Started from the Bottom Now We're Here: Livia Cevolini broke gender stereotypes on her way to starting her company

“It is best to demonstrate that you are as good as a man, or even better at your own job. I am here because I have the know-how, the competence to be here,” Founder and CEO of Energica Motor Company, Livia Cevolini, on how to level the playing field in male-dominant fields. Which, if you ask us, is pretty much all of them.

 

(Image: Business Insider)

 

The conversation about gender inequality, in whatever industry, has been ongoing for quite some time now yet we still have prejudices against women when it comes to essentially-male professions. Cevolini is no such stranger to the disquieting malaise of frustration when it comes to preconceived notions of what females should and should not be doing. She was 36 years old when she founded Energica Motor Company in 2014, a highly-esteemed manufacturer of motorcycles based in Modena, Italy, neighbours to other automotive greats such as Lamborghini, Maserati, Ferrari, and Ducati in the region of Emilia-Romagna.

 

 

Before she became an official boss, she was already conquering gender stereotypes when she worked as director of sales and marketing at CRP Group, an engineering firm in Italy that specializes in Formula 1, motorsport racing, and the aerospace industry where she then built a team to develop and manufacture electric race-bikes in 2010.

What nurtured her self-confidence in her position in the motorcycle industry, an arguably male-dominated field, was naturally, the male-to-female discrimination she weathered when she was in University – something that she is immensely grateful for her family for pushing her to study a scientific field.In the early 2000s, she sat as one of the few women in her otherwise testosterone-filled class where she, and the rest of the female student body, would get a humiliatingly ‘special’ treatment from their professors who would clarify their understanding of the topic at hand before moving on. This is well-enough behaviour of a good professor who cares about his students’ grasp of the subject if, and only when, the same questions were raised to the male students.

 

However, it was not. It was readily assumed that they could undoubtedly grasp the concepts. Here the gap between the assumed intellectual capacities of the women to that of the men became glaringly and uncomfortably clear – they were being underestimated just because of their double-X chromosomes.

This only propelled her to work harder, though, as she ended up graduating as one of the highest achieving students in her class. Additionally, the laughable underestimation of Cevolini’s place in the industry was also noticeable when she said she was asked whether she was a journalist or an umbrella girl whenever she was in the Ferrari Formula 1 engineering pits as a trainee.

Women face inequality everywhere. Most men, and sometimes also women, are still holding on to the archaic idea that women are merely child-bearers, accommodating mothers, and submissive housewives. Cevolini said that this is especially prevalent in the Italian culture and is something that puts them “behind in some years”.

But as they love to say, there is always a rainbow after the rain as the male-dominant automotive and motorcycle industry is gradually changing. More women are, according to Cevolini, showing their passion for the motorcycle industry and are actively demonstrating “that they can be very good at the business”.

Energica currently has 45 employees, 30% of which are female. Cevolini is hopeful to see this number rise as she recounts the praise-worthy benefits of having female employees – highly-skilled, passionate, good mediators, and different point of views – all of which are necessary in generating good ideas.

Tesla is the one company Cevolini looks up to as she said respects its founder, Elon Musk, for being a pioneer in the industry by continually trying to do the best service for customers. She sees it as the “right approach” in 2017.

Her piece of advice to entrepreneurs, “Go for your way. Do your job, study a lot in order to be prepared. Go for your growth. Don’t look at the others.”

 

Source: Forbes