Gendering Mobility: Women, Work and
Automobility in the United States
MARGARET WALSH

History
Volume 93 Issue 311, Pages 376 - 395
Published Online: 28 Jun 2008

ABSTRACT

This article examines women's relationship with car driving in the United States. The growth of American 'automobility' increased throughout the twentieth century, but most historians have ignored its relationship with women. They have assumed that the motor car was a masculine vehicle in terms of both its technology and use. Even those who recognized the motor car as a machine for changing lifestyles and interpersonal relationships considered that the male head of household had authority over choosing and driving the family vehicle. Some women, however, always drove. Though their numbers were relatively small in the years before the Second World War, they quickly seized the opportunity to get behind the wheel in succeeding years as more and more cars were produced in the United States and imported vehicles became popular. Women needed to drive to manage their unpaid work in the home efficiently and, when they entered the paid labour force in increasing numbers, they needed to run their households and to travel to their paid work. By the end of the twentieth century American women were as likely to drive as their male counterparts, though their patterns of driving were different. In the process, the automobile had become a sex neutral vehicle.