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

by Virginia Scharff

Overview

The twentieth-century rise of the automobile collided head on with Victorian prescriptions for the proper role and place of women in society. Gender conventions cast women as too weak, dependent, and flighty to manage the fiery motored beast. Overcoming that stereotype was as difficult for women as gaining access to the vote, the professions, and education, yet their personal feats of driving in both war and peace demolished the gender barriers against their taking the road. After women proved once and for all that they could drive under the worst conditions in World War I, they adapted the automobile to their domestic roles in urban society during the 1920s. Written with flair and verve, this volume displays Scharff's erudition in social, cultural, gender, and technological history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826313959
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	07/01/1992
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	231
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Virginia Scharff is professor of history at the University of New Mexico.

Editorial Reviews

"Ms. Scharff is to be congratulated for her spellbinding contribution to the evolving literature of automotive anthropology."

If I had my way, Id make Scharffs book compulsory reading for every Detroit executive.

Ms. Scharff is to be congratulated for her spellbinding contribution to the evolving literature of automotive anthropology.

"If I had my way, I'd make Scharff's book compulsory reading for every Detroit executive."

From the Publisher

Scharff's entertaining and erudite look at the "gendering of automobility" was originally published in 1991 by the Free Press. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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