Gendering mobility: Women, work and automobility in the United States

History

Volumn 93, Issue 311, 2008, Pages 376-395

  Walsh, Margaret ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CAR USE; LIFESTYLE; TWENTIETH CENTURY; WOMENS STATUS;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 45349087389     PISSN: 00182648     EISSN: 1468229X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-229X.2008.00430.x     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. Automobile figures are reported in the annual record of vehicle registrations compiled by United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Highway Statistics Summary to 1995(Washington, DC, 1997), [hereafter Highway Statistics Summary] [FHWA-PL-97-009], Table DL-201
2. USDOT, Highway Statistics, 1996-2001(Washington, DC, 2002), [hereafter Highway Statistics, 1996-2001] [FHWA-PL-01-10011 and 02-008], Table DL-20
3. The Statistical History of the United States From Colonial Times to the Present (New York, 1976), Tables A 6-8 and Q 148-162
4. Historical Statistics of the United States. Millennial Edition (New York, 2006), vol. iv, tables Df339-52
5. National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, Automobile Facts and Figures AFF), (1950-75) and Motor Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, Motor Vehicles: Facts and Figures(MVMA), (1976-2004). Partial household vehicle ownership is available in Nancy McGurkin and Nanda Srinivasan, Journey-to-Work Trends in the United States and its Major Metropolitan Areas, 1960-2000(Washington, DC, June 2003) [hereafter McGurkin and Srinivasan, Journey-to-Work Trends, [FHWA-EP-03-058], 1-12-1-13. For general information about the American economy in the post-war years see Michael French, US Economic History Since 1945 (Manchester, 1997) and for social and cultural trends see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America(New York, 2003) [hereafter Cohen, A Consumers' Republic].
6. American historians have preferred to focus on the production of automobiles rather than their consumption. There is therefore only a limited number of sources that examine the use and impact of the motor car before the Second World War. The best volumes are John Rae, The Road and the Car in American Life(Cambridge, MA, 1975) [hereafter Rae, The Road and the Car]
7. James J. Flink, The Car Culture(Cambridge, MA, 1975) and The Automobile Age(Cambridge, MA, 1988) [hereafter Flink, The Automobile Age]. For specialist aspects of car use see also Warren J. Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945 Cambridge, MA, 1979) [hereafter Belasco, Americans on the Road]
8. Michael L. Berger, The Devil Wagon in God's Country: The Automobile and Social Change in Rural America, 1893-1929 (Hamden, CN, 1979) [hereafter Berger, The Devil Wagon]
9. iThe Automobile and American Culture, ed. David L. Lewis and Lawrence Goldstein (Ann Arbor, MI, 1983) [hereafter Lewis and Goldstein, Automobile and Culture]
10. Joseph Interrante, 'You Can't go to Town in a Bathtub: Automobile Movement and the Reorganization of Rural American Space, 1900-1950', Radical History Review, xxi (1979), 151-68
11. 'The Road to Autopia: The Automobile and the Spatial Transformation of American Culture', in Lewis and Goldstein, Automobile and Culture, pp. 89-114
12. The Car and the City: The Automobile, the Built Environment and Daily Urban Life, ed. Martin Wachs and Margaret Crawford (Ann Arbor, MI, 1992). Several of these sources talk at length about the 1920s and most skim over the 1930s other than examining car production and labour disputes in the car industry. For the impact of the 'Great Depression' on American lives see Peter Fearon, War, Prosperity and Depression: The US Economy, 1917-45(Deddington, 1987), pp. 137-48, 236-55.
13. The best and at times only general source for the impact of cars on American life in the late twentieth century is Mark S. Foster, A Nation on Wheels: The Automobile Culture in America since 1945 (Belmont, CA, 2003) which offers a short but knowledgeable survey. Unfortunately, the work gives neither footnotes nor bibliography.
