Ahead of the second FIA Women in Motorsport Commission Seminar, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, this weekend Deputy Team Principal of the Williams Formula One team Claire Williams talks about the progress she has seen - both at her team and in the wider world of motor sport - in recent years.

“Things have really changed at Williams over the past two or three years,” Williams says. “We’ve got a lot more women coming up now. We’ve got 109 women; at the moment most of them work across the traditional kind of female roles of admin, finance and accounting, marketing and PR. But we’re definitely seeing that landscape changing and more girls coming up into the engineer-based roles, which is great.  

“It’s absolutely changing and from my perspective it’s a really positive change. But at the end of the day, for us it doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a woman, as long as they can give the performance to the team - that’s the most important thing.”

Over the past three years there has also been an increasing level of interest from women in Williams’ internships and graduate training programmes, Williams says.

“We’re seeing a lot more [women apply] and I think this is all to do with the role models and the increasing work that we’re doing in promoting engineering. It’s a trend and obviously there’s the Randstad Williams Engineering Academy that we run. We saw some talented girls selected for our first intake of students. And in addition, our one outstanding candidate for the 2015 Autosport Williams Engineer of the Future was Lizzie Thompson; she’s now joined the team on an accelerated two-year internship.

“I think if we see more and more females come into those roles, the role model [effect] trickles down and we’ll see more and more. It’s virtually a circle, in effect. It’s a positive trend.”

While the role model factor is important, so too is exposing young girls to the opportunities available to them in the world of motor sport, Williams says. Former Williams F1 team development driver Susie Wolff launched the Dare to Be Different campaign, and initiatives such as these dovetail neatly with the Women in Motorsport Commission’s overall aims.

“Targeting those girls from the eight- to ten-year-old age range is so important,” she says. “I’ve hosted one of the Dare to Be Different events with Susie. At the start of the day, the girls are filled with a bit of trepidation and kind of wondering why they’re here, thinking maybe their brothers should be here rather than them.

“And then, come the end of the day when they’ve gone through their various experiences across aerodynamics or media, or whatever it may be, and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, I want to work in motor sport!’. For these kinds of initiatives, if lots of different teams are trying to set up and establish at the moment to take part in them and actively push that agenda, then the more women we’re going to see in motor sport. It is going to take time, but as long as people are being proactive about it, then we’re going to start making and seeing some real progress.”

Motor sport’s great equaliser is in the nature of the sport as a meritocracy with easily measurable outcomes, Williams says. Proof of one’s ability can be seen in the results shown on the timing screens, and successes and failures alike are made public.

“There is nowhere to hide in Formula One or in motor sport as a whole,” Williams says. “But I think one of the key things to remember about motor sport - and one of the great things to remember, as it doesn’t happen in industry - is that there’s parity for gender. There’s gender parity in motor sport.”

For those women seeking to prove themselves in the meritocratic world of motor sport, the Lisbon Seminar is an environment tailor-made for establishing the connections that can help advance a career, be they with National Sporting Association representatives, Women in Motorsport members, or invited guests. Making the most of ‘Making a Difference’ will allow individual attendees to further accelerate the progress seen by Williams at her own race team.