From Henry Ford to Elon Musk, it’s at all times males that appear to get the glory within the historical past of the auto. However now Ford itself is utilizing the event of Worldwide Ladies’s Day and Ladies’s Historical past Month to shine a highlight on the important contribution the feminine intercourse has made to the improvement of the automotive.

Referred to as the Ford Explorer “Males’s Solely Version” this make-believe SUV stars in a brief spoof advert that begins by giving us the impression that it’s similar to every other particular version mannequin. That’s till Breaking Dangerous’s Bryan Cranston explains that the Explorer comes with out windshield wipers, a heater, flip indicators, rear-view mirror or GPS system as a result of it’s lacking all of the essential elements we take without any consideration day by day, and which had been developed by girls.

The movie is a part of a marketing campaign Ford is operating all through March to focus on the contribution girls have made, and are nonetheless making, to vehicles world wide. The corporate is celebrating these achievements on its ford.com web site and social media channels the place it can remind us of vital feminine engineers from the previous, and introduce us to a number of present innovators working throughout the corporate in roles as various as trend-spotting, exterior design and {hardware} integration.

Associated: Facelifted 2024 Ford Explorer Spied With Revised Styling And New Tech

Ford’s Heritage Vault archive, in the meantime, is celebrating Ladies’s Historical past Month with a collection of merchandise designed and engineered by girls, together with the 1994 Ford Mustang, the 1975 Ford Granada, and the 1999 Ford Windstar.

What’s unlikely to advantage a point out within the marketing campaign is that girls weren’t at all times so valued within the Ford empire. Again in 1968 feminine stitching machine operators employed to make automotive seats at Ford’s Dagenham plant within the UK went on strike to protest at being paid lower than males working in different areas of the manufacturing facility. The strike, which was made right into a film, Made in Dagenham, in 2010, ended after three weeks when the ladies had been granted a pay improve, however the episode was instrumental within the passing of Britain’s Equal Pay Act in 1970.

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