14. See also Rudi Volti, Cars and Culture: The Life of a Technology (Westport, CN, 2004), pp. 87-156, which places the United States into an international perspective.
15. Driving Licence statistics are derived primarily from federal government sources. The federal government first reported licensed drivers by sex for the United States in 1963 at which point some 37 million females were driving and they comprised 39.6 per cent of the nation's licensed drivers. Prior to that date AFF reported occasional statistics and information on women drivers. In 1953, for example, 29 per cent of the country's drivers were women and in 1958, 38 per cent of drivers were female. The percentage of 31.2 reported for 1951-6 in USDOT, FWHA, Ciharacteristics of Licensed Drivers, Report No. 6 of the first National Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) (Washington DC, 1973), p. 18, suggests that the percentages suggested by the AFF for 1953 and 1958 may be more estimates than facts. In 1951, 64.4 million American held driving licences
16. by 1956, that number had increased to 77.7 million drivers. Highway Statistics Summary to 1995, Table DL-201
17. Highway Statistics, 1996-2001, Table Dl-20; AFF, (1952), 63, (1953), 36; (1959-60), 44.
18. The prevalence of the feminine ideal of the 'cult of domesticity' or cult of true womanhood has been a highly contested subject in women's history. The classic statement, Barbara Welter, 'The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860', American Quarterly, xviii (1966), 151-74, was very popular in early women's history, but second- and third-wave women's history have challenged both its authenticity and its prevalence. The ideal was never a reality for working-class women who had neither the time nor the money to be a 'perfect' wife and the ideal increasingly was fragmented in the twentieth century under the impact of sexual freedom, thanks to Freud and then to improved means of contraception, the franchise, awarded nationally in 1920, mass communications and the need or desire to be gainfully employed. For discussions of cultural norms and ideals
19. see Sheila M. Rothman, Women's Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870-Present (New York, 1978)
20. Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism New Haven, 1982)
21. Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism(New Haven, 1988).
22. For insights into changes in the lives of American women in the twentieth century see pt. III, Modern America, 1880-1990', in A Companion to American Women's History, ed. Nancy A. Hewitt Oxford, 2003), pp. 225-432.
23. Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (New York, 1991) [hereafter Scharff, Taking the Wheel] provides a detailed discussion of women's relationship to the automobile in the years up to 1929. She clearly demonstrates that women were capable of driving early vehicles and did drive these vehicles. Kathleen Franz, 'Women's Ingenuity', in Tinkering: Consumers Invent the Early Automobile(Philadelphia, 2005), pp. 43-73
24. also discusses women's motoring skills in these years, while Clay McShane examines gender differences in the use of cars between 1910 and 1920 in Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City New York, 1994), pp. 149-71. Deborah Clarke considers some early female authors who drove in driving Women: Fiction and Automobile Culture in Twentieth Century America(Baltimore, 2007) [hereafter Clarke, Driving Women], pp. 30-40, 58-66.
25. Curt McConnell examines early motoring trips by women in A Reliable Car and a Woman Who Knows It: The First Coast-to Coast Auto Trips by Women, 1899-1916(Jefferson, NC, 2000).
26. For glimpses into family and women's use of cars in the years before the Second World War, see Scharff, Taking the Wheel
27. Belasco, Americans on the Road
28. Berger, The Devil Wagon; Rae, The Road and the Car in American Life
29. and Flink, The Automobile Age. Michael L. Berger also makes suggestions about the car and personal and community change in the section 'Specialized Sociological and Cultural Studies', in The Automobile in American History and Culture: A Reference Guide Westport, CN, 2001), pp. 141-306.
