Women in automotive history

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Julius LeBlanc Stewart: Les Dames Goldsmith au bois de Boulogne en 1897 sur une voiturette
Alice Ramsey with Margate Atwood, Nettie Powell and Hermine Jahns before their historic tour of the USA in 1909

Women in Automobile History looks at the influence of women in the history of the automobile. Even if Bertha Benz took the first overland trip in history in her husband Carl Benz's Benz Patent Motor Car Number 3 in 1888 , at the beginning of the automotive age there were initially only a few women who drove cars. As the proportion of women driving a car is steadily increasing, manufacturers are adjusting to the fact that women prefer different cars than men and have different demands on design .

history

The early drivers

Bertha Benz (around 1871)
Anne d'Uzès (around 1896)

In 1888 Bertha Benz took the first overland trip in history in her husband Carl Benz's Benz Patent Motor Car number 3. She drove 106 kilometers from Mannheim to Pforzheim and three days later on another route back. Not only was it a woman's first car trip, but the first ever overland trip in a car. This attracted a lot of attention and contributed significantly to the breakthrough of the invention. The Bertha Benz Memorial Route is named after Bertha Benz .

The French Duchess Anne d'Uzès, who took a driving test in April 1898, was the first to be penalized for driving too fast. Instead of the permitted 12 km / h, she drove 15 km / h in the Bois de Boulogne near Paris.

In the pioneering days of the automobile, it was mostly reserved for men to drive a car. The “ gentlemen drivers ” shaped the public discourse about the implementation of automobility.

“Whoever wanted to buy a car had to be able to freely dispose of a large fortune - and very few women could do that; the technical knowledge required to use a car made access even more difficult for women. "

- Christoph Maria Merki.

The Austrian Automobile Club , founded in 1898, only accepted women as “extraordinary members”, but in 1909 59 of the 1145 members were women. In 1907 the Vienna Police Directorate listed 16 women who had registered their own car, in 1912 there were 25 officially certified women drivers compared to 7,275 men tested.

There was no legal prohibition for women to obtain a driver's license . The Austrian Constitutional Court ruled in 1926 that women were entitled to drive taxis, since “a reason for not admitting persons of female sex to the parking truck service ... cannot be derived from the nature of the female sex”.

The acceptance of female automobility did not gain acceptance until the 1920s. The increasing number of "self-driving women" who drove an automobile was favored by improved control options for the car and the expansion of roads, but also by the questioning of traditional images of femininity. In the Weimar Republic , the car driver was the focus of the media as a symbol of the New Woman .

A famous car driver was the dancer Lena Amsel , who had a fatal accident in 1929 in her Bugatti , which had a drawn bird, her trademark, on the door. The life and death of Lena Amsel served Ruth Landshoff as a model for her novel about a dancer . “Lena Amsel's poor driving skills were legendary, she disregarded traffic rules and chauffeured so brutally that her car was mostly broken. On November 1, 1929, the painter André Derain invited Lena and her friend Florence Piton to his studio near Barbizon, where he wanted to portray them. On the way back she forgot to stabilize the very light car with a stone in the trunk, as would have been the custom back then. Derain drove ahead, Lena wanted to catch up with him and slipped on the damp autumn leaves. The car crashed against an embankment, overturned and immediately caught fire. "()

Also in 1929 Tamara de Lempicka painted a self-portrait titled Tamara in the green Bugatti . It was commissioned for the cover of the Berliner Illustrierte Die Dame .

In 1929 the proportion of women (in Berlin) in issued driving licenses was 4.2 percent. Until 1958, the consent of the husband or father was required in Germany in order to obtain a driving license; In 1966 the proportion of women was already 20.9 percent.

Alice Ramsey with her car

Records

In 1909 Alice Ramsey crossed the United States in an automobile. In 1926 Eliška Junková broke the records when she became the first professional female Grand Prix driver. One of her greatest successes was the German Grand Prix, where she set a new course record.

Clärenore Stinnes was the first person to drive a car around the world. On May 25, 1927, she started the expedition in an Adler Standard 6 in Frankfurt am Main , which led her through 23 countries and which ended on June 24, 1929 after 47,000 kilometers with the arrival in Berlin . The writer Erika Mann and her co-driver Ricki Hallgarten won a car rally over 10,000 kilometers across Europe in June 1931.

