Cities are failing women on bikes, but we can fix it

Welcome Shifter Big Stories, sponsored by Riese & Müller, a series of videos delving into bigger, and deeper issues around urban cycling and bike commuting.

We’re looking at why, in almost every city in the world, fewer women than men ride bikes for transportation, why this matters, and what we can do about it.

A big thanks to Riese & Müller for sponsoring this year’s Big Stories. In this video, I was riding the Riese & Müller Packster 70 — it’s so fun and smooth to ride, and it hauls huge loads easily: https://www.r-m.de/en-pt/bikes/packster-70/

Thanks to Bishops Family Cycles in Victoria, B.C.: https://www.familycycles.ca/

Thanks to Cloud eBikes in Vancouver, B.C.: https://cloudebikes.ca/

In addition to those who appear in the video, I also want to shout-out Karen Labree of the Cities, Health and Active Transportation Research Lab in Victoria, B.C. for her invaluable help.

Thanks to Cailynn Klingbeil, not only for co-presenting this video, but for contributing much research and writing. She has a great newsletter about getting outdoors: https://gooutside.substack.com/

Thanks to Josh Sandulak for his videography and editing: https://www.joshsandulak.com/

Shifter Memberships are here! If you’d like some bonus content while also supporting this channel, please consider becoming a member: https://www.patreon.com/Shifter632

0:00 Meet Sukey
0:52 Defining the problem
3:30 The bicycle’s historical importance to women
5:41 Barriers facing women cycling in cities today
7:51 Why some cities have higher proportions of women riding
9:14 A potential solution: “Modalities of care.”
11:22 Visiting a city that’s making a difference

Sources:
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/healthy-living/active-transportation-how-children-getting-school.html

Gender Equity and Cycling in Canada: Background information and Literature Summary

Cycling’s Gender Gap: Breaking The Cycle of Inequality

https://ecf.com/news-and-events/news/closing-gender-gap-and-cycling
https://theconversation.com/from-walking-to-cycling-how-we-get-around-a-city-is-a-gender-equality-issue-new-research-175014

The Safety Bicycle

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515001037
https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/6/2/15641760/bicycles-helped-womens-rights
https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/campaigns-guide/women-cycling
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-25/women-bikers-need-more-bike-lanes-and-culture-change
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/london-streets-women-cycling-abuse-b2308503.html
https://lcc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1252-LCC-Womens-Cycling-Campaign-Report_FINAL_2.pdf
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/male-cyclists-of-melbourne-what-the-hell-is-your-problem-20171017-gz2igy.html
http://siliconvalleytrails.pbworks.com/f/Explaining+Gender+Difference+in+Bicycling+Behavior.pdf
https://activetravelstudies.org/article/id/1393/
https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/dp201111.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/oct/03/the-reason-fewer-us-women-cycle-than-the-dutch-is-not-what-you-think-it-is
Cycling for Sustainable Cities, edited by Ralph Buehler and John Pucher
How Cycling Can Save the World by Peter Walker
Revolutions: How Women Changed the World on Two Wheels by Hannah Ross
Urban Revolutions: A Woman’s Guide to Two-Wheeled Transportation