30. There has been much scholarly discussion about the ways in which the growing popularity of the car had the potential to alter women's position in American society. It could be viewed as a technology to liberate women or as a technology that confirmed women's subordinate status in a patriarchal culture. Many commentators, however, recognize that some women did drive cars in the early years of the twentieth century. Thus, manufacturers could not afford to ignore these women, but these auto men also knew that more women did not drive and neither they nor many women wished to upset the social conventions of domesticity. That the automobile was personified as feminine and that it had phallic connotations has only served to complicate interpretations of women's real and symbolic relationships to the motor cars. See Beth Kraig, 'Woman at the Wheel: History of Women and the Automobile in America' (PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 1987), pp. 11-53
31. Clarke, Driving Women, pp. 13-26; Laura L. Behling, 'Fisher's Bodies: Automobile Advertisements and the Framing of Modern American Female Identity', The Centennial Review, xli 1997), 515-28
32. Martin Wachs, 'Men, Women, and Wheels: The Historical Basis of Sex Differentials in Travel Patterns', Transportation Research Record, 1135 (1987), 12-14
33. David Gartman, Auto Opium: A Social History of American Automobile Design(New York, 1994), pp. 68-135
34. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity 1920-1940(Berkeley, 1985).
35. For information on the automobile industry during the Second World War see, John B. Rae, The American Automobile: A Brief History Chicago, 1965), pp. 143-59.
36. For glimpses of women's potential to drive during the war see Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s Boston, 1982), pp. 15-99.
37. Cohen, A Consumers' Republic, offers an abundance of information about Americans' post-war consuming habits and indirectly supports the boom in car ownership and automobility. For information on the federal government and the suburbs see Kenneth T. Jackson, 'Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream: How Washington Changed the American Housing Market', in Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States New York, 1985), pp. 190-218.
38. For more specific information on this aspect of government involvement, see Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America, (Washington DC, 1996). For a broader view of planning and post-war suburban growth, see Delores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000(New York, 2003), pp. 128-80 and for general information on the Interstate Highways
39. see Mark H. Rose, Interstate Express: Highway Politics, 1941-1956 (Lawrence, KS, 1979) and Richard F. Weingroff, 'Designing the Urban Interstates' (2005) available at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/ fairbank.htm.
40. Cohen, A Consumer's Republic, pp. 257-89, offers the best discussion of shopping and women's access to supermarkets and shopping malls in the years after the Second World War. She also writes about couples and families shopping together, but does not examine women's ability to drive cars to these new consumer citadels. For information on the newer trends in shopping see Margaret Walsh, 'The Organisation of American Consumption', in The United States in the Twentieth Century ii, ed. Grahame Thompson (2nd edn., 2000), pp. 26-7.
41. See also Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York, 1988), pp. 162-82.
42. For fuller information on the 1950s see Walsh, 'At Home at the Wheel?'.
43. William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II 4th edn.; New York, 1999), pp. 123-4.
44. Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer, The Female Labor Force in the United States: Demographic and Economic Factors Governing its Growth and Changing Composition(Berkeley, 1970), pp. 15, 17
45. Julia K. Blackwelder, Now Hiring: The Feminization of Work in the United States, 1900-1995(College Station, TX, 1997) [hereafter Blackwelder, Now Hiring], pp. 151-65
46. and Cohen, A Consumers' Republic, pp. 283, 285-6. By 1960, 15 per cent of families owned two or more cars, a figure that had risen to 28 per cent a decade later (Highway Statistics Summary to 1995, Table DL-201
47. Statistical History of the United States, Series Q 175-186).
48. In 1969, the average length of the trip for family business was 5.6 miles in contrast to the average length of the car trip related to earning a living, which was 10.2 miles. Journeys for family business remained more numerous on a Saturday, whether because that was the day when the family car was available or because men also engaged in household tasks, is not reported. See Purposes of Automobile Trips and Travel, NPTS Report No. 10 (Washington, DC, 1974). Shopping was the main function of family business trips. Other items included in this category were medical and dental visits and journeys to the bank, the garage, the laundry or the hairdresser (Household Travel in the United States, NPTS Report No. 7 (Washington, DC, 1972)). In the 1977 NPTS Survey, the presence and age of children in households accounted for different rates of car journeys, A Life Cycle of Travel by the American Family, NPTS Report No. 7 (Washington DC, 1981) and Household Travel, NPTS Report, No. 9 (Washington DC, 1982).
