A fascinating history of how the automotive industry and consumers battled to define what women wanted in a car.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication Date: January 14, 2025
Formats: paperback – ebook – audiobook
ISBN: 9781421450568
Since the commercial introduction of the automobile, US automakers have always sought women as customers and advertised accordingly. How, then, did car culture become so masculine? In Pink Cars and Pocketbooks, Jessica Brockmole shares the untold history of women’s relationship with automobiles: a journey marked by struggle, empowerment, and the relentless pursuit of independence.
This groundbreaking work explores the evolution of women’s automotive participation and the cultural shifts that have redefined their roles as drivers, mechanics, and consumers. Brockmole traces the rise of gendered marketing of automobiles over the course of the twentieth century. Auto companies created ads that conformed to commonly held ideas about women’s relationships with automobiles. As the century progressed, marketing to women became less informative and even more gendered: the automotive industry portrayed women as passengers, props, or reluctant drivers, interested primarily in aesthetics. And yet, by the 1970s, female drivers were communicating directly with each other, forming clubs, and teaching each other through women-focused repair manuals.
By examining market research studies, advertising archives, trade journals, women’s magazines, newspapers, driving handbooks, and repair manuals, this book shows how women bought their way into the automobile and masculine car culture. Brockmole uncovers the stories of pioneering women who defied conventions, such as trailblazer Alice Ramsey, the first woman to drive across the United States in 1909, and Barb Wyatt, whose contributions to automotive manuals broke new ground. Women have always been users of technology, and this book illustrates how the auto industry evolved—as well as how it chose not to evolve—in response.
Praise for Pink Cars and Pocketbooks
“A fascinating study of the relationship between women, cars, and American capitalism. From marketing campaigns and showroom design to car maintenance handbooks, Jessica Brockmole shows how women embraced the combustion engine despite numerous marketing schemes that underestimated their abilities to handle and repair vehicles. The overlapping analysis of the auto industry, consumer culture, and American women offers a valuable new contribution to our understanding of twentieth-century America.”—Michelle M. Nickerson, author of Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial
“Written with the panache of a seasoned author, Pink Cars and Pocketbooks is a meticulously researched and persuasively argued contribution to the histories of women, gender, and consumer culture. Brockmole sheds new light on how American women influenced the highly masculine auto industry and, ultimately, claimed their place in the driver’s seat.”—Emily Remus, author of A Shoppers’ Paradise: How the Ladies of Chicago Claimed Power and Pleasure in the New Downtown
“If you’ve ever wondered how automakers so utterly misread women with the introduction of the Dodge La Femme, read this book! In this engaging work of historical scholarship, Jessica Brockmole uncovers how savvy female consumers, through the sharing of automotive knowledge, challenged gender presumptions and took control of their own automotive futures.”—Chris Lezotte, author of Power Under Her Foot: Women Enthusiasts of American Muscle Cars
“Women’s love of cars and driving shines through in this colorful consumer history. From Alice Ramsey, who starred in a marketing campaign for Maxwell Motor driving coast to coast, to Charlotte Montgomery, who sold the industry on women’s buying power, Brockmole offers a thoughtful history of gender and consumerism.”—Katherine J. Parkin, author of Women at the Wheel: A Century of Buying, Driving, and Fixing Cars
“Pink Cars and Pocketbooks details a compelling history of how biased marketing assumptions led automakers to promote appearance-driven gimmicks for female consumers. Women responded by creating communities to share automotive knowledge. Brockmole explores timely issues of how technologies have been gendered and who has the power to assert technical expertise.”—Amy Bix, author of Girls Coming to Tech! A History of American Engineering Education for Women
