Woman, mechanic and tiktoker. She is Irati Etxandi, a 23-year-old girl from Gipuzkoa who works in a family workshop in San Sebastián. She is dedicated to automotive mechanics and electromechanics, a sector in which women are practically non-existent and in which they still have to face attitudes of contempt for their gender.
In fact, according to the latest Active Population Survey (EPA), relating to the fourth quarter of 2022, there are 119,500 women who work in the automotive field (manufacturing, sales and repair) in Spain. This means 21.7% of the total number of workers in the sector. A low presence but one that has grown in recent years, since in 2016 there was 15.6%.
If production is excluded, the EPA data indicates that the sale and repair of vehicles employs 59,600 women, 18.12% of the total. However, it is in areas such as the workshop where the disparity is even more accentuated. Despite the fact that the employers (CETRAA) do not have updated figures, various recent studies certify this fact.
The Euromaster Workshops network published in 2022 that barely 2% of the applications submitted for mechanic positions are from women. Along the same lines, an initiative of the Barcelona Workshops Guild stated that only 1% of the workshops surveyed have female mechanics.
“I see this reality in my day to day. We are very few”, says Irati Etxandi. However, cases like yours can help the situation change. This young Basque’s love of repairing cars has helped her go viral on TikTok, where she has more than 112,000 followers. In just 7 months, she has made her videos, in which she shows what her work is like, add more than 6.5 million views, a popularity that she logically did not expect when she started with the account. of her (irae_6).
“My third video, in which I was removing an airbag from the steering wheel, had a lot of reach. At that moment I considered whether to continue or not, because he gave me a little respect ”. Some doubts that his father, owner of the workshop, and his brother, who also works in the family business, quickly dispelled. “They convinced me that I shouldn’t be held back by what other people think or say,” so I kept going.
His videos show all kinds of tasks and curiosities related to his day-to-day work in the workshop, although Etxandi believes that the ones that attract users the most are those in which he has to disassemble more parts and show parts that are not so well known. One of her most viewed videos is one in which she removes the dashboard of a car. “People are surprised by so much work to change a simple part.” His videos of errors or typical breakdowns in best-selling models are also viral.
However, the path that the young woman took at first was very different from her current reality. She completed a degree in Administration and Finance, but when she went to work she quickly got tired of being in the office. She decided to go to the office of the family workshop to change scenery, but since there was no work to fill the day, she began to go down to the workshop and touch cars. “Now I don’t want to be in the office anymore,” the young woman jokes, although she explains that he and her brother share this task.
“They have left me books and at home I am studying automotive”. However, his passion is electromechanics and he plans to train in this field. A function that he currently shares with his father in the workshop, but that he will be able to cover when he retires, since his brother is specialized in mechanics.
Why didn’t you take studies related to vehicle repair before? “Surely due to the lack of references,” she replies. “I have liked cars since I was little, but since I started driving, my curiosity piqued me more. I considered studying automotive, but unconsciously I did not see it as a viable option. He had a different image in his head, in which there were only boys. You come to consider that it is not a job for women or that we are not good at it, which is what many people want you to think, but it is not like that ”.
Indeed, the reality in the classroom does not differ from that existing in the labor market. Based on the data from the Euromaster study, women represent only 1% in vocational schools in the repair sector. Voices like Etxandi’s can serve as references and increase the presence. “If at the age of 15 he had seen a girl like me on a social network, he probably would have thought: ‘Why can’t I do it?’” she explains.
And that is currently one of its main objectives. Disseminate their work so that other people can see it and normalize it, so that “other girls and women, especially young people, also dare to study and enter a world that seems so manly.” A fight in which he still finds too many obstacles.
Etxandi admits that she has felt belittled on numerous occasions by clients. “Some ask me where the mechanic is and I answer them: ‘tell me’. Sometimes they wonder if I am going to understand them. They do not understand that he can be a girl and a mechanic ”. Others have asked her if she was sure how to do a job, hers, which she does practically every day. “I notice that they distrust me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m young or because I’m a woman. I suppose that both aspects play a role”.
And the situation on TikTok is not much better. The feeling of impunity for users who hide behind anonymity on social networks further promotes these deplorable attitudes. “In general they are good comments, but there are always some bad ones. There are people who take my videos as a confrontation between genders, they tell me that I only go viral because I am a woman, ”she laments.
“Weird attracts, but I don’t think the success of my videos is solely due to the fact that I am a woman in a man’s world. There are many other popular mechanics on TikTok.” Over time, she has learned that the comments do not affect her in the same way and she has understood that they are a minority. “Now I delete them and block most users, although I continue to answer from time to time,” admits the young woman.
Despite everything, Etxandi has no intention of abandoning his profile. He explains that at first his TikTok channel was not considered as a reference, he just wanted to answer questions and for people to learn a little. However, his opinion changed after realizing the macho thoughts. “When I realized what the situation was like and the comments I was receiving, I did consider myself that this could serve as a reference for other people. There are parents who tell me how much their daughters and sons like my videos. That is what motivates me the most to keep uploading them”.