How Gender Stereotypes Slowed Down Society’s Progress (and Still Do)

We tend to think of those fume-producing, four-wheeled machines known today as cars as extensions of men. It’s a little-known fact, though, that <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/bertha-benz-woman-wheel-first-ever-road-trip/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the very first long-distance car ride in August 1888 was undertaken by a woman</a>: Bertha Benz, wife of German engineer Karl Benz who’s considered the ‘father of the automobile.’ It’s also Bertha who made his automobile business venture possible in the first place by investing her dowry — which she did before they married, knowing she would lose all her legal power to act as an investor once they did — and who fixed several mechanical issues with the first car model. Another little-known fact is that the first electric vehicle was developed primarily with women in mind. Despite Bertha demonstrating that the ‘weaker sex’ is clearly physically and intellectually capable of driving, the prevailing belief at the time was the opposite. But an electric car? That’s ‘feminine’ enough. As one American commentator <a href="http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Gender/Scharff/G_casestudy2.htm" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">wrote in an article on reckless drivers</a>: ‘No license should be granted to anyone under eighteen and never to a woman, unless, possibly, for a car driven by electric power.’ <a href="https://medium.com/the-no%C3%B6sphere/how-upholding-masculinity-slowed-down-our-progress-and-still-does-dada1278a51c">Visit Now</a>