Gender Differences in Driving
Concept Development and Stereotypes
David Altenburg
Introduction
Through the research of 'Gender Driving Differences', I discovered that it might be benificial to consider the source of the stereotypes we place on individuals in society so we might better find a solution that can also focus on the problem where it begins.
Cara Lucy's report
In Cara Lucy's report I found her interpretations as gender driving differences well thought out and had some useful ideas for a basis of further research. Her examples, though personal, occur more in society than we would probably like to admit.
Email Discussion IssuesFrom the listed discussions it is appearant that the Gender Driving issue has many arguments surrounding it. One person believes that looking into the gender issue with surveys will not solve any problems, because on survey's men will have a tendancy to lie more on certain questions, and women on others.
Ms. Patheco's information is admittedly limited and is in the opinion that males cause more accidents due to social norms. She mentions how she would like to see more cases of accidents where women are responsible, and suggests further research be done on the web through Newsgroups.
The next students message simply states that his perception on driving between men and women was relatively equal, and that there is no real issue. Though this is the type of view that would be beneficial to drivers as a whole, the view is not shared by all drivers as of yet.
The next discussion is in regards to the study of Gender Driving as a fruitless path where there be many 'why's' answered, but no resolutions made. "Demographics, I think are not as important as treating the problem of road rage as a whole." I think that statement alone sums up their opinion.
This next statement by an individual who wrote Dr. Driving was quite blunt and to the point of their feelings on gender/ethnic/age issues. "I hate to say this but it is usually the people of ethnic backgrounds, women, and older people that can not drive."
One resulting reply of the previous statement by a student of Dr. James class was met with as much animosity as the email he had analyzed. He first called the person a racist, sexist and discriminatory, which is true about the statement's subject matter in the original email. He then goes on in calling the person 'blind' to society, and accuses them of being a horrible driver themselves and using their predjudice tendancies to justify their own problemed driving abilities.
Interpretations of the Discussions
In response to the email about demographics not solving the problem as a whole: The problem as a whole is caused by a multitude of smaller problems, a few of them being gender/ethnic/age based. How can we solve the problem as a whole without understanding each tangent that causes it? I could liken this individuals perception of gender driving to making a soup with the main ingredients, but forgetting all the spices that complete it. Sometimes the little things make a big difference in the end. Regarding the actual stereotypes themselves(the last two email discussions), ask yourselves 'how much truth is there to stereotypes in general?' And, 'Where do stereotypes such as these from?' The easy answers would be; none, and from predjudice people. But that's not always the case, or is it? People seemed not to want to discuss the gender/ethnic/age differences, possibly because they are heated topics within our society. After all, humans have been predjudice of any one who is different for thousands of years, and only in the past couple hundred years has human civilization begun to accept one another. Very slowly. Increasing pressure for accepting people's differences has become a pivotal point in our evolution as a society. Today the world is becoming smaller as the human population continues to explode and social norms of the past are clashing fiercely with the new ideas of present. People are looking for newer and better places to live causing an influx of people relocating to different areas, adding to the diversity within the populations of each area. Why do I say that the people in the above email discussions don't want to deal with gender differences? Because facing(finding the source and correcting) a problem is tougher than ignoring it and hoping it will just 'go away' with time. I sympathize with not wanting to deal with it, and believing that there will be no helpfull solutions that come out of a study of it, but sometimes the solution will find itself with just the knowledge of where and why the stereotypes come from. Stereotypes
Aren't stereotypes derived from some sort of original truth? Men are stereotyped as aggressive and reckless drivers. Women as passive and indicisive. Old people as slow, and 'not all-together-there'. Ethnic people(foreigners/or other poor, differently colored residents) stereotyped as possibly every one of the above, almost a miscellaneous stereotype for 'bad driving' in general. The reason I bring this up is because(as I stated previously) humans have a tendancy to categorize people into groups, so when someone sais 'men/women/elderly/or ethnic people' drive this way or that, first of all don't be offended by taking it personally. Many times people categorize/stereotype because it's a tendancy in our society(or every society) to do so.
