Gender differences in Driving:
subjective or concrete?
Mrs. Luceyās web page can be accesse
here. I have accessed this site which is a report on gender differences in driving behaviors and this is what I found.First she goes into her definitions of norms and stereotypes. Norms being "an unwritten rule that guides or regulates acceptable or approriate behavior in a particular situation" and stereotypes "are stigmatic and discriminatory labels that are placed on people.
Here are a few stereotypical statements found on
Luceyās page.-Men are less likely to ask for directions and women find it more comfortable to do so. -If a car breaks down, it is more expected of a man to know what to do and more expected of a woman to stand on the side of the road unitl help arrives. -Men are more likely to criticize other drivers to where the other driver can hear them and women are more likely to criticize other drivers to themselves out of fear of retaliation. -Women prefer their male counterparts to drive they ride as passengers.
Lucey also wanted to do some research of her own in which. This is what she did in her own words.
In order to look at gender driving norms, I had taken a test issued in Dr. James' G6 class and distributed them amongst sixteen individuals. Eight were answered by females and the eight others were answered by males. The test consisted of twenty questions. The first seven featured questions that revealed anger within the individual, the next four looked at the philosophy of the individual, the next seven at the feelings of compulsive rushing and competition, and the last three at the over sensitivity to social pressures that motorists experience
On her web site
stats on her above research are listed. The results of her research turned up that women scores showed that they tended to score slightly highter on all areas except that of feeling compulsion and competition and the tendency to give in to social pressure.The next section in her report talks about the
implications of traffic psychology. She talks about how the exact influence of driving norms could not be determined from the research she did. She believes that the aspect of how gender norms affect driving behaviors is a subject that warrants a more indept look.
OTHER STUDENTS REPORTS ON GENDER AND DRIVING DIFFERENCES
Dr. James requested in our instructions to next explore other generational reports on the subject of gender differences in driving. I clicked on the link that was provided in the directions. It took me to a compilation of reports from all different generations.
It appeared to be a great page to find info. for research on the subject and it was. I clicked on a web page of a student named
Chris Chu. He apparently had done the same report I am doing in the exact same format. He had a beautiful page with lovely clouds and the info. he had links to were great. He had a number of links under the usenet and web section of the report. One link was to a national statistics site on crashes. A lot of information could be found there. His report was very similar to the one I am currently conducting. He had sections including a summary of Cara Luceyās report. Next he had reactions to email postings which Dr. James had chosen. His report went on as follows the same as my report will go. So follow and find out.In his section on previous generational reports he had a summary of a report from a student named
Christine Tomooka. She had a great page in which she had done a lot of research. She included a lot of facts and references on her report. I was also interested in how the report had been done by her. She had some interesting sections including HOW WOMEN ACQUIRED THEIR STEREOTYPES, THE BEGINNING OF WOMEN DRIVERS AND THE EFFECTS IT HAS HAD ON SOCIETY, DRIVING & THE GENDER DIFFERNCES, HER CONCLUSIONS AND HER REFERNCES, which there were many of. Overall both students had great reports I learned from.
In my directions to this report you can find a number of email listings that Dr. James has selected for students doing this report to read and to discuss. All of these email discussions are concerning the topic of driving and gender differences and there are a number of different opinions. You can read them if you would like by accessing the
directions page.The first email posting is by a Mr. Shintani who feels like gender doesnāt have a lot to do with acts of aggressive driving. He talks about how studies that show women to be more aggressive could very well be biased or people may not have answered them accurately at all. He brings up the idea of guestions being sexually biased. I feel he has a point and this idea may be valid. For example in recent years the Sat (scholastic aptitude test) has been under fire for and has looked into the problem of having culturally biased questions in its tests. Why couldnāt this also be attributed to sex.
The next entry by a Mrs. Brandi Ashby was an argument in support of banning the stereotype that men are usually more aggressive. She feels that women are not as innocent as they seem. She feels that women are becoming increasingly aggressive behind the wheel.
The next author was an Elizabeth Pacheco, and she states how she hasnāt actually found any information supporting the idea that women are as aggressive as men, and that she always assumed that male drivers are more aggressive and reckless just due to their stereotypically masculine nature.