49. The notion of the traditional family in the 1950s stems in part from the numerous television sit-coms' on family life, such as 'Ozzie and Harriet', 'Leave It to Beaver' and 'I Love Lucy' that flooded American households and have been repeated endlessly. Recent analysts, however, have been concerned to examine the diversity of American households in the 1950s and to suggest that the so-called family ideal of the breadwinning father, homemaking mother and dependent children was very much in the minority. The most famous American discussion of the 'problem that has no name' or the critique of domesticity for potential career homemakers is Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique(New York, 1963). Such is the importance of this volume for feminism in the 1960s that its roots in the 1950s cannot be ignored. Many women, however, wanted to find work rather than careers so that they could enjoy the good life suggested by mass consumerism. For discussions of family life see Blackwelder, Now Hiring, pp. 147-68
50. Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap(New York, 1992), pp. 23-41
51. Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life(New York, 1988), pp. 177-201
52. and Cohen, A Consumer's Republic, pp. 194-256, 292-344.
53. Statistics for women's labour force attachment are located in Historical Statistics of the United States. Colonial Times to 1970 Washington DC, 1975), Series D 11-25, 127-8, US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labour Force Statistics Derived from the Current Population Survey CPS), 1948-1987(Washington DC, 1988), Bulletin 2307
54. US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings (Washington, DC, 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001) and US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Women in the Labor Force: A Databook Washington, DC, 2005) [hereafter Women in the Labor Force available at www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-databook2005htm. The figures reported in different branches of the federal government are not always identical, so statistics should be treated with care.
55. Women in the Labor Force: A Databook, Tables 2 and 7; Howard V. Hayghe and Suzanne M. Bianchi, 'Married Mother's Work Patterns: The Job-Family Compromise', Monthly Labor Review (June 1994) [hereafter Hayghe and Bianchi, 'Married Mother's Work Patterns'], 24-30
56. Howard Hayghe, 'Women's Labor Force Trends and Women's Transportation Issues' [hereafter Hayghe, 'Women's Labor Force Trends'], USDOT, FHWA and Office of Highway Policy Information (OHPI) Women's Travel Issues: Proceedings from the Second National Conference, October 1996 (Washington, DC 1997) [FHWA-PL-97-024] internet access http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/ohim/wtipage.htm [hereafter Women's Travel Issues], pp. 11-12.
57. Initially analysts were concerned to compare male and female car journeys, pointing out the ways in which the two sexes who lived in the same household differed, more especially if there were children. Though this type of work has continued to proliferate, especially when focused on trip chaining or multiple-purpose journeys, issues centring on the diversity of women have recently assumed more importance. At times these differences are perceived in terms of racial and ethnic origins; at other times in terms of age, whether families are female-headed and on yet other occasions according to income or class. Occasionally income and race/ethnicity are considered to be proxies for each other. A range of articles on these subjects can be found in the proceedings of the three conferences on 'Women's Transportation Issues', namely Women's Travel Issues: Research Needs and Priorities, 1978(Washington DC, 1980)
58. Women's Travel Issues(1996) and Research on Women's Issues in Transportation[hereafter Research on Women's Issues in Transportation] 2004, Conference Proceedings 35, vol. i: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers(Washington, DC, 2006), vol. ii: Technical Papers(Washington, DC, 2005).
59. In the mid-1990s 29 per cent of employed women were in managerial and professional jobs. Twenty years earlier in 1975 only 18 per cent were in managerial or professional speciality jobs. Hayghe, 'Womens' Labor Force Trends', p. 12.