Where does the process of learning the 'stereotypical' behaviors begin? First, in our own homes. Second, at our schools. This section of the report will deal directly towards the differences between men and women are raised and how it inherintely determines their behaviors as adults, which can extend into driving and the stereotypes that surrounds each of them.
Gender-Typing our Children
In our society, there is an immediate differentiation between the way we(overall as a society) raise our boys vs. the way we raise our girls. Is it not the commonly known 'American Dream' to desire that our sons become great atheletes, corporation owners, or well respected public officials? And is it also not the 'Dream' to see our daughters grow up as scholars, or models, or to marry into a wealthy house? For women and men alike, think for a second of your parents dreams of you.
For men, atleast in one time of your life, hasn't your parental figure promoted/guided you to excell in sports, school, mechanics, or some other generally male gender based activity? And for women, have you ever been guided to consentrate on grades, or had your parents disaprove of a boy you might have dated at one time solely because of their lack of future goals in success?Of course these questions can be inter-related between the sexes, what I'm asking is if it could be a generalized order you've experienced or seen in the way parents guide their children.More evidence in Gender-Typing of our children:
When a child is born, if it's female, what's the most common color of the room vs. if it was male?(pink vs. blue right?) What do we dress them in, style or colors wise? As our children grow a few years older, what's their most common toys?
Have you all noticed the commercial content during kids prime cartoon hours? You will see the difference of 'boys toys' vs. 'girls toys'. Examples: Barbi, Care Bears, My Little Pony, Nano', and countless other toys where little girls can play 'house'. In recent trends, girls toy commercials are becoming increasingly more aggressive in nature, such as the Sailor Moon who may have the body dimensions of 'Barbi', but she has magical powers that can destroy things. Next is the Tamagochi Angel commercial where one girl flips out and grows a set of horns, yet they are still wearing wings and floating on a cloud blissfully
Examples of commercials targeting boys: Toys that battle mostly. Beetle borgs, Power rangers, transformers, GI Joe, a Nerf gun that shoots foam darts. In all the boys commercials(as in the ones directed at girls) you rarely see inter-gender game play. Also, in fantasy playing as children, hasn't it been predominantly the boys(dating back to the middle ages) role playing a knight of some sort, and sword fight for fun? The girls on the other hand might often try on 'mom's' make-up or pretend their a princess.
This is the basis of my arguement. Children in our society are taught(as we were) from birth to behave differently from the other gender. Boys have been taught that aggressiveness is acceptable. Girls grow up learning slightly more passive means.
Impact
The psychological impact of this gender diversification has been considered in numerous studies done by developmental psychologists. I wanted to use the web as my search engine for this entire report and unfortunately, I found no documentation on it posted on the web yet. I just ran into University after University listing claiming that 'Gender development' was a subject they researched and taught.
The raising of our children differently (aggressive vs. passive) directly provides the means as adults, to notice a clear difference in personality traits between the genders. This I believe is the basis of the stereotypes formed, and the result is a clear social distinction in 'gender driving differences'.
Stereotypes Themselves - Examples of Personal ObservationsDo stereotypes have truth to them? How much truth if so?
Growing up in Washington and living on both sides of the cascades(totally different attitudes on each side. e.g. city/logging culture vs. farming cattle ranch cultures)allowed me to see subtle variants in peoples attitudes. While attending WSU for two years, I was subjected to many peoples opinions of stereotypes and was the subject of them myself(city boy). For a better understanding of where WSU is and the attitudes of the local folk of the area are, you should know, it's in Eastern Washington in the middle of the Palouse(farming area of wheat, dill etc.)
WSU's
program promoted foreigners to attend its academic program because the University gained international recognition and that little bonus of increased tuition for non-residents. There was an influx of Japanese students attending between '91-94' and it seemed many had purchased nice vehicles for transportation(a basis for a stereotype to begin). Since they were Japanese nationals and not fully used to the traffic laws, nor local customs of driving, there were a few accidents involving their cars. From that point the stereotype grew and a resentment of foreign/ethnic drivers for being thought of as 'reckless, rude, and overall bad drivers' became a social norm of locals to the area.What's my purpose for naming two incidences that don't directly involve gender driving? It's because they are relevant in showing how 'stereotypes' are based on some sort of truth that has been extorted and then used as a generalized rule to include all people who physically match the description of the stereotype.(e.g. being foreign, being black in color.) This is relevant to gender differences because the actions of certain women(as the actions of certain men) have caused society in general to feel able to classify them into one of their societal-perpetuated stereotypes.
