By Rana Zalghout | Staff Writer
Growing up, I have always heard misogynist jokes about women that never made sense to me. One of the main jokes is that women’s driving licenses are useless since women don’t know how to drive either way. During every road trip that I have ever been on, a male family member of mine shamed the car in front of us and assumed that the driver is a woman because “women are bad drivers”. Most of the time, the reckless driver in front of us turned out to be a man, which made me giggle because my family’s assumptions were wrong. However, such jokes and stereotypes about women driving cars are rooted in patriarchy, where a whole gender is being falsely stereotyped, and in some countries, such stereotypes never allowed women to drive until recently.
Therefore, why are men so terrified of women driving? Why do they change their direction whenever they know that a woman is driving a car in front of theirs? How did it all start?
Cars were brand-new and the exclusive toys of the upper class at the turn of the 20th century. Only affluent men and women could possibly imagine being drivers. That’s why the way these women were driving was barely given attention. Nonetheless, the cost of automobiles began to decline in the 1910s, and many men got enlisted to fight in World War I. Women were now the main decision-makers at home as the need for society to function without many men increased the number of female drivers. In the 1920s, more women began getting access to automobiles and learning to drive.
At this time, and thanks to the declining cost of cars, more middle-class women had access to driving. As was stated, prior to the 1920s, owning and driving a car was within the exclusive domain of the wealthy. As the proportion of middle-class women increased, so did the challenge to the social order. Some people didn’t like these developments since they gave women more independence and access to new parts of society. This was an effort to put women in their place and portray them as poor drivers. Because of this, both wealth and status are at the heart of the unfavorable stigma surrounding women drivers.
It is evident that the stereotype about women’s driving skills was created only to control women and prohibit them from becoming more active and powerful in society. Indeed, there is no proof behind the myth that women are poor drivers. In reality, the only difference between men and women in driving is that, due to these stereotypes, women’s self-confidence while driving is affected. Moreover, statistically, men receive traffic tickets at a rate that is 3.4 times higher than that of women, and they are involved in triple the number of drunk driving arrests.
The negative stereotypes about women and their abilities have drawbacks on women’s self-confidence as they portray them to be inferior when driving. When are we going to evoke such stereotypes and stop judging people’s abilities and skills based on their gender, socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds?