Did you know ? Without the patriarchy we would have had mobile suitcases much sooner

We have known the wheel for millennia yet human beings have never thought of putting it on wheels on the suitcase that in the 20th century.

It is from this observation half scared and half amused Swedish author Katrine Marçal’s book begins It’s a girl’s idea! How the world is closing the door on women’s ideaspublished by Otherwise last October.

She analyzes how sexism and gender stereotypes forged but also provoked innovations certain delays and certain errors, how, if we had been able to put aside prejudices at the right time, progress and progress could have been made.

The failure of the rolling suitcase

It was a certain Bernard Sadow who, after thinking of attaching small wheels to his suitcases, filed a patent for his invention in 1972:

“When Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins returned to Earth, they grabbed their suitcases by the handle, carrying them as they had done since the invention of the modern suitcase in the mid-nineteenth century.

So the question isn’t why Bernard Sadow came up with the idea that suitcases needed wheels, the real question is why didn’t this idea come to us sooner? »

Before this good old Bernard Sadow, however, others had tried without meeting a resounding success.

In the 1940s, in England, two inventors came up with a device of belts and wheels allowing you to pull your suitcase. Ditto for Sylvan Goldman in the United States, who ten years earlier had imagined a shopping trolley on wheels: not even the object had met his audience.

In the 60s, Bernard Sadow it also fails with its revolutionary invention, and for good reason: the company is simply not ready, explains Katherine Marçal. The wheeled suitcase makes buyers smile more than convince.

“We generally reject new ideas if we perceive them as too ‘simple’ or ‘obvious'” then explains the author to justify the failure.

Roulette too obvious… but not only

But it’s not just the simplicity of roulette move a heavy object into play. It’s also about gender norms.

Allowing her to roll her suitcase effortlessly, the man was deprived of demonstrating his strength, and therefore of his masculinity. How to show gallantry without carrying your wife’s luggage with her big muscles? How to show his place as head of the family without being able to carry the weight of the whole family on his solid shoulders?

Yes, these small, seemingly harmless wheels had a serious emasculating power…

Especially since the arrival of the wheeled suitcase allows women to move around independently and without anyone’s help. A true proof of emancipation accompanying a revolution for the luggage market.

“How could this rather casual notion that ‘a real man carries his own suitcase’ have been strong enough to counter what we now consider an obvious innovation?

How could our dominant view of manhood be narrower than the market’s desire to make money?

And how could the rudimentary idea that men have to carry heavy things blind us to the point of not seeing the potential of a product capable of transforming an entire global industry?

This is how, through the invention of the wheeled suitcase as we know it today, Katrine Marçal defends the idea that innovation must also be viewed through the prism of societal evolution.

“The ability to change a way of thinking is the missing ingredient for a rolling suitcase to become a reality. It was necessary to be able to imagine male consumers who prefer comfort over fatigue, as well as women who travel alone. Only then could the wheeled suitcase stand out for what it was: a clear innovation. »

Want to know more about these great advances? Katrine Marçal’s book is full of anecdotes and stories to understand the great contemporary progress in the light of the genre.

Photo credit: Daria Shetsova via Pexels

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