Prior to World War 1 (WWI), the racing circuit included female drivers, and they were winning—right up until the time they were barred for being female.

Before the war, women were also doing a lot more than just driving. They were also involved in automobile design and production. Women invented windshield wipers and signal lights, and a female doctor from California came up with the yellow line down the middle of our roads. So, how did technology, like the automobile, become gendered after WWI?

Why things changed
Cultural Studies Ph.D. candidate and Symons Seminar Series chair, Tanya Bailey, is investigating this intersection of gender, technology and war. A longstanding interest in automobile history, and living in Savannah Georgia, home to one of America’s first grand prix races, led Ms. Bailey to her research project and focus. Specifically, she is seeking the answer to why the automobile was not gendered technology prior to WW1, but became significantly male gendered in the post-war years.

“I hope to discover why war changed ideas about women and technology so drastically, in the hopes that it will help us today to understand why this happens in places like Silicon Valley with current technology,” says Ms. Bailey.

Onset of a new identity
Taking a cross-disciplinary historical and cultural approach, Ms. Bailey uses early films such as An Auto Heroine (1908) and Mabel at the Wheel (1914) to explore the representation of women as drivers prior to the war, documentary films of women driving ambulances during the war, and post-war films such as Female (1933) to see how ideologies changed after the war.

Last October, as part of her graduate studies, Ms. Bailey travelled to Scotland to examine archival materials about an almost all-female automobile factory. At this factory, between 1918 and 1920, female engineers, machinists and workers built cars specifically designed for women—the Galloway.

Lasting Implications
While more women drive today, barriers for women in technology still exist. Ms. Bailey has witnessed the experience of a young woman with a mechanical engineering bachelor’s degree, a Master of Science in Space Engineering, and excellent work experience who was courted by potential employers after graduation, and unexpectedly experienced gender bias during her interviews.

This young woman is Ms. Bailey’s own daughter. It had never occurred to her that her research on the gendering of technology might one day help her own child.

Ms. Bailey strives to understand why gendering occurs so it can be taken out of the equation.

“There are signs of changes occurring in how we think about women and technology,” says Ms. Bailey. “I hope this continues until when we think about tech, gender is out of the way— whether it is to drive or build.”

Find out more about Trent University’s Cultural Studies Ph.D.