Warning: Women Can’t Drive Here

How many labels and obstacles does a woman have to fight to be able to drive a vehicle? This piece rips apart society’s double-standards.

It all began the day after my last Post-Graduation exam, when I was compelled by my brother (who is a staunch believer in women’s equality in society) to join a driving school for taking lessons.

For someone like me – who can’t ride even a bicycle – this was completely new. However, the keen interest shown by my entire family stopped me from dampening their spirits. Little did I know that I will have to overcome not only my own fears but the social prejudices, as well. Apart from my own anxieties to be annulled, there are socially rampant myths to be busted.

Though our society has come a long way from acknowledging women as passive-fecund to women as protesting-feminists, the past continues to haunt the present.

Irrespective of their dexterity in driving, women are weighed down by the “women-can’t-drive” tag. Just as women have been denied the control over their own lives, so they have been barred from holding the reins of even a vehicle.

With the existing status quo firmly pre-determining the place of a woman at the domestic front, society has taken for granted that she can never position herself at the steering wheel. While society unabashedly makes it obvious that it is her ‘duty’ to unfailingly and unquestioningly straddle between the daughter-, wife- and mother- mode; she is all but expected to change the gears.

The fact that my mother has learnt and mastered the art of driving way back in the 9’0s continues to raise eyebrows. My first brush with the socially sanctioned biased mindset came when I sat beside my behind-the-wheel mother. Throughout our ride, I could spot prying eyes, nasty smirks, and even snide remarks.

I’m yet to notice a difference in the state of affairs. While it is mostly male drivers and pedestrians whose tongues go wagging, women are no less bemused at the sight of a she-driver. The piercing stare and the contemptible looks are enough to make one feel like a trespasser who has just gate-crashed into an outlawed region, the sole right to which belongs to patriarchy. With the male population of the society ever eager to pass a judgment, it all boils down to the fact that women can’t drive and so they mustn’t!

 While it is mostly male drivers and pedestrians whose tongues go wagging, women are no less bemused at the sight of a she-driver.

What ails our society is the tendency to clearly define and demarcate every aspect of life along gender lines. Are we as a society not yet ready to acknowledge a driver as someone who has acquired an art, notwithstanding the gender? Can we not identify a person as an individual in his/her own right? Why is it that all social institutions, norms, codes of conduct/behavioural tendencies, education, finances are largely influenced by biology and anatomy?

The need of the hour is to discard the age-old, gendered social lens which prescribes a way of life for individuals reducing them to two sets of stereotypes, each an extreme opposite of the other.

What we fail to understand is that road accidents and rash driving is not gender specific. The nagging nexus between one’s gender and driving skills are nothing more than a social construct. Apart from a handful of statistics and surveys, there is no logic behind the stereotype. If all men were drivers par excellence, and considering the fact that there are more male drivers than female ones,  wouldn’t our roads be a safe haven and a pedestrian’s paradise?

On my part, though I’m yet to ace the wheels, I’m all geared up to follow the trail of my mother, braving not only the blaring horns, but also the glaring scorns.

 Pic credit: AlanCleaver (Used under a CC license)

Vichitra Agarwal

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