There has long been a real divide between the occupations that women go into, and those professions traditionally done by men and working in technology and the engineering professions always find women in a minority. This is especially true within the motor industry; so when BMW announced that the latest design for their classic Z4 car, had been created by two women car designers, this news was greeted with surprise and disbelief.
BMW had held an internal competition back in 2005 to design the new Z4 2010 in which teams from Germany and the USA submitted their designs anonymously and a team, fronted by two women car designers, Nadya Arnaout and Juliane Blasi came up with the winning model. The fact that the designs were submitted anonymously must have helped the winning women by allowing the design of the car to stand alone without any prejudice or preconceptions.
The car itself, the BMW Z4 was first on the market in 2002 and this latest car in the series has received favourable reviews. Car critics have actually reported that it does not seem particularly girly which seems a ridiculous thing to say. As if one could even imagine that BMW would be ruled by anything other than the best design for the job!
The car industry is notoriously male dominated so the fact that a new car designed by women has even been reported on, shows that successful women in this branch of science are the exception rather than the rule.
