In September 1915, Sara Bard Field , driver Maria Kindberg , and machinist Ingeborg Kindstedt drove across the US in an Overland car.
This outing proved to be the first of many during the early 20th century that smashed barriers for women seeking greater independence. In those days, women were often treated as little better than serfs, unable to walk around in a city alone. Sometimes, it was the harassment. Other times, it was assumptions that a woman walking the street must be a prostitute.
The car would soon prove useful for the next fight after freedom of movement: the right to vote. Suffragettes took a famous trip across the United States in 1915 using improved ICE technology to show that women were every bit as capable as men. Keep in mind that this was several years before even the United States military tried to take a convoy across the whole continent by car, so this was an extremely gutsy move. Road conditions were iffy at best and deadly at worst in those days.