60. See also Blackwelder, Now Hiring, pp. 177-257.
61. Analysts generally agree that men have taken a larger share of household tasks especially during the 1980s, but since then there have not been any marked changes. Women remain more involved in household management, especially when there are children. Though some housework remained undone in 1995 as compared to 1965 or was deemed to be unnecessary, bought-in services often substituted for other tasks and these services; for example, meals and laundry could involve automobility. See Arlie R. Hochschild, 'Men Who Do and Men Who Don't', The Second Shift(New York, 1989), pp. 216-38; Hayghe and Bianchi, 'Married Mother's Work Patterns', p. 29
62. Suzanne M. Bianchi and Daphne Spain, 'Women Work and Family in America', Population Bulletin, li (1995), 31-4
63. Suzanne M. Bianchi, Melissa A. Milkie, Liana C. Sayer and John P. Robinson, 'Is Anyone Doing the Housework: Trends in the Gender Division of Household Labor', Social Forces, lxxix (2000), 191-228
64. and Sandra Rosenbloom, 'Understanding Women and Men's Travel Patterns: The Research Challenge', Research on Women's Issues in Transportation i. 7-16.
65. Sharon Sarmiento, 'Household, Gender and Travel', in Women's Travel Issues, pp. 37-52.
66. Trip-chaining has been the subject of numerous articles, often using data provided by the NPTS, 1969, 1977, 1983, 1990, 1995 and 2001. For the more recent research that examines female and male patterns see Nancy McGurkin and Elaine Murakami, 'Examining Trip-Chaining Behavior: Comparison of Travel by Men and Women', Transportation Research Record(Journal of the Transportation Research Board), no. 1693 (1999) [hereafter McGurkin and Murakami, 'Examining Trip-Chaining Behavior'], 79-85, and Nancy McGurkin and Yukiko Nakamoto, 'Differences in Trip Chaining by Men and Women', Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, ii. 49-56.
67. See Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier(New York, 1991). Garreau's controversial and highly discussed book is basically a commentary on recent trends in American urban growth. These have witnessed the convergence of business, shopping and entertainment in locations close to major highways that were until recently residential suburbs or semi-rural communities. For Garreau's brief five-part identification of 'edge cities', see pp. 6-7.
68. Heather MacDonald and Alan Peters, 'Distance and Labor Force Participation: Implications for Urban and Rural Women', ch. 4, Women's Travel Issues, p. 57
69. comments on the notable spatial reorganization of work since 1970, as does Marion B. Fox, 'Working Women and Travel: The Access of Women to Work and Community Facilities', American Planning Association Journal 1983), 136-170.
70. Sandra Rosenbloom, 'Trends in Women's Travel Patterns', ch. 2, Women's Travel Issues, pp. 20-1, draws on census data of the late 1980s to show that almost 40 per cent of female workers did not have a daytime job in which at least one-half of the hours fell between 8.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. Some 23 per cent of all full-time working mothers and almost 60 per cent of those working part-time did not work most of their hours during the classic nine-to-five day. There is a noticeable paucity of transit available for flexible commuting to work within the suburbs or within edge cities.
71. Gloria J. Jeff and Regina McElroy, 'Women's Travel: Consequences and Opportunities', ch. 5, Women's Travel Issues, p. 85
72. Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo, 'Journey to Work: A Comparison of Characteristics of Single and Married Parents', Specialized Transportation Planning and Practice, iii (1989), 219-45
73. McGurkin and Murakami, 'Examining Trip-Chaining Behaviour', 79-85. Rosenbloom, 'Understanding Women and Men's Travel Patterns', pp. 6-7.
74. Though household and family support activities have been an important determinant of women's travel behaviour and have been documented in a variety of reports, less attention has been paid to differing practices of females within a dual headed family and a single-headed family. Annual divorce rates (per thousand of population) are available at Table 83, Section 2 Statistical Abstract of the United States(2004), p. 4, pdf version, http://www.census.gov/prod/2004/pubs/03statb/ vitalstat.pdf. This says nothing about the rates for remarriage, which are significant or about co-habitation.
