As any gal of a certain age will tell you, until very recently, competing in the Boys' Club was not undertaken lightly.
If you didn't do well, getting laughed at because you were female was often the least painful possibility. And even if you surpassed expectations and did very well indeed, plenty of the boys still looked for something to laugh at or find fault with. An extreme example would be Joan of Arc, burned at the stake for, basically, being successful.
In other words, until recent times it was so tough for a woman to excel in a man's world that most didn't even consider it.
Take automobile racing - NASCAR, the Daytona 500, the Indy 500 - historically, a bastion of raging testosterone. Is there anything more of a Boy's Club than auto racing?
Why would any woman in her right mind decide to break into auto racing? And do so before "the women's movement" had really taken off?
To get the answers to those questions, you'd have to ask Janet Guthrie, who made that decision and became the first woman driver in history to qualify for, race at, and finish in the top 10 at events like the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500.
We can presume that her attendance for most of her schooling at a private Florida girls' school played a part, where the curriculum stressed independence and strength of character along with the three R's.
Guthrie went on to earn a B.Sc. in physics in 1960 at the University of Michigan, and became a research and development engineer at Republic Aviation. She worked on precursor Project Apollo programs, and in 1964, more than a decade before Sally Ride became the first female astronaut, decided to apply to NASA to be an astronaut.
Guthrie got through the first round of eliminations for NASA's Scientist-Astronaut program, but was eventually passed over because she didn't have a PhD. The point here is that she decided to go for it, and gave it her all.
It was around the same time - the mid-'60s - that Guthrie became enamored of fast cars and was bitten by the racing bug. She bought a Jaguar XK120, later upgrading to an XK140, and became well known on the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) circuit. By 1972 she was racing on a full-time basis.
Eventually, Guthrie had raced in three Indy 500s, finishing as high as ninth in the 1978 race. She raced in 11 Indy-car events, placing as high as fifth, and competed in 33 NASCAR events, her highest a sixth place against the boys.
In Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle, her 2005 autobiography, her friend and tennis legend Billie Jean King wrote the foreword, and King describes best how Janet overcame the odds. King writes that Janet had to "endure scorn from fans, resentment from drivers, apathy from sponsors, and ridicule from the media. And yet she persevered. ... The skeptics harrumphed that women lacked the stamina to endure a 500-mile race, the strength to control a car at 200 mph, and the steady nerves to make the split-second decisions necessary to avoid catastrophe. Janet proved them all wrong, and her success was as much a testament to valor as ability."
But eventually, Guthrie received full acceptance from all the famous male drivers, and was heaped with praise for her skill and tenacity. Janet Guthrie's helmet and race suit are on display at the Smithsonian, and she was one of the first elected to the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. In 2006, Guthrie was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
Although she raced for the excitement and the challenge, Janet Guthrie did more than buck the Boys' Club for a thrill. She was a brave pioneer who helped forward the status of women in all fields, and was a beacon of the women's movement.
At Novus Medical Detox Center we are privileged to work with patients who display enormous personal conviction and sheer bravery in overcoming substance abuse and dependence. We thought you might like to read one of their success stories.
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