Women Can't Drive: Why Such A Stereotype?

A woman is capable of doing everything just as any man can, and sometimes even better than them, like managing both the family and the professional job simultaneously. But one might have heard a lot of times that 'women can't drive' or that 'they are bad at driving' as compared to men, but can one ever wonder what is the basis of this belief? Is there a scientific fact that claims that women can't drive? Or is it just another stereotype made by the patriarchal society to make women feel inferior?

Women have always had to fight for every right they have today which includes the right to drive, sounds unusual right? But it's fact, that until June 2018, women were prohibited from driving in Saudi Arabia. The country’s government believed in some patriarchal rules which dictated that women were not supposed to travel without any male guardian, in most cases who would be able to drive for them. Apart from this being rule in a country, it's a stereotype that a lot of people believe in, that women shouldn't travel alone, or that men can always drive for them. Due to this, from the early times, it used to be the man in the family who would drive, and fewer opportunities were given to women resulting in less participation of them in the act of driving.

Women Can't Drive Is A Myth

Apart from this, women also got fewer opportunities to drive as their participation in jobs were less as compared to men who would be required to drive to work, women, on the other hand, stayed at home to take care of their family as per the gender roles assigned to them by the patriarchy. But now as the times are changing and the participation of women in the workforce is increasing rapidly, and thus the number of females behind the wheel is increasing as well. But what remains constant to date is the baseless belief that women can't drive. Even though many studies have suggested that women are safer at driving as men are more involved in life-threatening accidents compared to women.

According to reports, in the United Kingdom in 2017, men were responsible for 72% of all the penalties related to traffic offences even though the number of male and female driver were almost the same. As per the same study, men were responsible for 84% of all drunk driving offences and 78% of all speeding offences. All these study results are enough for us to get the idea of how safe drivers women are in comparison to men but yet women are considered to be the bad drivers. Yet memes and jokes are made about how bad women are behind the wheel which furthermore promotes the wrong idea that all women are prone to motor accidents or mishaps.

Due to all these stereotypes, women feel less confident while driving as compared to men because even though they might be good at driving, people still stare at them, as if they are not supposed to drive at all. All these stereotypes are somehow affecting women and their self-esteem and therefore there is a profound need to banish all these wrong beliefs and stereotypes. By randomly joking or commenting on women's driving skills somehow people have generalised this wrong belief so much that it has become a permanent idea in the mindset of people. Everyone needs to understand that this belief is groundless, no study scientific study has ever proven this, and it shouldn't be normalised at all. We need to understand that how good someone is at driving never depends on their gender.

Opinions expressed are author's own.

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