In 1934, four Aero 20s drove with three women's teams (Vera Vlčková and Eva Elstnerová, Ela Slavíková and Helga Martenová as well as Zdeňka Veselá and Ezka Kavalierova) and a service vehicle with František Alexander Elstner and a mechanic via Marseille and Algiers to Morocco. Via Spain, France and Germany, the vehicles reached Prague again after 48 days and around 14,000 km in April 1934. The motto of the expedition, which was accompanied by newspaper and weekly news reports, was "6 women cross 6 countries in 6 weeks and complete more than 14,000 km - safely and without errors". On June 6, 1939, the writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach , a friend of Erika and Klaus Mann , set out with Ella Maillart in a Ford Cabriolet on a three-month trip from Geneva to Kabul .

Daimler-Benz and the women

Mercédès Jellinek (around 1902)
Advertisement for motor oil (1901) by Jules Chéret

Louise Sarazin took over the licensing business of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft in France in 1888 after her husband had died. The Daimler company received 12 percent of the purchase price of every engine that Louise Sarazin produced as the concession holder. When she married Émile Levassor , her Daimler patents went to Panhard & Levassor , which was the first to manufacture automobiles in France.

Mercédès Jellinek is the namesake of the Mercedes-Benz automobile brand . The Austrian businessman Emil Jellinek ordered touring cars from Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft , and later a racing car according to his specifications. Jellinek named it after the first name of his ten-year-old daughter Mercédès . The Mercedes 35 HP from 1900 and the Mercedes Simplex from 1902, designed by Wilhelm Maybach , were technically ahead of their time. In 1902 the name "Mercedes" was protected by law, and the Mercedes star has been used as a radiator symbol since 1910 .

After Bertha Benz's first drive, it was 125 years before the former Federal Constitutional Judge Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt became the first woman to be appointed to the Board of Management of Daimler's Supervisory Board in 2011 .

Opel

Since the death of the company's founder Adam Opel in 1895, the Opel works have been run by his widow Sophie . She was also responsible for taking over the Anhaltische Motorwagenfabrik , with which Opel began producing automobiles in 1899 - previously only sewing machines and bicycles had been made. Sophie Opel ran the company until her death in 1913.

Fashion and model

The first women motorists appeared quite martial in leather clothing, dust coats and pilots' hoods. In the period of inflation, beautiful women with beautiful cars became status symbols for a narrow layer of the nouveau riche, the lady in the passenger seat became a symbol of automotive culture, and the aim was for the highest levels of elegance and exquisite luxury. At the Concours d'Elegance of the Austrian Automobile Club in the park of Belvedere Palace in June 1922, a jury assessed the overall impression of the vehicle, equipment and toilets. Open and closed vehicles were allowed, with at least one lady in a sports suit or summer toilet sitting next to each handlebar.

Eleanor Thornton was the model for the mascot Spirit of Ecstasy the Rolls-Royce -Cars.

advertising

The history of automobile advertising also reflects the social status of women. Women appeared on advertising posters as early as 1901; Benz first advertised automobiles with feminine charms in 1912 . In the 1920s, automobile advertising was aimed at the “lady” target group who became socially acceptable at the wheel. Later images of a young woman in a trouser suit - especially the advertisement for Mercedes-Benz - were supposed to advertise the “lady's car”, which was by no means difficult to drive, through the thirst for adventure. In the 1930s, advertising for the motorization of broad social classes was created. In the 1950s and 1960s, the role of women in advertising was re-applied to the classic distribution of roles, with the Dodge La Femme specifically targeting women in the United States . It was not until the 1980s that the topic of equality was included in car advertising and, in the 1990s, women were recognized as a separate target group by the automotive industry. The concept car Volvo YCC from 2004 was developed exclusively by women and was specially designed for the needs of female drivers. Today, automobile manufacturers turn to women with unusual materials, chic paintwork, colorful covers and many extras.

Motorsport

Dorothy Levitt (around 1908)

Madame Laumaillé, who took part in the Paris-Nice race in 1898, is named as the first female motor sportsman. Anna Marie Lutzmann, the second wife of the director Friedrich Lutzmann , was the first female factory racing driver for Opel in July 1900 . The most famous motor sportsperson in England in the early 1900s was Dorothy Levitt . In 1906 she published the first book written by a woman on the subject of cars, entitled "The Woman and the Car," and she invented the rearview mirror .