Usenet and Web Search ResultsMy intentions on this search were not to find cross-gender driving incidents, nor peoples ideals involving the 'whys or why nots' of furthering this form of research. Instead I intended to fight the root of the problem itself. I decided to search for reasons of 'how' gender/ethnic/age stereotypes were even created. The 'how' being the history of the problems.
Usenet first attempts to search categories- Internal Server Error.
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@sunsite.unc.edu and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
Using the words 'gender development study' I found:
A highly criticized study that claims boys receive more public disciplinary action than girls in a classroom. It's a study of sex inequity, but the methods of research and their findings indicate oxymoronic tendancies. The study is given credit for it's attempts and further research in the area was suggested.
Re: Literacy Levels Plummet As Dreaded Ebonics Plague spreads
I found this this method of stereotyping to be amusing. It involves rap and it's influence on children with their 'upgraded' dress, speech, and body language methods. This is not a gender based posting, but it is an example of stereotyping a certain group of people.
On the Web Searches I used 'Gender Development Reports' as my primary search topics.
With that heading my search ended up listing about 80+ Universities that dealt with gender development differences, but no links or references that I could continue from there. All the actual information was appearantly being kept inside the classrooms.
Ms. Suzukiwrote a report on 'Self-Witnessing of Driving', but I'm not sure if that's an accurate way of describing the report. Her intent from the beinning as she states in the introduction, was "justify the notion that women are better drivers than men." It was a well researched report citing references to the works of 'Furnham and Saipe, 'Berger', and 'Loeper'(studies ranging from the 1930's to the 1980's). The actual content and conclusions though seemed a bit contradictory.
Throghout the report Ms Suzuki sites references in scientific studies that show a tendancy of men causing more crashes, and exhibiting the tendancy for 'psychotic' behavior, especially at younger ages. There are some great references to the conclusions of other researchers in support to her arguement of the suppression of women, such as: "Berger(1986) states that the stereotype consisted of the idea that the delicate physical and emotional constitution of women, poor decision-making in crisis situations, a woman's place was in the home, femininity, cleanliness." It indicates that she was looking into the basis of the woman's stereotype commonly held by men.
In her conclusion however, it seemed she was in a rush to gather her data and get her point across. This statement intrigued me: "much of the research was done by men. I thought that this was very interesting, that most of the results from these studies eluded to the fact that women were better drivers than men, or that they were about equal." I'm assuming that this assumption came from the data of the subjects in the course of a study she listed where men demonstrated a more 'psychotic' tendancy(according to a survey). Another possibility is that she may have felt the studies results should not be counted as totally valid since they were performed by members of the opposite sex.
Finally, towards the end she makes a contradictory remark to her paper's arguement: " The idea of males historically driving more, may account for the greater number of driving convictions for males." I don't know what to say about that remark. Overall, the report seemed to have some good background to it, yet her intentions as stated from the introduction caused me to be skeptical of the objectiveness she gave her study. Since the intention was to prove men were worse drivers than women, it seemed wise to be cautious of subjective remarks vs. actual facts.
Dr Driving teaches you driving psychology! This page links to support groups, information, background, and subject matter involving road rage of all sorts. The section I focused in on dealt with masculine and feminine driving. Dr. James promotes driving in a method allowing the passenger to feel safer. He mentions how to alternate ones driving between their normal aggressive(masculine) mode and a more (feminine) polite one. It's an interesting concept and after I tried it, I found it to be a more relaxing experience. For purposes of this report however, I must state that driving in either fashion is giving into the stereotypes society has set up for us.There wasn't much data regarding the stereotype information I was looking for as of yet, and my CSS search engine results ended up with a 'zero documents found' message in the search engine every time. It's full of all kinds of information, but I would like to see the CSS's knowledge expanded even more so.
Rothe book
I found no relevant references in 'gender development' in the book that I could relate to this report.
Suggestions for Future Generations