The opposite day on the health club, a gaggle of males had been discussing the restricted availability of parking spots across the health membership. The dialog quickly turned in direction of parking etiquette. Their ire was directed at a specific SUV whose errant positioning, they complained, would typically occupy the area meant for 2 autos. No prizes for guessing who drives the automotive, certainly one of them quipped; his tone making his implication clear. That is what occurs when ladies begin driving large vehicles, one other chuckled. There was a spherical of laughter and the lads went their separate methods.
The cliché about ladies being unhealthy drivers is as recent as curdled milk. Its infamy is, maybe, second solely to the caricature of the nagging spouse. In gags and skits, these inventory feminine characters have been mocked for generations. Whereas this style of jokes is greatest ignored — partaking with content material of this nature can play havoc along with your social media algorithms — the quips about ladies drivers by no means fail to rile me up. Being raised in a family the place two generations of girls took the wheel can do this to you.
One among my earliest childhood recollections is of my daadi driving an historic blue Ambassador, and the pleasant sight of a diminutive, white-haired girl wrestling the big steering wheel into submission and shouting at jaywalkers. Whereas tales of my daadi’s driving exploits had been largely rumour for me, I bore witness to my mom’s driving journey from the very starting. As a baby, I accompanied her on her driving classes; later, I turned her main passenger on faculty runs and market visits. As a girl driving her household round, my mom was a novelty within the suburban Kolkata of the Nineties and early 2000s. I used to be at all times conscious that what was regular for me was distinctive to many others in our milieu.
A lot has modified since then. Girls drivers are hardly a uncommon sight in metropolises anymore. As per a information report final yr, almost 36 per cent of the driving licenses issued in Mumbai had been to ladies. The share of girls shopping for SUVs — the stereotypical “male” automotive — has reportedly elevated over four-fold previously 5 years. In recent times, feminine participation within the public transport workforce has additionally seen an increase: From women-operated cab companies to state transport our bodies. Final yr, in June, the Maharashtra State Highway Transport Company deployed its first-ever batch of girls drivers. Now, it counts over 120 of them in its ranks. However past the statistics, driving can also be seen as a software of empowerment.
Within the film Piku, when the titular character (performed by Deepika Padukone) says she doesn’t like driving, Rana (Irrfan Khan) tells her that “driving liberates a girl”. To ascertain this level, he refers back to the activism of girls in Saudi Arabia, who braved arrests and state reprisals for years within the combat for his or her proper to drive. Three years after Piku’s launch, the Gulf kingdom lastly lifted the ban on ladies drivers in 2018.
The second when Saudi ladies might legally drive in their very own nation for the primary time — on June 24 — turned a day of celebration. The Girls’s Worldwide Automotive of the 12 months (WWCOTY), a multi-national collective comprising completely of girls motoring journalists, was created in 2009 and strives to “give visibility to ladies within the automotive world”. Within the years following the reversal of the Saudi ban, the WWCOTY has designated June 24 as “Worldwide Girls Drivers’ Day” as a part of its marketing campaign to draw worldwide consideration round this concern.
To the cynical, earmarking sure days and investing them with symbolic which means can really feel performative. Such “particular days” are, predictably, claimed by company strategists as an event to advertise their model as being socially-aware and to ship the fitting alerts to their customers. Furthermore, when focussing on a single day as a second of significance, we will find yourself ignoring the complexities of floor realities. As an example, human rights teams have flagged that even after the lifting of the ban, deep-rooted social and cultural obstacles proceed to impede Saudi ladies’s potential to drive.
These shortcomings, and the reams of web content material lampooning the driving capabilities of girls, can lead one to view efforts just like the “Worldwide Girls Drivers’ Day” as whimsical and ineffectual. Nonetheless, highlighting such “particular days” can nonetheless provide some advantages. For one, they’ll shine the highlight — if just for a short time — on issues which can be normally relegated to the margins in public discourse. They may also help set off conversations and convey consciousness to points that will in any other case be missed. They usually also can provide the chance to look at the pernicious impact of so-called “informal and innocent” jokes.
Below the façade of humour, the seemingly innocuous jibes about ladies drivers reinforce stereotypes and prejudices that they finally must battle on the roads. A quirk of destiny made me impervious to this prejudice. However the Worldwide Girls Drivers’ Day is pretty much as good a time as any to keep in mind that being raised by a girl who drives, shouldn’t be the one factor that stops us from laughing at punchlines taking purpose at ladies drivers.
The author is a Mumbai-based lawyer