After the First World War, women's races received a lot of attention. In June 1923, Olga Frühwald covered the 1,300-meter racetrack in Vienna's Praterallee in 54 seconds. Eliška Slavíková was class winner in the 1000 miles of Czechoslovakia in 1934 up to 1500 cc on an Aero 1500 .

In the 1960s, Pat Moss was successful in rallying . Michèle Mouton won several world rally championship races and was runner-up in 1982 . In Formula 1 , Lella Lombardi was the only woman in a Formula 1 Grand Prix in the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix to achieve points. In the German Touring Car Championship in 1992 , Ellen Lohr won a race at the Hockenheimring . 2001 won Jutta Kleinschmidt at the Dakar Rally . Danica Patrick won an IndyCar Series run in Motegi in 2008 and finished third in the Indianapolis 500 in 2009 .

Studies and Statistics

Relationship to the car

Women value practical and rational reasons of a car. Operating costs , additional loading options and the size of the car (small car preferred) determine the choice of vehicle. Women predominantly take over driving the children to school, to sports or to shopping; The relationship to the car is also determined by role behavior in terms of gender - the woman's car is then very often the family's second car. The stereotypical "woman's car" does not exist, but there are things like "low sill, the substances of low fuel consumption," the more women than men appeal.

The "Woman and Car Competence Center" has existed at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences since 2003 . Six professors and a practice partner examine the needs, wishes and requirements of female drivers.

Risk and involvement in traffic

According to the Federal Statistical Office from 2010, the risk of women having an accident in traffic is significantly lower than that of men.

"Car drivers [were] less likely to be primarily responsible for accidents in which they were involved than car drivers."

- Federal Statistical Office

The introduction of unisex tariffs in motor vehicle liability insurance from December 21, 2012 resulted in premium increases for women of eleven percent. Until then, female drivers were insured more cheaply than male drivers. The General Association of the German Insurance Industry confirms "significant differences in performance between men and women", which would lead to systematic discrimination of one gender through the unisex tariff.

The proportion of women in the KBA's license portfolio on January 1, 2013 was 41 percent. When the B driving license was issued, the proportion of women when it was first issued in 2012 was 53 percent. Around nine million drivers were registered in the KBA's central traffic register (VZR) on January 1, 2012 , including around two million women.

According to the DVR , 52 percent of the 18 to 24-year-old car occupants who had an accident in 2005 were male and 48 percent female. The severity of accidents was significantly greater for young men than for young women: 74 percent of the 18 to 24-year-old car occupants who died in a car were men, 26 percent were women.

The recidivism rate was lower among women among drivers who had experienced traffic problems and completed psychological rehabilitation and therapy measures.

Traffic behavior

Long-term studies by TÜV Süd and the Institute for Applied Psychology in Zurich in the period from 1972 to 1992 and 1998 of over 10,500 drivers with regard to the frequency of six driving style types revealed clear differences in the driving style of women and men. Accordingly, women are more often assigned to the "calm, balanced driving style" than men (44 versus 28 percent). A minority of women tends to have a “sporty, ambitious driving style” (9, 14 percent) and the “aggressive, reckless driving style” (3, 9 percent) is much less represented among women. There were smaller differences in terms of distribution in the driving styles “active-dynamic” (28 versus 31 percent), “affective-unbalanced” (9 versus 12 percent) and “unsure-awkward” (7 versus 6 percent).

In a 2010 study by the Ruhr University Bochum , the parking of men and women was compared. The result was that overall, women park less precisely and more slowly than men. The observations of a parking lot operator from England showed that men "usually roared too quickly across the parking lot and overlooked some gaps". Before parking, men would “not position the car properly” and “accordingly come to a sloppy stop”.

