2024/11/24 by Josef Taalbi · 1 voice · 3 citations
Engineering · Environmental Science · #American Environmental and Regional History #Automotive engineering #Electric cars #Engineering #Gender studies #Political science #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1016/j.eist.2024.100934
published in Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 54, 100934 (Elsevier BV)
openalex publication_date 2024/11/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
The role of gender relations in shaping technological transitions is widely acknowledged but remains understudied. This study uses historical data to analyze the gendering of early 20th century American cars and its consequences. Previous research has argued that early electric vehicles were construed as a women’s car, contributing to its demise. Other work has questioned to what extent automotive preferences were gendered. The results of this study suggest a partially new interpretation. Early advertisements for electrics targeted business and family men, challenging the view of cars as “adventure machines”. However, as electrics declined, producers turned to feminization to survive competition from gasoline cars, a response to declining market shares, rather than the opposite. This made electric cars part of a conservative separate spheres gender ideology. The results stress the co-construction of gender and technology and how gendering processes can create powerful lock-in effects and barriers to (sustainability) transitions.