Despite historic milestones in Formula One (F1), there's a big challenge for women in motorsport.

As Angelique Vitale, a driver manager for the Toyota Gazoo Racing Cup, says: “The biggest barrier women have is challenging the old school mentality.”

In the last five seasons of F1, women have had a stronger presence in the paddock.

In 2025, Laura Mueller became the first female race engineer for Haas’ Esteban Ocon. Last year, Charlotte Tilbury became the first female-founded company to sponsor F1 Academy.

The academy is a female-only championship, which began in 2023, designed to develop young talent and help them progress through the motorsport ladder.

But there's still a way to go for gender equity, according to Monash University academic Thomas Heenan, who teaches on sport in society.

“Formula One is boys with their toys at high speeds,” Heenan said.

“F1 actually has got rid of that real decorative grid girl type thing that you used to see, but in some ways, it's made it appallingly more masculine as women are hardly seen."

Vitale, who is also a marketing assistant in the automotive industry and student, worked at Kick Sauber for the Australian Grand Prix (GP) 2025 as part of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) Girls on Track program with Motorsport Australia.

“The program is unique to Australia,” Vitale said.

In 2023, 37 per cent of permanent employees were women, according to the F1 Gender Pay Gap Report. The ‘Discover Your Drive’ and F1 Academy initiative are “aimed at increasing the female talent pool in motorsport both on and off the track”, the report stated.

For Vitale, such initiatives show that F1 is trying to tackle the issue. 

“They might not have the greatest female representation of staff, but I feel like they’re one of the only sports that is actually taking adequate steps to try and change this.”

She pointed to Aiva Anagnostiadis and Joanne Ciconte, Australian drivers who are signed to the F1 Academy this season.

“The amount of media coverage they got throughout the Australian GP, every media corporation was on them,” Vitale said.

“That’s something you wouldn’t have seen even a couple years ago. Women have had the talent but no one wanted to sponsor or interview them. You can see the difference now."

Both women are looking to be the first female driver in an F1 championship since Italy’s Giovanna Amati in 1992.

Heenan said women in motorsport at present could only "go so far, but the glass ceiling is always there". "If they fall off a horse, of course it's a woman who's done it. There'll be that type of attitude to this,” he said.

“Discrimination on the basis of gender is never questioned in F1 when it should be," he added.

"You can start at academy level but
it's got decades to travel. Men will still get a place before women, particularly if women are outside of the organising groups."

Stories of harassment continue to come out in the motorsport industry.

Vitale shared her own experience. “I’ve had some difficulties with sponsors just not wanting to deal with me, or respecting me, for the fact that I am a young woman,” she said.

“There've been some crude comments made to me while working by some of the sponsor guests, like, ‘Are you looking for a husband? He’s recently divorced’," she said.

“I think it’s because they’re the ones funding the team and they’re providing the money, so they feel this kind of entitlement."

The incidents mentioned did not occur inside the team, she said, only with sponsors.

Heenan said that kind of situation made it tough on women in motorsport. 

“There's a blokes-y bravado about it all, and I think working in that situation would be very confronting,” he said.

In 2024, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was investigated for controlling and coercive behaviour. This brought more attention to the treatment of women in F1.

Vitale noted that, “based on other incidents and comments from staff within the team, it seems to not be the most pleasant environment for females”.

Heenan pointed to a wider culture. 

“It is something that seems to be ingrained in the culture and it's across all teams,” he said.

In the most recent gender pay gap reports, Red Bull's mean average difference in bonus amounts was 47.80 per cent lower for women than men.

The report for the 2024 constructors’ champion McLaren shows a 46.85 per cent difference.

Such statistics are “disappointing” and “alarming” for someone aspiring to work in F1, Vitale said.

“The onus is on the teams to manage that, but I think at some point the FIA as a regulatory body needs to step in. I think the variation in teams reflects a culture,” she said.

Heenan also pointed to the wider culture. “Formula One is the perfect place to put women in cars and pay them the same amount for doing the same job, and it just doesn't do it because there is a male hegemony about the whole sport,” he said.

“If a woman was successful in the sport, it would be tremendous. But women will be given a car that is uncompetitive and that's not visibility.” 

Vitale looks forward to a future of gender equity in the sport and what this will bring.

“I think there would be higher levels of female engagement. Even if there’s someone that hasn’t watched F1 before, like when the Matildas were playing in the World Cup.

“Even men were so proud of the country and what they were achieving,” she said.

“I would like to see a program like what the FIA, Motorsport Australia and Sauber does across the entire paddock.

"They were so genuinely passionate about us being there, and that’s not something you can force. That’s a culture embedded within a team."