Formula E’s Vice President of Sporting Beth Paretta has outlined that the provision of opportunities is not only key for the continued growth of women’s sport but for growing the business of sport itself.
Speaking on an episode of GlobalData’s Instant Insights podcast, Paretta said of the value to sports organizations: “When you see other sports capitalizing on it, I think it just proves that the concept matters and that it works. Because, ultimately, sponsors are making hay with it, as they should. It’s a business, and there are proof of concepts out there. This isn’t some sort of harebrained scheme. We know that it works.”
Ahead of International Women’s Day tomorrow (March 8), Formula E announced today that it will be expanding on the half day of all-women testing it ran ahead of its 11th season last November – which was the first-ever all-women test session for an FIA World Championship. Such was the success of the event that the all-electric series will be running a full-day all-women test in the fourth quarter of this year ahead of its 12th season.
“Every team had to put women in their race cars, and it pushed them to get to know some of the women drivers out there and figure out who was available, who they would like to contract to drive their car – it pushed some of them to create relationships that they didn’t have, which was the point,” Paretta said.
She added: “The idea of the women’s test is to just give these women the opportunity again, build these bridges, get them to know the teams, get them to know our series, get them to consider our series as an option for themselves.”
Paretta, who has held a host of leadership positions within motorsports for over 15 years and set up the women-run, women-driven Paretta Autosport team, is clear that opportunities like those being provided by Formula E are central to improving gender parity in the industry – not just for drivers but throughout the paddock.
“The magic of motorsport, and this is the thing that we’re trying to remind people, is that of the professional sports we think of this is something that’s actually co-ed,” she said. “We can have everybody participating on the same track.”
This is something that Paretta has seen become increasingly the case in motorsport over recent decades and even just in recent years.
“If you look 20 years ago, 25 years ago, at where we were, and then even where we were five years ago, there’s sort of been this nice acceleration to seeing more women in the paddock across all roles,” she explained. “I know the focus is always on getting more women behind the wheel as drivers, and that is important, but, even personally, my professional endeavors were to try to lift the veil on all of the careers that exist in the paddock, because it’s that idea [that] we just need the best and brightest and people that are passionate about it – and if we could let people know that there’s space here for them and that we want you and we need you in the in our sport, then it’s a welcoming environment.”
Paretta believes one of the things that will help to achieve this is getting more women into positions of leadership. She also noted that there is little if any evidence to support the oft-floated suggestion that any physical differences between men and women mean they cannot compete against one another on the track.
In terms of achieving greater parity there, she said: “With things like F1 Academy, W Series a few years ago, I still think any progress is good progress because that’s how many more seats where you know women are getting track time. The solution is always going to be seat time, and it’s great that those series exist, but what I want to see is on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday when the cameras are off, those women just running laps out on track. There’s no substitute for seat time.”
Indeed, Paretta is of the mind that, with the right pathways, women will not just compete at the highest level on track but will win.
“There’s a lot of questions of like: Will women ever get to the highest echelons of motorsport? Will they win? Will they take podiums? Will they win championships? I would argue that they would. I do honestly still think that the biggest challenge is opportunity, just getting a shot.”
