Mother of Invention
How Good Ideas Get Ignored In a World Built for Men
An illuminating and maddening examination of how gender bias has skewed innovation, technology, history and work.
It all starts with a rolling suitcase.
The wheel was invented some 5,000 years ago, and the modern suitcase in the mid-nineteenth century, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that someone successfully married the two. What was the hold up? For writer and journalist Katrine Marçal, the answer is both shocking and simple: because "real men" carried their bags, no matter how heavy. There were rolling suitcases before the '70s, but they were marketed as a niche product for (the presumably few) women travelling alone, and the wheeled suitcase wasn't "invented" until it was no longer threatening to masculinity.
Mother of Invention…
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February 7, 2023KATRINE MARÇAL is a Swedish writer, journalist and correspondent for a Swedish daily newspaper. Her first book, Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner? was shortlisted for the August Prize and won the Lagercrantzen Award. She lives in London.