Wilfred Lee wrote: "Is there much difference between genders when referring to aggressive driving? I though women drove as bad as men did." The answer to this is yes in some aspects women drive as bad as men do. In other some aspects worse and in a few the same. If you link to Dr. James
roadrage survey you can find a few facts that will support all three.One such visitor added a suggestions that people of ethnic background, women and older people are the ones whom cannot drive. This was a very prejudice and racist statement not backed by any argument or facts. This was a one Brisacs who wrote this.
Mr. Shintani replied to the above author by labeling Brisacs a racist and sexist person due to the comments Brisacs made. This author didnāt have much to say worth any value either. This author has given in to lowering himself to the previous author with verbal retaliation.
This email exchange started off with authors exchanging information back in forth while holding a decent discussion. The last two authors seem to have lost their way off the subject and have gotten into personal issues, not real relevant to the subject. Throughout my life my views on gender and driving have changed repeatedly. Growing up I always thought men were more aggressive and reckless from men, just due to the fact that men were percieved in movies and television shows to be the primary sex in car chases, etc. My mother was always the more aggressive of my two parents. She was always shouting honking and gripping with bad language toward other drivers. My father was relaxed and hardly ever rushed. I took this fact as just another abnormality my family had and assumed the norm as the opposite. I slowly started to accept the fact that women can be aggressive behind the wheel after meeting a few aggressive female drivers. After many years of being a driver and a passenger I have concluded that the sex of an individual in the present day has little effect. I presume that it is the disposition of the individual in particular that distinguishes if he or she will be aggressive. I also hypothesize that a disposition can be largely influenced by the nurture of the individual. Nurture mainly being parents friends and environment.
Historically women have been the more timid of the sexes. Men are usually more dominant in many aspects of society. History does change however. Women are increasingly becoming more and more outspoken and equality is being reached in many ways.
Michele Rodino in the department of communication at the University of Washington has written an article discussing many issues about gender differences and communication. She discusses aspects of language, speech, and online differences. I found the online differences to be interesting. Offline, men usually are the dominant speakers in a discussion or debate. Men talk the most and interupt the most. Men usually lead the discussion. Womenās speech is usually in a superpolite way. Online however it has been found that women and men enter comments at the same rate in discussion and chat rooms. Women sometimes dominate or form conversations around themselves. I feel that women are still a shy in person and that these findings are due to partial or complete anonymity.
A web search was done using key words like driving, women, drivers. Titles of articles that were found are as follows. "Womens role in road rage up, statistics show", "1997 Fatality Facts: Gender", "Transport related injury". These were three titles that caught my attention on the web search.
The first article titled
Womenās role in road rage up, statistics show. This article argues that there is a growing trend in womens involvement in aggressive road incidents. Women have historically been known to be the more timid of the two sexes when it came to driving. "Two women were killed on the Golden state freeway in a wrong-way collision, moments after they allegedly taunted another driver." Over the years things have been changing concerning women, a lot more women are on the road today. "In 1963, about 43 percent of driveres , or 40 million motorists, wre women. Today, more than 88 million women are licensed drivers- about 50 percent of motorists in the United states". The number of women drivers involved in fatal traafic accidents has increased. Though men are still more likely to be involved in accidents involving aggressive behaviors the number of women involved in these types of accidents are growing. This may be related to changes in our society. Women are now a major part of the work force and many women hold positions of power in companies. This may correlate with the growing number of aggressive female drivers. Insurance companies today have also realized the trend. Young men used to have the highest flat rate coverage for drivers, young womenās rates are quickly growing to match that of the male gender.
The next article 1997 Fatality Facts: Gender is on the web page for
insurance institute for highway safety. They found that men typically drive more mile per year and engage in more risky behaviors like drinking, not wearing a seat belt, and driving over the speed limit. I feel it is not surprising that they have found that more men die each year that women in motor vehicle accidents. This page shows many statistics on differences between male and female deaths, the use of alcohol and rates of death each year between gender and age together. "among passenger vehicle drivers in 1997, the proportion of fatally injured males with blood alcohol concentrations(BACs) at or above 0.10 percent was higher than females at all ages. Alcohol was most common among males age 21-40 and females 31-40, when more than half of male deaths and about one-third of female deaths involved high deaths involved high BACs." I was wondering if this fact was correlated with actual alcohol consumption between the sexes. Do women start drinking alcohol at later ages? Or do they just end up getting in more accidents when they are older and drinking? There are some great charts on this web page and the facts have been analized from data on the U.S. Department of Transportationās Fatality Analysis Reporting System.
An Australian Injury Prevention Bulletin made by the Australian Institute of Welfare had an article on Transport related injury.
