As the most powerful woman in the motor industry, Citroen boss Linda Jackson knows a thing or two about cars.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t get talked down and patronised by male forecourt salesmen.
Speaking to the Mail at the Frankfurt Motor Show, British Mrs Jackson, who became chief executive of the French car giant three years ago, told how she has been the victim of sexism in showrooms and how sales staff have ignored her.
Citroen boss Linda Jackson has revealed how she has been the victim of sexism in showrooms
The 58-year-old grandmother regularly goes on mystery shopping exercises to garages to see how rivals are selling cars.
Mrs Jackson said: ‘You do learn a lot about how the customer is treated. Sometimes you go into a showroom with your husband and they just turn to your male partner and say, ‘how would you like to spend your money?’
‘This is what we need to change. We want to make it easier for anyone to buy a car.
‘When women go into a dealership, they want to touch, feel and drive the car. They don’t want hard pressure. It’s not about being a woman. It’s about how I would want to be treated as a woman.’
Mrs Jackson made waves in the car industry when she became not only the first female to be appointed as boss of a French motor firm, but also the first British chief.
Originally from Coventry, she joined the car industry almost by accident when she took a holiday job stapling invoices at Rover as a teenager.
She fell in love with cars and turned down a place to study teaching at Sussex Univeristy to stay on as an accounting clerk at the firm.
Within a decade she was named finance director of Rover in France in 1998, and began climbing through the ranks of the French motor industry.
Mrs Jackson made waves in the car industry when she became not only the first female to be appointed as boss of a French motor firm, but also the first British chief
She met her husband David while working at Rover, and he became her unoffcial research assistant.
She has three grandchildren from her step-children Adrian and Charlotte. She suffered tragedy when her husband died from cancer in the summer of 2014, months after she started as CEO at Citroen.
Mrs Jackson, who lives in Paris and has a house in Normandy, and is also a qualified ballet teacher, said: ‘He still inspires me to go on. When I have little successes I say, ‘thank you’.
Mrs Jackson, who lives in Paris and has a house in Normandy, is also a ballet teacher
‘You either go on or you stay strong and survive. I had to rebuild my life. It’s a lonely time – but it’s lonely at the top anyway.’
She has been credited with creating a ‘French Revolution’ at Citroen by bringing her ‘Anglo Saxon’ approach to the company.
Having a British person at the helm of a French firm initially caused a stir – she despaired at the time-keeping of her French colleagues, while they were mystified by her tea-drinking.
But Mrs Jackson says both sides have now adapted, joking: ‘Now when I go to our dealers they get the tea out.’
Last year Citroen sold 87,000 cars and vans in the UK and has around 2.8 per cent of the market. It recorded the highest sales volume for five years in 2016 across Europe, and in the same year sold 1.2million Citroën vehicles worldwide.
Earlier this year Mrs Jackson was named the ‘most influential Briton in the global car industry’, topping a poll of 50 leading UK male and female car executives operating at home and abroad in the annual Auto Express ‘Brit List’. It was the first time a female executive has taken the top spot.
Mrs Jackson has previously told of her constant battle against sexism in the traditionally male dominated car industry. She has admitted that a woman having her job would have been imposisble to think of a decade ago.
‘When I told people I was in the car industry they used to think I was a mechanic,’ she has said. ‘But being a woman, providing you do a great job everyone remembers you. Though it’s not very politically correct to say it, I’m afraid.’