Gender and Automobility: Selling Cars to American Women after the Second World War

Abstract

This essay examines the marketing of automobiles to women in the United States after World War II when mass consumption was established. Remarkably, little attention has been paid to the segmentation of the American car market by gender. Drawing on textual and pictorial archival sources from the National Automotive History Collection, the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson and the Benson Ford Research Center, as well as on statistical materials and reports generated by the federal government, it discusses how and when American women were recognized as significant, if not equal consumers of automobiles. Emphasis is given to the years 1945—1980. Two socioeconomic developments were significant in altering the status of female car consumers. In the boom years between 1945 and the early 1960s, the new suburban lifestyle required most women to drive as modern housewives. Then, they wanted greater say in the purchase of the family car or even their own car. Subsequently, in the late 1960s and 1970s, civil rights legislation and the surge in women’s labor force participation allowed more women to buy their own vehicles as well as to drive more often. There was a cultural lag before auto manufacturers in the 1980s acknowledged women’s importance in the car market. Women still, however, faced difficulties negotiating with auto dealers.