literature

  • Deborah Clarke: Driving Women. Fiction and Automobile Culture in Twentieth-Century America. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 2007, ISBN 978-1-4356-9222-0 .
  • Georgine Clarsen: Eat My Dust. Early Women Motorists (= Johns Hopkins University Studies in historical and political Science. Series 126, Vol. 1). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 2008, ISBN 978-0-8018-8465-8 .
  • Angela Dinghaus, Sabine Guckel-Seitz: The lady at the wheel . In: Christiane Schröder, Monika Sonneck (Ed.): Out of the house. Women's history in Hanover . Reichold, Hannover 1994, ISBN 978-3-930459-04-9 , pp. 117-124.
  • Antje Flade, Maria Limbourg (ed.): Women and men in the mobile society. Leske + Budrich, Opladen, 1999, ISBN 3-8100-2494-5 .
  • Anke Hertling: Conquering the male domain of the automobile. Self-propelled Ruth Landshoff-Yorck, Erika Mann and Annemarie Schwarzenbach. Aisthesis-Verlag, Bielefeld 2013, ISBN 978-3-89528-941-5 (Also: Kassel, University, dissertation, 2011).
  • Claudia Quaiser-Pohl, Kirsten Jordan: Why women believe they cannot park - and why men agree with them. About weaknesses that aren't at all. One response to A. & B. Pease . 3rd edition, Beck, 2004, ISBN 978-3-406-51717-4 (described in: Why men don't listen and women don't park well )
  • Virginia Scharff: Taking the Wheel. Women and the Coming of the Motor Age. Free Press et al., New York NY 1991, ISBN 0-02-928135-0 .
  • Clärenore Stinnes : Through two worlds in a car. A woman's first car ride around the world 1927 to 1929. Promedia, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-85371-105-7 .
  • Susanne Vieser, Beate Gabelt: Women on the move . Engineers, designers and racing drivers make car history. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-8218-1400-4 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ bertha-benz.de The first long-distance journey with an automobile in the history of mankind. (accessed on November 11, 2013)
  2. ↑ daimler.com ( Memento from November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Frau und Auto. Institutionalization (accessed November 11, 2013)
  3. ↑ Christoph Maria Merki: The bumpy triumph of the automobile 1895–1930. To motorize road traffic in France, Germany and Switzerland. Böhlau, Wien et al. 2002, ISBN 3-205-99479-5 , p. 286.
  4. ^ A b c d e Roman Sandgruber : "Women in Motion". Transport and women's emancipation. In: Emil Brix , Lisa Fischer (ed.): The women of Viennese modernism. Oldenbourg et al., Munich et al. 1997, ISBN 3-486-56290-8 , pp. 53-63.
  5. ↑ Saudi Arabia - as the only country in the world - has banned women from driving a car since 1990 → [1] . As a protest against the driving ban, several Saudi women drove a car. [2]
  6. ↑ Repeal of a provision of the Vienna Ordinance regarding the use of parking spaces by female drivers due to the lack of a legal basis. Violation of the principle of equality. Unjustified different treatment of the sexes. Erk. v. March 20, 1956, V 26/55. In: Collection of the findings and most important decisions of the Constitutional Court. NF booklet 21: Year 1956. Printed and published by the Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1957, ZDB -ID 203210-7 , No. 2979, pp. 117–119, here p. 118.
  7. ↑ Anke Hertling: Representing gender. Automobility in discourse of femininity in the Weimar Republic , University of Kassel, IAG Kulturforschung, 2004 (PDF)
  8. ↑ Ruth Landshoff-Yorck: novel of a dancer . First edition from the estate, Aviva Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-932338-15-1
  9. ↑ Gerald Piffl: A Genius of Life , THE STANDARD / print edition, October 31/1. November 2009
  10. ↑ Christoph Maria Merki: The bumpy triumph of the automobile 1895–1930. To motorize road traffic in France, Germany and Switzerland. Böhlau, Wien et al. 2002, ISBN 3-205-99479-5 , p. 289.
  11. ↑ focus.de The first woman with a driver's license (accessed on November 11, 2013)
  12. ↑ zeit.de driver's license in a Sunday suit (accessed on November 13, 2013)
  13. ↑ zeit.de The great ladies of car history. (accessed on November 11, 2013)
  14. ^ Women and Cars: Clärenore Stinnes . In: The time . ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed on March 17, 2016]).
  15. ↑ On the 100th birthday of Erika Mann , deutschlandfunk.de, accessed on November 28, 2013
  16. ↑ Reinhard Bauer: Aero: Automobil-Marketing durch Motorsport (PDF), version from February 16, 2014.
