Driving licence: do gender stereotypes affect the pass rate?

Boys and girls are not in an equal position when it comes to access to a driving licence. In France, there is a nearly 10% gender gap in the pass rate for the practical test, even though for the road code theory test, it is almost the same. This gap remains the same whether considering the population as a whole or focusing on young people only.

Research on driving licence access mainly focuses on the causes for the decline in the number of licence-holders. The question of gender is not often discussed.

When it is brought up, it is mainly to observe how, in the long-term, women’s access to a driving licence has increased to the point that it is almost equal to that of men. Parity was almost achieved in the mid-1990s. This parity is also presented as one of the determining factors for the peak car hypothesis, which states that car use has peaked and will now fall in a sustained manner.

The advantage of having a driving licence for work

Studies investigating the gender gap in driving licence access are therefore rare, and the conclusions differ depending on the country. Women have a lower pass rate in the United Kingdom and Finland, but not in Sweden or the Netherlands. In France, the pass rate for the practical exam for a car driving licence was 53.4% for women, versus 62.7% for men in 2018, a gap of 9.3 points. That said, it was at 11.6 points in 2009, so it seems that the gap is slowly narrowing over the years.

If women are just as likely as men to pass the driving licence theory test, why is it that in France, the pass rate for the practical exam is 10 points lower? Why do women have a higher pass rate for the theory test (70%) than the practical (56%)? Why do men have a higher pass rate for the practical, when they go on to represent 86% of drivers under 24 killed on the road?

It is a major issue. The driving licence test is the most commonly sat exam in France, with nearly 1.3 million candidates each year. Passing it is a major factor in professional and social integration, particularly for young people with fewer qualifications.. A recent meta-evaluationbased on 93 studies, quantitatively measured the impact of access to a vehicle on employment. It showed that having a vehicle increased the probability of having a job, particularly for welfare recipients and minimum-wage earners.

The different levels of access to a driving licence between men and women therefore has potential consequences with regard to the professional integration and life trajectories of individuals. Ensuring compliance with the principle of equality is also a major challenge for public authorities, which play the role of a regulator for driving schools and exam centres.

Driving instructors’ expectations influenced by gender stereotypes

We set out to investigate the role of gender stereotypes in driving licence access. Driving-related stereotypes among teenagers and adults have been studied by psychologists. They are based on an essentialist view, in which driving abilities and risk-taking at the wheel are directly related to biological sex. Furthermore, studies have shown that gender stereotypes around driving licences were used by employers, for whom a motorcycle licence, for example, says just as much about a candidate’s gender as it does about their mobility.

The influence of gender stereotypes – both generally and in specific relation to driving – has been suggested as a potential factor to explain the differences in the pass rate for the licence B practical exam (car or van). These stereotypes can be defined as social beliefs about what it means to be a man or a woman in a given society, and what is valued for each gender in terms of physical appearance, behaviour, interests, psychological traits, social relations, and occupation.

Stereotypes about women drivers are based on a social belief that women cannot handle stressful situations that require fast decision-making, such as those on the road. Conversely, men are thought to have a natural ability for driving, associated with risk-taking and rule-breaking behaviour. In this way, men are considered the prototypical driver, with female drivers on the other side of the spectrum.

These stereotypes can also influence the performance of individuals. Scientific literature on the threatening effects of stereotypes raise the hypothesis that, during an evaluated task highlighting a negative stereotype about a particular group will have a direct effect on members of the group. This phenomenon has been studied in-depth in the performance of girls in mathematics and has recently been demonstrated among women in the context of driving a car. Studies show that activating negative stereotypes about female drivers when a woman is at the wheel disrupts their performance.

Gender stereotypes also create different expectations and practices among instructors depending on the gender of the learner. This phenomenon, known as gender socialisation, has already been studied in educational practices in parents as well as in teachers. Even so, there is no study that we know of on the effect of the learner’s gender on the expectations and behaviour of instructors and examiners in the field of driving.

Testing driving schools

To explore this hypothesis, we carried out an experiment using correspondence testing. The aim of the test was to identify any differences in treatment between how female and male candidates are prepared to sit the driving exam by driving schools. The goal was to identify whether gender stereotypes around driving ability that may increase difficulties in learning to drive and passing the exam are perpetuated by driving instruction bodies.

We chose a very simple test protocol, whereby a pair of candidates, similar in all ways except for their gender, requested information from the same driving school. First of all, we created two fictional identities of candidates preparing to obtain their driving licence, a girl and a boy, 21 years old, with very common French names (Thomas Bernard and Léa Martin).

We wrote two messages requesting information from driving schools regarding the cost of lessons or the number of hours necessary. Each message was sent either by Thomas and Léa, so that each driving school would receive two messages that were different but equivalent.

Then we created a data base of driving schools that was representative on a national scale, by randomly selecting 500 establishments from the 13,500 companies registered under the specific APE code – NAF 8553Z in France.

We ended up with a sample of 176 driving schools spread out across France. The results of the study show that women were more likely to obtain information about the number of hours, but also that that number was more likely to be higher. On average, driving schools recommended nearly two additional hours of driving lessons for woman compared to men.

In conclusion, it seems that the learner’s gender does influence the instructor’s evaluation of them, before the learning phase even starts, leading them to determine the duration and content of instruction depending on common social beliefs about male and female drivers.

Given that these practices have damaging consequences on women’s access to driving and therefore, on their social and professional integration, regulatory intervention is required. In the field of discrimination, many different options for public action exist, including a reminder of the legal framework and the principle of equality of candidates, road mobility, and training and awareness-raising initiatives for driving schools, which are government-certified structures.