their yard.”

With an eye toward helping women claim their fair share of the automotive playing field, Caldwell has formed a networking and professional support group aimed at bolstering careers of women in the industry. A chapter of the Detroit-based International Women’s Automotive Assn., it plans to hold its first regular meeting Feb. 26.

More than 70 women turned out for the group’s inaugural luncheon last September in Long Beach. Among them was Jeanne Brewer, one of a handful of women car dealers in Southern California.

“It’s really great to be able to make connections with other women in the industry,” Brewer said. “It’s important to let women know they are not the lone ranger in their field.”

Brewer, who plans to join the group, acknowledged that curiosity fed much of her desire to attend the luncheon. “I wanted to see who was going to show up,” she said. “There are so few of us.”

Women have made impressive strides in landing jobs at the manufacturer and marketing level, but their representation drops the closer the cars get to the street. Only about 5% of car dealers in California are women, up slightly from 2% nationwide. And no more than an estimated 7% hold positions of management or higher in the nationwide aftermarket sector, which manufactures and distributes replacement and performance accessories for cars.

“The industry is still kind of an old boys’ network,” said Charlie Van Cleve, vice president of sales for Cerritos-based Headman Hedders & TD Performance.

Proof of that sentiment was never more apparent to Van Cleve than after an encounter two years ago at a Seattle trade show.

She and a male sales representative, Jerry Nunez, were staffing a Headman booth when a retailer inquired about a specific part. Nunez turned the question over to Van Cleve, but the customer continued to address only Nunez even after Van Cleve had answered his questions with part numbers and technical specifications.

“That just showed a real lack of respect,” Nunez recalled from his office in Phoenix. “It’s just assumed by the majority of people that because you’re a female you simply don’t have a knowledge of the products in our industry. It’s still a man’s industry, no question about it.”

But while Nunez said he generally supports the notion of women working shoulder to shoulder with men, he agrees to some extent with the prevailing male mind-set concerning women in the automotive industry.

“Clearly women like Charlie are the exception,” Nunez said. “When it comes down to cars, I’m probably going to trust a guy more than a woman. Very few of them understand automobiles. You just don’t meet many women who are competent about product knowledge.”

To Barnese, much of that thinking stems from the fact that until recently, cars and the car culture had been targeted exclusively at men. Cars--all but ordained an extension of a man’s personality--were deemed too greasy and technical for traditional female sensibilities.

The role of women had historically been limited to the bubbly, scarf-bearing starter of drag races or the bikini-clad calendar girl draped over a hot rod.

“Up till a few years ago when people looked at an attractive woman in this industry, they would think you were some kind of bimbo on the cover of a magazine,” said Barnese, who with 15 years in the aftermarket sector oversees a national sales team of 100 men.

Yet not all women have felt mistreated or objectified by men in the course of their automotive vocations.

Pauline Stenberg, vice president of Los Alamitos-based Cone Engineering, has worked for 17 years in the administrative side of the company, which makes exhaust extension systems. “I’ve never felt any bias against me because I’m a woman.”

Nor has Bette Thorley. She has overseen operations at Thorley Headers in Corona since 1959. “I don’t ever feel like there is a glass ceiling in this industry anywhere at all,” she said. “It’s always been very even for me. I’m thankful of that. I’ve never walked into a convention hall and had the men think anything less of me than I thought of myself.”

Both women, however, have worked almost exclusively in the business end of their manufacturing companies, both of which they helped start with husbands who handled the design and technical aspects of the products made.

But women who have felt the sting of sexism say they’ve learned to cope with it.

“You have to establish your authority in the field,” Brewer said. “Once anybody establishes that, gender is almost a nonissue.” Yet even with 14 years in the business, Brewer is still occasionally dismissed by male customers who stare incredulously when she tells them she is the boss of her dealership.

But Brewer shrugs it off. “You can’t hold onto bad experiences,” she said. “If you do, they’ll eat you up and you’ll be less likely to be successful.”

Van Cleve agrees. “Unequal treatment,” she said, “made me work harder. It made me work smarter. It made me more determined to succeed.”

When the issue of gender does rear its head in professional encounters, it’s not always a liability, Van Cleve said. Because of what she dubs the “curiosity factor,” men she finds are often more apt to hear out a female sales representative.

“Being a woman will get you noticed, but by God you better have something to say,” Van Cleve said. “If you’re not saying something of value, men will dismiss you much faster than they would dismiss a man with nothing to say.”

But beyond the issue of the benefits and drawbacks of gender, Brewer says, is a more important consideration: Women who want to be successful must work hard.

A disgruntled account representative at an advertising agency in 1983, Brewer decided to answer a classified ad which began with the bullet, “Achievers wanted.”

Although she knew nothing about cars, she applied for and won the open sales position at Woodland Hills Honda. After three months working the showroom floor, Brewer was named salesperson of the month. Five years later she had worked in just about every capacity at the dealership and had moved up to general manager of Acura Pasadena, which along with Woodland Hills Honda is owned by Guy Martin.

Dick Kennedy, who had been general manager before Brewer, credits her ascent to her work ethic.

“She paid her dues,” Kennedy said.

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At a Glance

* What: Regional meeting of the International Women’s Automotive Assn. networking and professional support organization.

* When: 4 p.m., Feb. 26

* Where: Westing Long Beach, 333 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

* Information: (310) 260-0192