The deeply sexist ‘secret’ hidden in most cars – And thankfully it’s changing – 2024-04-19 14:07:59

Can sexism exist in things we have never thought about or noticed? And yet it can. Mostly in small-small things that are completely normalized in the mind. This is even demonstrated by the New York Times article, which claims that the “sun visor”, the protection from the sun on the front seats of a car, has a deep sexist “secret” of years.

As a rule of thumb, as the New York Times explains, until a few years ago, 81% of commercial vehicles had a mirror only on the right side of the vehicle, on the sun visor that was in the passenger seat. The reason; Because the stereotype, which fortunately has changed in recent years, predicted that a woman would sit in the passenger seat. Something that changed from the 10s onwards.

In particular, the reason most cars have a mirror in the passenger seat is because initially car manufacturers only placed interior mirrors on the passenger side on the grounds that female passengers were generally female and needed them for cosmetic purposes.

Gradually, however, this trend changed and now the interior mirrors are either located on the side of the driver’s sun protection or only on this side, or they are not present at all.

According to a study published last year by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute and cited in the New York Times article for the first time, more women than men are in the driver’s seat. In 2010, the report found, 105.7 million women were licensed to drive in the country, compared to 104.3 million men, reversing a long-standing gender gap. However, some car manufacturers do not cover these cases of women at the wheel.

“This is a stupid tradition. That’s always where the passenger side mirror was, on the right, because when couples were in the car together, it was customary for the man to drive,” says University of South Alabama sociology professor David Gartman and author of “Auto Opium: A Social History of American Automobile Design’ (1994). “Car manufacturers assumed that since women are governed by grooming trends, the grooming mirror should be on their side,” he added.

However, he added that now this trend has stopped making sense since women are driving too, “families have a car for every adult in the house”, at least in the US.

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