This article talks about the issue of the number of transport related injuries in women. The number of injuries women have sustained while driving have increased substantially in the last few years. This can be due in part to the sheer number of kilometers that women drive each year. The number of kilometers driven by women has increased each year. "It appears that women are increasingly being injured as drivers rather than as passengers of motor vehicles. Between 1979-1981 and 1991-1993 the percentage of females killed in motor vehicle crashes as drivers increased from 37% to 46%, while the percentage of males killed as drivers only increased slightly form 69% to 70%." This helps show the changing role of women as drivers in Australia. More women are increasingly on the road just as women in the United States are becoming.
A search was done to find more information from different sources on the issue of gender differences in driving. I accessed three alternative databases to acquire information. One was ERIC where I found three relevant articles concerning gender differences in driving. The next was Uncover where no relevant article could be found. The third was the UH. Expanded Academic Database, where many articles were found. I will briefly synapse each article and give list its citation.
This is a study conducted using 1300 high school students. It examined gender differences concerning their use of alcohol in binge drinking, problem behaviors and driving while intoxicated.
Trieman, Katherine A. and Beck, Kenneth h. Adolescent Gender Differences in Alcoho Problem Behaviors and the Social Contexts of Drinking. Journal of School of Health, 1996, v66 n8, P299-304.
A study was done using a group of 343 tenth-graders to find out family characteristics and influences, drug and alcohol use, perception of driving skill, and personality factors. It was found that females used drugs and alcohol more often. The males used the automobile more often to enhance their self-efficacy. There was no distinct difference in gender differences in analysis of risky driving behaviors while intoxicated.
Farrow, James A. and Brissing, Peter. Risk for DWI: A New Look at Gender Differences in Drinking and Driving Influences. Experiences, and Attitudes among New Adolescent Drivers. Health Education Quarterly. 1990, v17 n2 p213-21
A study was done to find out statistics on elderly drivers. Their accident patterns and accident ratios between genders. It was found that the accident ratio of females is 35% higher than that for elderly males of the same age group. Both genders below the age of sixty five showed similar accidents patterns. Elderly over the age of 75 have a greater accident ratio than those younger. The gender differences could be due to the fact that their were lower amounts of these females driving in their youth and that they could have recently gotten drivers licenses in the later years of their lives.
Stamatiadis, Nikiforos. Gender effect on the accident patterns of elderly drivers. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 1996, v15 n1 P8.
It was found in a comparison between male and female drivers that stress on and off the road is positively correlated with the breaking of traffic rules. No clear cut division between gender and offending of road rules behavior. Although women have been found to be more stressed in general. Sociologists feel this is in part to the male dominated society we live in.
Frances, Simon and Claire, Corbett. Road traffic offending, stress, age, and accident history among male and female drivers. Ergonomics, 1996,v39,n5 p.757.
A study in New Zealand shows that male teenagers are more interested in driving than females. Males tend to use alcohol more often and break driving curfew more often than females. Females were found often to be the passengers of cars after curfew hours while the driver was under the influence of alcohol. Males tended to engage in more unsafe driving habits. Both males and females are the same in regards to offenses such as driving without a liscense, not wearing seatbelts and breaking traffic rules.
Field, Jeff and Kirkwood, Barry and Harre, Niki. Gender differences and areas of common concern in the driving behaviors and attitudes of adolescents. Journal of Safety Research. 1996, v27 n3 p163.
A study done on alcohol offenders found that more offenders were male than female. This study was done on 5, 154 drunk driving offenders.
Chang, I. And Lapham S.C. and Barton K.J. Drinking environment and sociodemographic factors among DWI offenders. Journal of Studies on Alcohol. 1996, v57 n6 p659.
This article is about how advertisement has broken up tradition gender roles in driving. Driving has helped facilitate women to become more independent and to allow them to open up their social limitations. Advertising in the early twentieth century depicted middle class women driving. This was during a time when males were traditional gender roles were being challenged.
Gehling, Laura L. "The woman at the wheel:" marketing ideal womanhood. Journal of American Culture. 1997, v20 n3 p13.
This article is an argument against the restriction of rights on women in other countries that are under Islamic rule. In these countries women are not allowed to drive cars. I am interested in this because, if women were one day allowed to drive, it would be a great place to start research because it would be a new environment to compare the gender differences in driving.