  17. ^ When one goes on a journey , faz.net, accessed November 28, 1938
  18. ↑ daimler.com ( Memento from December 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Louise and Edouard Sarazin (accessed December 13, 2013)
  19. ↑ Martina Schmidt-Tanger : Professional Women - Women in Business: You can't flourish in the shade , Junfermann Verlag, Paderborn 2011, p. 198
  20. ^ Gerta Walsh: Sophie Opel - Entrepreneur in the 19th Century. In: Hessian homeland. Issue 2/1992, pp. 68-70.
  21. ↑ einestages.spiegel.de Historical car advertising (accessed on December 1, 2013)
  22. ↑ Antje Flade, Maria Limbourg (ed.): Women and men in the mobile society. Pp. 49-51
  23. ↑ Antje Flade, Maria Limbourg (ed.): Women and men in the mobile society. Pp. 53-57
  24. ↑ Jürgen Pander: Volvo YCC: The Small Difference Volvo knows what women want , Manager Magazin , March 8, 2004
  25. ↑ Michael Specht: Women as a target group: Lust am Lifestyle , Spiegel Online , October 6, 2014
  26. ^ Leonard JK Setright: The Guinness Book of Motorcycling Facts and Feats. Guinness Superlatives, Enfield 1982, ISBN 0-85112-255-8 , p. 105.
  27. ^ Manfred Riedel: Friedrich Lutzmann - A pioneer of automobile construction. Anhaltische Verlagsgesellschaft, Dessau 1999, ISBN 3-910192-61-0 , p. 125 f.
  28. ^ Leonard JK Setright: The Guinness Book of Car Facts and Feats. Guinness Superlatives, Enfield 1980, ISBN 0-85112-207-8 , p. 35.
  29. ↑ Reinhard Bauer: The "1000 Miles of Czechoslovakia" - only held three times! (PDF), as of 02/2014
  30. ↑ sofi.uni-goettingen.de (PDF; 208 kB) Hartwig Heine, Rüdiger Mautz: The mothers and the car. 1999, p. 44.
  31. ↑ Gender Study: Merely No Women's Car , Der Spiegel , November 18, 2012
  32. ↑ Doris Kortus-Schultes, Waike Moos: Significance in gender-specific differences when buying vehicles. In: Mönchengladbacher writings on economic practice. Vol. 19 = Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, Economics, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics. Annual band. 2005/06, ZDB -ID 2197911-X , pp. 275-298, here p. 18, PDF; 183 kB, accessed on November 29, 2013
  33. ↑ Competence Center Women and Cars Competence Center Women and Cars , accessed on December 5, 2013
  34. ↑ Federal Statistical Office 2010: destatis.de traffic accidents. Accidents involving women and men in road traffic (accessed on November 11, 2013)
  35. ↑ Marcel Sommer: The lady tariff has had its day. In: Zeit.de. November 8, 2012, accessed April 2, 2014 .
  36. ↑ gdv.de ( Memento from December 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) What you should know about the new unisex tariffs , General Association of Insurers, accessed on November 12, 2013
  37. ↑ kba.de ( Memento from March 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Driver's license inventory in the Central Driver's License Register (ZFER) - basic table on January 1, 2013 (accessed on December 1, 2013)
  38. ↑ kba.de ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 2.4 MB) Existing driving licenses in the Central Register of Driving Licenses on January 1, 2013. p. 49 (accessed on December 1, 2013)
  39. ↑ kba.de ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Holdings in the Central Traffic Register (VZR) - Germany and its countries on January 1, 2012 (accessed on December 1, 2013)
  40. ↑ dvr.de ( Memento from April 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) Young drivers and the risk of road traffic. P. 5. (accessed December 1, 2013)
  41. ↑ Psychological rehabilitation and therapy measures for drivers who have had a problem with traffic. (Report on the research project FE 82/213/2001). Part A: Wilfried Follmann, Eva Heinrich, Daniel Corvo, Markus Mühlensiep, Christian Zimmermann: Documentation of measures outside the legally regulated area and optimization approaches (= reports from the Federal Highway Research Institute. Series M: Mensch und Sicherheit. Vol. 196). Wirtschaftsverlag NW Verlag für neue Wissenschaft, Bremerhaven 2008, ISBN 978-3-86509-851-1 , p. 18.
  42. ↑ Fred W Hürlimann, Benedikt von Hebenstreit: Typology and traffic. Traffic safety in practice II. Verlag Heinrich Vogel, Zurich 1996, ISBN 978-3-9520221-7-7 , p. 68 ff
  43. ↑ ruhr-uni-bochum.de Skilfully parked (accessed on November 11, 2013)
  44. ↑ zeit.de Right? Can women park worse than men? (accessed on November 14, 2013)