Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age

The automobile collided head on with gender in the early twentieth century. Women struggled as hard to overcome the stereotype of the “flighty” driver as they did to win access to the vote, higher education, and the professions. The gender debate influenced Detroit’s automotive design, engineering, marketing, and sales. Virginia Scharff shows how gender categories seeped into and shaped every corner of our culture, including the automobile.