Mustikhan, Ahmar and Ansari, Massoud. Womenās woes under Islam. World and I. 1998, v13 n2 p54
A study done on crash reports in Hawaii during 1990 and 1991 show that determination of fault by police officers may be biased to age , sex and type of car driven. It was found that young males have slightly higher odds of being at fault in a collision than females of the same age.
Kim, Karl and Li, Lei and Richardson,James and Nitz Lawrence. Drivers at fault: influence of age, sex, and vehicle type. Journal of Safety Research. 1998, v29 n3 p171.
5.Further searches in Css engine and Site Indexes
Report on gender stereotypes in driving
The title of this report is the Stereotypes of Women Drivers: From a male conducted research and analysis from my perspective. This report was done by Christine Tomooka in Dr. James Psy 459 class in the year 1994.
The sections of this report are How did women acquire their stereotypes, the beginning of women drivers and the effects it has had on society and driving and gender differences.
The first section on how women acquired their stereotypes states that reasons include the want to keep women in their place. Women also need to be protected against the corruption of society. This I feel is an age old
prejudice against women. The thought that they are inferior to men and therefore need mens help and protection. Another argument for stereotypes against women and allowing them to drive is that they have poor decision making,
delicate physical strength, and a more delicate emotional side than men. Another prejudice against women being in automobiles is that they are not meant to be in a vehicle where their slow reactions and poor judgment can possible
injure themselves and or others.
The next section of the report goes into the beginning of women as drivers and the effects it has had on society.
"The amount of information on the first women drivers are limited. However, Loeper (1980: 53) states that the first woman driver was Genevra Mudge of New York City in December of 1899."
Prior to the 1920's their was little driving among women. Stereotypes of them being weak were still strong. During and after the first world war stereotypes were challenged as women were needed to
help in the work force due to the abscence of men. This abscence of men made it necessary for women to be self sufficient and self mobile. Other stereotypes of the automobile are still strong today.
The idea that the task of working on vehicles is non feminine, since it is an unclean task.
Driving and gender differences is the next section in Miss Tomooka's report. In her report she analyzes research done and concludes the statistics. One such research article does a study of men and women
and their testimonies on their own driving abilities. the men seem to rate themselves higher than women. This is her conclusion and I agree "I can suggest that men are more likely to have a higher self-assessment of their driving skills than women, though men and women have basically the same conception of the average driver."
Their was also a study done on subjects types of behaviors. Only young women were used in the study done but she concluded from it that "As indicated in this study, it was a certain type of behavior that had a tendency to be accident-prone and the age of the driver. There is no sign of gender difference because only female subjects were used.
She concludes her report that she found that most studies were conducted by men and that these studies showed that there is no gender difference in quality of driving between sexes. She also feels that most historical stereotypes of womens driving is questionable to her.
On page 45 Roth talks about a student " aged seventeen, was agraid of driving in downtown Vancouver traffic because of all the one-way streets and parking hassles. But he wouldnāt want this to get around because people would think he is a fool." This just shows that men can be nervous about driving situations.
On page 46 Roth writes "as one boy said, I never wear seat belts when Iām with my dad. He doesnāt believe in them. If I put them on he accuses me of not trusting his driving and he acts hurt. Sometimes my mom puts them on just to get at him". This just shows that males can sometimes let their egoes get in front of their rationality.
On page 47 Roth writes During interviews with youths a contradictory message was given about parents. Fathers were featured as individuals who had total disregard for the law and safety. Fathersā driving was repeatedly characterized as speeding, beating red lights, running stop signs, ignoring pedestrian rights, not wearing seat belts, and driving while impaired. Some youths defined their fathers as driving maniacs who rationalized their actions by saying Iāve never had an accident so I know what Iām doing." This shows that many children feel the male sex in their family is the more dangerous.
Roth, Peter.J. Beyond traffic Safety. Transaction Publishers. New Brunswick, 1993.
7.Reactions to other students
I found the same report on gender differences done by Karla Hampp in my 459 class. Her page is very decorative and she has done a great job at constructing this page. She has done a good job on the beginning of her report yet she has not finished. Though she has gotten to a beautiful start. She was the only one who has put up their reports so far.
8.Suggestions for future generations
My suggestions for the next generation would to look through others reports to get a good idea of what is expected of you. The most important thing is to be open minded. Try to elaborate on what previous generations have done and go above and beyond them.
My Report1: (Music and Driving)
My Report2: (Definitions of driving)
My Report3: (Gender and Driving)