The history of the automobile would be incomplete without considering the influence of the car on the lives and careers of women in the earliest decades of the twentieth century. Illuminating the relationship between women and cars with case studies from across the globe, Eat My Dust challenges the received wisdom that men embraced automobile technology more naturally than did women.
Georgine Clarsen highlights the personal stories of women from the United States, Britain, Australia, and colonial Africa from the early days of motoring until 1930. She notes the different ways in which these women embraced automobile technology in their national and cultural context. As mechanics and taxi drivers—like Australian Alice Anderson and Brit Sheila ONeil—and long-distance adventurers and political activists—like South Africans Margaret Belcher and Ellen Budgell and American suffragist Sara Bard Field—women sought to define the technology in their own terms and according to their own needs. They challenged traditional notions of femininity through their love of cars and proved they were articulate, confident, and mechanically savvy motorists in their own right.
More than new chapters in automobile history, these stories locate women motorists within twentieth-century debates about class, gender, sexuality, race, and nation.
Georgine Clarsen is a senior lecturer in the School of History and Politics at the University of Wollongong.
PrefaceIntroduction1. Movement in a Minor Key: Dilemmas of the Woman Motorist2. A War Product: The British Motoring Girl and Her Garage3. A Car Made by English Ladies for Others of Their Sex: The Feminist Factory and the Ladys Car4. Transcontinental Travel: The Politics of Automobile Consumption in the United States5. Campaigns on Wheels: American Automobiles and a Suffrage of Consumption6. ""The Woman Who Does"": A Melbourne Womens Motor Garage7. Driving Australian Modernity: Conquering Australia by Car8. Machines as the Measure of Women: Cape-to-Cairo by AutomobileConclusionsNotesEssay on SourcesIndex
This is an extremely interesting book in that it provides the reader with a different perspective on the automobile age and what it meant to women as well as society as a whole... A must-have book for anyone interested in womens history. The photographs of various women traveling or involved in mechanical work are a great addition as well. It is a fascinating look at the way that cars freed many women and started us on the path to greater mechanical equality with men.
— Marcia A. Lusted— Academia
Georgine Clarsen has produced a fascinating account of women motorists in the first three decades of the automobile age. Her crisp and elegant prose takes the reader on a speedy trip over a wide range of terrain, indicating the importance of the car in the cultural politics of the early 20th century.
— Sean OConnell— Reviews in History
Presents an excellent case study of the ways in which new technologies take on gendered meanings in the process of their social integration... Highly readable book.
— Anne Clendinning— American Historical Review
For anyone wanting to fully understand early automotive history, this book is a necessary read.
— Dennis E. Horvath— Cruise-in.com
This study holds great value, helping readers to appreciate the rich history of womens involvement in things mechanical.