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[Music] I started writing grade six because when it was really cold out I would normally walk to school but walking to school it would take a long time it would get really cold so my friends and I decided that if we biked we could get there faster that’s really how it started this is Suki she’s a grade night student here in Calgary Canada and she rides her bike to school most of the year there’s a few different routes she can take and she loves it I really like the Independence that it gives me I feel like when you’re riding you can go at like your own pace at your own time and you can decide when you get to school how you get to school when you leave for school so I like the Independence that it gives [Music] me batuki is an anomaly there are not many kids like her who ride their bikes to her school it’s a similar story at other schools in Canada a recent Canadian study found that students in grades 6 to 10 only about 4% of them Rod their bikes to school and among that small percentage the number of boys who ride is at 7% compared to the number of girls at only 2% it’s not just school trips for males outnumber females that Gap is seen in cities and countries around the world women and girls make up a disproportionately low number of people who ride their bikes every day and this is a big problem that if we don’t start solving is going to hold back our cities our families and our potential for years to come [Music] hey everyone I’m Tom and I’m kayn and this is shifter a Channel about Urban cycling bike commuting and the ways we get around our cities and this is a special video today it’s a shifter big story sponsored by Reesa Mueller today we’re talking about a big problem you and I have talked about Lots something that sort of seems like an insurmountable issue the gender gap and cycling yeah it’s a big issue and we haven’t really known how to delve into it so we’re really grateful to the sponsorship of Reese and Mueller it gives us the time and the energy and the resources to dive into this they have no influence over the content but they’re sponsoring this whole series so we’re really grateful for them giving us the opportunity to really dive in in a more deep and meaningful [Music] way let’s dive in we’re going to look at the gender gap that exists in cycling and almost every country in the world [Music] where I live in Canada only a third of bike commuters are women one NGO found that men outnumber women on bikes in city after city after City from India to Kenya to Brazil the organization deems it a critical gender gap it’s one of the most Stark illustrations of gender inequity and check out this graph from the European cyclist Federation the study looked at 13 different countries and aside from a few places in Europe men outnumber women in every city this Gap is unique to Cy the numbers show that women often take public transport more than men and they walk more than men but when it comes to bikes women don’t ride as much as men and this matters a lot because when women have less access to bikes they have less access to their cities they have less access to Opportunities like jobs Education Health a discussion paper on gender and transport from the organization the oecd sums this up succinctly the difficulties faced by women with regard to their Mobility are a form of social exclusion which affects all aspects of their lives and in particular hinders the economic output and health of women well let’s take a look at the history of this let’s go back to the days when women first started cycling in big numbers let’s go all the way back to the 1880s when the Rover safety bicycle or just the safety bicycle was invented this is the first time a bike that resembles a modern bike came into the market it had two wheels of equal size and it was a much safer ride than the bikes that came previously and by the end of the 1880s it was common to see all kinds of people riding bikes for both Recreation and transportation in cities throughout Europe throughout North America and throughout the world it was mostly middle and upper class women who rode but they made up a third of the market in the UK and the US according to author Hannah Ross in her book revolutions how women changed the world on two wheels but from the early days women faced a lot of resistance and barriers to cycling and social stigma according to Ross they even face questions about their sexuality their femininity and even their moral Mor it despite all that opposition women rode bikes in droves which led to some pretty big changes in their lives and in society one example of this change is the way that women dressed many women on bikes started adopting what they called rational dress which is a more practical way of dressing instead of the big poofy dresses that were the norm they started adopting more practical things that led to developments like Bloomers or Knickerbockers basically baggy shorts that they could wear that made it easier to Pedal some of these new clothes were adop did more widely than just those on bikes including by the early suffragettes this became a part of the women’s movement bicycles were also a key part of the suff Jette movement and a bigger scale many women use bicycles to get around the city promoting their messages about women’s rights to vote US Women’s Rights campaigner Susan B Anthony actually called the bike a freedom machine and said the bike had done more to emancipate women than any one thing in history so if you take a step back and look historically at the bicycle it had a pretty big impact on the women movement not only did it Usher in the suffragette movement and change the way people dressed but it also changed the perceptions of what women could do and what they were capable of that’s pretty incredible for the humble bicycle back to today when a girl like Suki riding to school remains an anomaly why is this numerous challenges to equity and cycling exist and we’re going to take a closer look at both the barriers and the solutions globally persistent gender inequality is an issue many women and girls may not have consistent access to bicycles so they haven’t learn to ride them there may be cultural perceptions and entrenched gender Norms that restrict women from cycling and stigmatize this way of getting around there are interpersonal factors at play like beliefs attitudes skills and preferences related to physical activity transportation and safety research shows women’s concerns about traffic risks are consistently greater than those of men and they’re more likely to act as a barrier to cycling for women than men and safety is multifaceted is there a safe route without Danger from traffic or other cyclists as well as secure and well-lit bike parking at the destination then there’s the physical environment and that involves cycling infrastructure both the type and location different cycling infrastructure comes with different levels of interaction between cyclists and motor vehicles and those interactions tend to be more negative for women think about bike design if a woman is carrying kids and groceries where do they fit cargo bikes are a solution but they can be cost prohibitive given these