Women have been part of the automotive sector from day one, although, as in so many other areas, they have been made invisible. Bringing to light and giving the recognition they deserve to the pioneers of the automobile is precisely the objective of the new CASA SEAT exhibition, inaugurated this Wednesday and which can be visited free of charge until October 14. The exhibition features the names of some thirty women who contributed to the car becoming the invention that changed the 20th century, as attested by Emilia Pardo Bazán herself, who in an article from 1897 included in the exhibition stated that the car "is one of the best conquests of civilization" because its use would free women from having to travel always accompanied by "lackeys and grooms."
Pardo Bazán is considered the best Spanish novelist of the 19th century and a pioneer in activism for women's rights, but she has also gone down in history for something much more unknown: she was the first Spanish woman to drive a car. It is precisely on these types of anecdotes and curiosities that the exhibition focuses, revealing, for example, the names of the first women who drove around the world or the identity of the first women to work as taxi drivers: Wilma Russey, who obtained the first license in New York in 1915; or Piedad Álvarez, who was the first Spanish taxi driver. It is also especially interesting to know how several inventions and technical advances in the automotive industry, such as turn signals, the rearview mirror, and windshield wipers, have female authorship.
"Pioneers, is a tribute to the women who have made history in the automotive sector and who are very little recognized," highlights the new director of CASA SEAT, Cristina Vall-Llosada, who also emphasizes the importance and weight that this industry has had in Barcelona, a city that next year will celebrate the 135th anniversary of the manufacture of the first car in Spain. During the inauguration of the exhibition, Vall-Llosada also thanked the president of the Palau de la Música, Joaquim Uriach, for having lent one of the paintings from his collection to the exhibition, Dona del volant, by the painter Ramón Casas, a great fan of the motor world.
Claudia Grego, co-creator of Pioneras, along with Jose Mata, explains that "the big surprise" they have had after long months of documentation and preparation for the exhibition is that "women joined the automotive world simultaneously with men," although their names have been forgotten. They also wanted to emphasize the social impact of the car's emergence, which was synonymous with modernity and quickly became a lever for women's emancipation, although at the beginning of the 20th century, this technological disruption was only accessible to the wealthiest classes of society. "The automobile changed society's vision, as it offered mobility and allowed women to be outside the home; it was a very powerful transformation for the time," explains Grego, recalling names of pioneers such as Bertha Benz, Clärence Stinnes, Alice H. Rumsey, and Camille du Gast.
The exhibition is divided into four sections: Adventurers, Inventors, Drivers, and The War Effort. This last section is of great relevance, as the First and Second World Wars meant that the drivers of cars were no longer solely actresses and wealthy women with recognized surnames, but also anonymous women who drove ambulances or worked in factories while men went off to the battlefields. Photos are shown of volunteers from the NGO The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (Fany), of women repairing an engine or changing a tire, and also images of CNT drivers during the Spanish Civil War.
Although the protagonists in this section are anonymous, there are a couple of exceptions: we see Nobel laureate Marie Curie at the wheel of one of the automobiles she converted into ambulances and portable X-ray units to improve assistance for wounded soldiers at the front. As documented, Curie learned to drive and took mechanics lessons to help save lives. Another familiar face from this wartime period is a 1945 photograph of then-princess Elizabeth, future Queen of England, who joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the women's division of the British army, and also underwent mechanics training, which led the press of the time to attribute her the name Princess Auto Mechanic.
The exhibition features fifty photographs and other documents such as film excerpts, press articles, and images of some of the first automotive patents created by women. A space is also dedicated to paying tribute to the so-called Design Damsels, a group of pioneering women in industrial design who were hired by General Motors in the 1950s and who marked an advance both in the interior design of vehicles and in safety matters, as they incorporated retractable seatbelts and "door open" indicators.
Parallel activities
Pioneras can be visited freely, but CASA SEAT also offers guided tours, with prior reservation. Another way to delve deeper and learn more about the history of women and the world of automotive is to participate in some of the parallel activities that the exhibition has scheduled for the coming weeks. On Saturday the 16th, the film Suffragette, which tells the story of English suffragettes at the beginning of the First World War, will be screened in the CASA SEAT auditorium. On the 18th, art historian Cristina Manresa and writer Ernesto Mallo will visit CASA SEAT to discuss the vehicles that captivated and obsessed various stars and famous personalities from 1930 to the present day. In the session Celebrities and cars: a story on wheels, attendees will discover the cars that fascinated stars like Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Jennifer López, or Charlize Theron.
In parallel, considering that many of the safety systems incorporated in current vehicles were conceived by women, on September 19th the CARNET Insights meeting will focus on new technologies and trends in road safety. Javier Luzón, Head of Vehicle Safety at SEAT; Nuria Pérez, head of the traffic victim assistance department at Aesleme, and Jesús Monclús, director of the Prevention and Road Safety area at Fundación Mapfre, will answer key questions about the future of road safety.
Finally, on October 7, in collaboration with the Young IT Girls collective, which promotes breaking gender stereotypes in technical and scientific fields, CASA SEAT will offer two sessions of a workshop that will invite attendees to design the solutions for future mobility and in which they will learn to program robots with Scratch.
Pioneering Women
Among the many biographies brought to light in the exhibition, that of Bertha Benz, wife of the inventor of the first internal combustion engine, stands out. Accompanied by her two children, in 1888, Bertha made a hundred-kilometer journey to publicize an invention that from the first minute she identified as revolutionary. She is also credited with the invention of brake pads, as during the long journey she had to face various challenges, such as repairing the fragile wooden brakes, which led her to use leather strips and shoe soles to reduce their wear.
Another prominent protagonist is Florence Lawrence, considered the first great film star in history and a great car enthusiast, to the point that she was the inventor of a device to indicate changes in direction and braking, a precursor to current turn signals and brake lights. The also actress Anita King was the first woman to cross the United States from coast to coast by car and alone. She did so in 1915 with the support of the founder of Paramount Pictures. Her journey between Hollywood and New York lasted 49 days, quite a feat for the time. A few years earlier, in 1909, Alice Huyler Ramsey had also traveled from coast to coast with a 30-horsepower Maxwell, accompanied by her two sisters-in-law and a friend. Of the 5,767 kilometers traveled between New York and San Francisco, only 244 were paved.
The figure of Harriet White Fisher also occupies a prominent place in the exhibition as she was the first woman to travel the world in a 40-horsepower Locomobile in 1909, visiting countries such as the United States, England, Italy, Egypt, India, and Japan. This experience was captured in a book published in 1911, A Woman's World Tour in a Motor.
In the chapter of female inventors, the exhibition pays tribute to Dorothy Levitt, a British driver considered the inventor of the rearview mirror; likewise, Dr. June McCarroll is credited with having had the idea of painting dividing lines on the road to separate lanes and prevent accidents. Margaret Wilcox invented a heating system to improve driver comfort in cold weather; and Mary Anderson will go down in history for having patented the first windshield wiper in 1903, as recorded in the US Patent and Trademark Office with the number 743,801.
Finally, fans of motor racing competitions will also find multiple references to the first female drivers in the exhibition. Key Petre stands out, nicknamed the queen of Brooklands, for her exploits on the Surrey circuit. Another example is that of the sisters Violette and Evelyn Cordery, who on this same circuit, in 1929, covered 48,000 kilometers in 20 days and 20 hours without stopping. Finally, Gwenda Steward is also remembered, who also triumphed as a driver in the early 1920s, achieving various speed records.