Australian driving school for Chinese speakers apologises for calling female trainers ‘timid and weak’
- Number 1 Driver School’s advert says its female instructors ‘can’t perform intensive training and their students often improve only very slowly’
- Melbourne-based institute expresses regret over incident but residents say they are unconvinced by the apology and have reported company for discrimination
Melbourne-based Number 1 Driver School was also panned for boasting about its all-male staff online.
“Female driving instructors are timid [and] weak,” the company said on its website.
“They tend to spend most of the class time on minor roads, can’t perform intensive training and their students often improve only very slowly.”
The driving institute later removed the offending wording whose screenshot was first posted to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu by resident Mel Wang in July.
Wang said she was so angry with the language she did not know what to say. “We’re living in the year 2022, aren’t we?” she wrote.
The company also tendered an apology on Xiaohongshu, China’s Instagram-like service, adding it would hire two female driving instructors “at the request of the general public”.
