Motor Girls: How Women Took the Wheel and Drove Boldly Into the Twentieth Century by Sue Macy (review)

Macy’s Wheels of Change (BCCB 3/11) traced the social upheaval that accompanied women’s enthusiasm for bicycling, and this companion volume demonstrates that, even though the initial shock of women on wheels had been somewhat absorbed, adding a motor to the technology forced a replay of arguments for and against women taking to the open road. Readers may be startled to learn that female participation in mechanics, racing, and long-distance touring was fairly robust at the start, and only later did men throw on the brakes, for example, rewriting racing rules to exclude women drivers. Macy handily contextualizes women’s embrace of driving within the larger framework of world war and the suffrage movement, establishing once and for all that women were physically and psychologically capable of handling machinery, speed, and the hardscrabble terrains of the early days of motoring. Sidebars and insets are particularly lively, focusing on such intriguing miscellanea as arcane rules of the road, women taxi drivers, women motorcyclists, protective fashion and gear, and the Girl Scout Automobiling merit badge. Layout can be a bit frenetic, with a plethora of photos vying for wedges of space with spidery font. Apart from the visual challenge, though, this is a spunky title with appeal for report writers (index, source notes, and bibliography are included) and recreational readers.