I'm a female driver, why do I still face sexism when visiting a garage or showroom?

Whenever I go into a garage or a showroom, why am I still asked where my husband is!!! - Priya N

Despite decades of Women's Lib (now refashioned or out of fashion, to both genders' great relief) our psyches are still deeply chauvinist, especially when it comes to things professional, or demandingly physical, or technical. Or car.

But that is changing. 

For its first century, the only concession car manufacturers made to women was a vanity mirror on the sun visor...on the passenger side. 

Their first attempts at a complete woman's car were simply "ordinary" cars with less of everything - less size, less space, less power, less style.

He is sitting with a 2-litre GTi engine...in a city centre traffic jam; his five-seater is carrying...only him; and his spacious boot is loaded with...a briefcase. 

Her car, more accurately described as a motorised shopping trolley or a lawnmower with a lid, is screaming its tiny heart out on more open suburban roads, its four little seats are carrying half the school's Under-10 football team, and the dinky boot is loaded with a baby's push chair, the weekly shopping, a bicycle that needs to be taken for repair, and a potted plant. 

And even though He's the one with the burly physique who is supposed to know something about auto mechanics, His car is newer and has almost no chance of breaking down and leaving Him stranded in the dark. 

She, who is supposed to be feeble and vulnerable and sterotypically doesn't even know where the bonnet latch is, drives the older model held together by little more than the children's chewing gum and half-melted chocolate bars.

I suspect if you looked in one of the ears of husbands who orchestrate this, you would be able to see daylight through to the other side. 

But the second century of motoring is changing all that. Surveys in the UK show that 40 per cent of all car buyers these days are women, and their preferences influence 80 per cent of all car purchases. And as a guide to the future trend, bras outnumber Y-fronts 5-to-3 among driving school pupils. 

Even manufacturers have finally twigged that women are swapping their apron strings for the purse strings, and although they may not share their menfolk's passion for polishing the paintwork and fitting gadgets, they do have a strong opinion on the design of seats, pedal angles, steering lightness, functional equipment, hard-wearing interiors, space, boot size, steering adjustability, jacking points, wheelbrace designs, style, colours and - overwhelmingly more than men - value for money! 

So manufacturers are, or at least for a while they were, consulting women's panels at the design stage of new models and many changes have been made accordingly. 

Also for a while, there was a spate of “we are talking to you, madam" ads: the Renault Clio featured a sexy, stylish but definitely mind-of-her-own woman driver; Nissan's Micra had Her handcuffing Him to the bannisters with a note saying: "Ask before you borrow it" before she whizzed off to do her own thing; Vauxhall had its car full of very hunky men but it was driven by Ruby Wax; Peugeot lionised Rosie and Emma in "Thelma and Louise" style, speeding away from domesticity; the girlfriend in the Fiat Punto finally got fed up with her bloke's patronising remarks - she threw all his worldly goods out of the window and proceeded to "put her foot down" - on the accelerator pedal, too. You might have seen Mitsubishi's ad on good 'ol KBC - She commandeered the keys and donned the rally helmet and drove them home in half time.

The irony that all these cars were town runabouts might not escape you. 

More sincerely, even garages had to change gear after surveys showed that prejudice runs deepest in the workshop.

Mechanics were, and mostly still are, far more likely to try to overcharge or con women; and if the bumpyfronts question a technical point mechanics ask them to send their husbands for an explanation! 

In showrooms, too. Test couples were sent car shopping, dressed similarly and displaying similar technical know-how. The salesmen invariably only spoke to the "Husband". 

Manufacturers, at least for a while, tried to indoctrinate their sales reps not to do that, and ran elaborate courses on where to stand, how to present the brochures, what to say and what not to say, to avoid (er...disguise) any gender-bias. 

One manufacturer even instituted a policy where showrooms and workshops had creches and coffee bars, and they scrapped sales commission so sales staff gave less of the hard sell which women, in particular, dislike.

And they must truly, truly hate to rank higher than men in loathing for being badgered by a salesman who presupposes you're a dupe and considers you incapable of asking for the information you want, when you want it. 

The tide has turned and, although it has slowed, the fact is that more and more women are getting into the driving seat, in parts of Europe to the point of becoming the majority, and to a lesser but now significant extent in Kenya. 

Women do not, by either nature or nurture, generally take too enthusiastically to auto mechanics beyond what is necessary, useful, or (and here's the real secret) unassignable to someone else. They are not actually besotted by nuts and bolts for their own sake, as men tend to be. 

In this, as in so many other aspects of life, they are not men's equals. They are unquestionably superior and, in their apparently roundabout way, eminently practical.

That's why they will never completely deprive men of the enormous satisfaction they derive from opening doors for them, carrying the suitcases, paying the restaurant bill, changing the puncture, and pretending St Valentine's Day is a one-way street.

They will also let us pretend to know more about cars, while ensuring that notion is further and further from the truth. 

To any chauvanist who has a problem with that: just count your blessings that women are unable to delegate childbirth.