Sense and sensibility. A narrative study of older women’s car driving

The present study uses a qualitative approach to examine the personal meanings older women attach to cars and driving. The data consist of 10 narrative interviews with Swedish women aged 69–87, carried out in 2002. In the analysis, a social constructionist perspective was combined with a narrative approach focusing on how the women described the important actors and their respective positions during different periods of their driving histories.

In addition, a life-course perspective and feminist theorizing on marginalization influenced the analysis. The aim of the study was to better understand the social reality surrounding older women’s driving and the mechanisms that marginalize women as road users throughout their life course. Two main themes emerged, reflecting the “sense and sensibility” of driving; i.e., personal meanings related to its practicality and to its experiential nature.

These two themes were often constructed as polarities in the interviewees’ talk, as if the lust and splendour of cars and driving only were legitimate for (older) women if practiced within a socially acceptable framework of practicality and care-taking duties. Overall the present findings illustrate how (older) women’s experiences on the traditionally male arena of driving are not fully embedded into our cultural conceptions and norms, and how the marginalization of women drivers is further reproduced.