Living in the suburbs in the late 1950s, author Betty Friedan preserved her writing time by having a taxi transport her children to school. Friedan realized that driving did not free her from the yoke of domesticity she so famously exposed in her classic, The Feminine Mystique. Instead, she recognized that for most women the car was principally a tool in service of the type of never-ending domestic work expected of them. Not only did women not find liberation on the road, but they also found themselves targeted by spurious stereotypes of “women drivers.” These myths, including a belief that women were excessively cautious, spatially inept, and fundamentally incompetent drivers, persisted with little change over the course of automobile history.

Yet at the same time, in spite of these negative associations, women needed cars. The country’s shift to the suburbs, facilitated by the emergence and eventual dominance of the automobile, meant that women had to go out and get products and services once delivered to the home. While one historian contended that driving “represented liberation from the household,” home economist Christine Frederick noted that moving to the countryside meant that in addition to all of the farm production she was responsible for, she also had to serve as a chauffeuse. Most women discovered that to facilitate everything from daily milk delivery to doctor’s care, they needed to drive. Their work also included taking their husbands to the train or their jobs and their children to school and activities. Across the century, even those women with the means to drive did so almost entirely in service of their domestic responsibilities and identities.

Sure the car can represent freedom and adventure, but it also means more errands, expenses and expectations, especially through decades of social gender roles.