75. USDOT, FWHA, 'Purposes of Vehicle Trips and Travel', 1977 NPTS, Report No.3 (Washington, DC, 1980), http://www.fhwa.gov/ohim/1977d.pdf
76. USDOT, FWHA, 'Personal Travel in the United States, 1983-84', vol. i, pt. III, 1983 (Washington DC, 1986), http://www.fhwa/gov/ohim/1983/ vol1pt3.pdf
77. NPTS, USDOT, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 1995 American Travel Survey(1997), http://www.bts.gov/publications/ 1995_american.travel_survey/
78. 'America on the Go' Findings from NPTS 2001 (2003), http://www.bts.gov/ publications/america_on_the_go/us_holiday_travel. Cohen, A Consumer's Republic, pp. 292-331, examines the shift from mass market to niche market in post-war America.
79. Don Pickell and Paul Schmirek, 'Trends in Personal Motor Vehicle Ownership and Use'. Evidence from the NPTS, 1995, NPTS Symposium 1997 (Washington, DC, 1999), p. 103, reports that in 1977 15.3 per cent of American households did not own a car, whereas in 1995 this percentage had fallen to 8.1 per cent.
80. See also Elaine Murikami and Jennifer Young, 'Daily Travel by Person with Low Incomes', p. 80,
81. and Daphne Spain, 'Societal Trends: The Aging Baby Boom and Women's Independence', pp. 17-63
82. also in NPTS Symposium 1997. This symposium is also available electronically at http://nhts.ornl.gov/publications.shtml. United States and Batelle Memorial Institute, Travel Patterns of People of Color prepared for FHWA) (Columbus, OH, 2000)
83. Sandra Rosenbloom, 'Travel by Women', ch. 2, pp. 39-47, 51, 'Travel by the Elderly', ch. 3, both in 1990 NPTS Demographic Special Reports Washington DC, 1995), http://nhts.ornl.gov/1990/doc/demographic.pdf
84. Charles Lave and Richard Crepeau, 'Travel by Households without Vehicles', 1990 NPTS, Travel Mode Special Reports(Washington DC, 1994), ch. 1, http://nhts.ornl.gov//1990/doc/mode.pdf
85. Ibipo Johnston, 'Location, Race and Labor Force Participation: Implications for Women of Color', ch. 18, pp. 229-54
86. and Jon Burkhardt, Arlene M. Berger and Adam T. McGavock, 'The Mobility Consequences of the Reduction or Cessation of Driving by Older Women', Chapter 22, pp. 441-54 both in Women's Travel Issues.
87. Census figures reported here are taken from McGurkin and Srinivasan, Journey-to-Work Trends, 1-1-1-20.
88. The population of the United States increased from 203.2 million to 281.4 million between 1970 and 2000 (McGurkin and Srinivasan, Journey-to-Work Trends, 1-1-1-20). The figures reported differ from those contained in US Census Bureau, Demographic Trends in the 20th Century. Census 2000 Special Reports(Washington, DC, 2002), app. A, table 1
89. 'Immigration to the United States, Fiscal Years, 1820-2000', Table 1, in Fiscal Year 2000 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Servicex(Washington DC, 2002) available at http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/Yrbk001m.shtm. The numbers of illegal or undocumented immigrants, however, is substantial. The Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS) estimated that 7 million unauthorized immigrants resided in the United States as of 2000. Mexico was the largest source of this unauthorized immigration, contributing some 58 per cent as of 1990 and 69 per cent as of 2000. http://dhs.gov/library/assets/statistics/publications/Ill_Report_1211.pdf
90. See also Mary M. Kent and Mark Mather, 'What Drives U.S. Population Growth?', Population Bulletin, lvii (2002), 24
91. Alan E. Pisarski, Commuting in America III: The Third National Report on Commuting Patterns and Trends(Washington, DC, 2006), pp. 20-2, 70-2.