constraints Plus lack of infrastructure for making such stops by bike cycling is often a less convenient option for women than men it also doesn’t help that women are often under represented in planning and Engineering the profession’s responsible for Designing cycling and road infrastructure and another important piece of the built environment and cycling infrastructure is social safety so personal safety from possible harassment just look at London England where less than onethird of London’s daily cyc trips are by women the city’s London cycling campaign recently conducted a survey to learn what stops women from biking in London women face frequent harassment intimidation and abuse the survey found with 93% of respondents saying drivers had used their vehicles to intimidate them and nine out of 10 women saying they had experienced verbal abuse and aggression while cycling so that’s a lot about the factors that can influence if a women’s Cycles or not yeah it’s it’s a lot it’s it’s complicated but I think the good news is that Solutions exist right we know how we can narrow that gender gap just look at the countries that have a high proportion of women riding it’s countries like the Netherlands Denmark Japan in these countries it’s normal to see not just women riding but children older adults and family units together it’s totally ordinary to wear your regular clothes and use the bike for transportation just getting where you need to go these places tend to have great safe bike infrastructure that makes it easy to choose the bike to get to where you’re going it’s not only about safe bike Lanes about other things too reduced speed limits and ways of discouraging car use there’s another piece of the puzzle in these countries that may be harder to address women May Ride More in these countries because they have more time to do so a researcher in the Netherlands found that there are policies in place that enabled women to have more time such as paid parental leave shorter work weeks less of a need to shuffle kids around the city in a car all of this led to more time for women which let them choose the bike more often but these factors don’t just fall from the sky they can be built and there’s a lot of work happening these days to expand the way we think about cycling Beyond downtown commuters um I’m Megan Winters I’m in the faculty of Health Sciences at SFU in the City’s health and act of Transportation research lab Dr Winters talks about a concept called the mobilities of care which isn’t specifically about women but it may hold the key to getting more women on bikes the way City a lot of cities have designed their cycling networks is that their focus is on getting people from where they live to their downtown offices and so that’s where the major Investments of bicycling infrastructure have been in Vancouver and in many other cities I’d emphasize that commutes are only one kind of trip that we make they might be like 30% of the trips that we make and then since Co and work from home you can just ratch that back and it might only be like 20% of the trips we want to make so in the research world in the past decade this term mobilities of care has become more apparent so whereas most Transportation Planning has looked at commute trips getting people to their work trips all of these other trips that we do uh a big umbrella of them might be called mobilities of care so that those trips are trips that have to do with supporting the daily needs of a person in a household they’re about non-paid trips and so they include things that are like getting kids to and from school and sports but also things like uh getting to the grocery store getting to the fulfill the needs of the house or taking care of Aging parents accompanying them to appointments and things like that what you want to then make sure is that the bicycle infrastructure high quality bicycle infrastructure that you provide is going to connect to those kinds of places so that might mean making sure there’s great bicycling infrastructure to the community center to the library to the stores and services as that it takes them right to the front door of those stores and services cuz often when we’re doing these kinds of mobility of care trips you might be escorting other people with you so you might have kids in toe you might have extra bags in gear with you and so making sure that people can do every link of that trip um and that they can get right to the door or destination that they need to go to is really important to see some of this in action I decided to visit a city that’s done maybe more for getting women on bikes than any city in North America this is Victoria British Columbia a provincial capital of about 400,000 people that has been building bike infrastructure at a furious Pace over the last few years but they haven’t been building bike Lanes in the traditional way hey my name is Sarah Webb I work at the city of Victoria I would absolutely say Victoria is one of the best places for women to ride their bikes for many years Victoria had a really great cycling population but it was very much focused on men uh middle-aged on road bikes um over the last several years we made a a very strong and dedicated effort to change the way our City’s uh built um both in terms of the land use side and uh the streetscape transportation infrastructure so we wanted to attract um New Riders we wanted to attract children we wanted to attract parents uh riding with ch kids so that was a part of the the Investments we’ve been making as we’ve been building out our all ages and abilities uh cycling Network um first and foremost it’s a the the infrastructure so we’ve added more protected bike Lanes uh more traffic calming interventions but along the way to we’re connecting to those places that women tend to go to and whether that be recreation centers libraries schools Grocery Stores um we’re providing those spots and end of trip amenities to make it easy to connect and Link trips but also to get there by bike and when you get there you have a great place to park so not only is Victoria seeing more Riders overall all different types of uh routes uh days of the week and and for trip purposes but we’re also seeing more women specifically get out on their bikes [Music] so it’s not about building bike lanes for commuters it’s about building a city that enables all kinds of trips that can be done without a car here’s a somewhat unexpected example so Victoria has implemented a full-time yearr round bike valet program downtown so that people can come in park their bikes for free in a safe and welcoming environment and what this has done is not just for commuters but there’s all types of people using the bike valet uh we actually served over 40,000 bikes last year in the City downtown valet and about 40% of them were cargo bikes or extended uh longtail bikes bikes that carry uh children specifically uh we have huge growth in terms of use by women by youth uh young adults uh teenagers and children and it’s really brought in a a different FL flare and vibrancy into our downtown core by having a a full-time bike valet okay let’s return now to Suki who we met at the beginning of the video so she lives here in Canada in car Centric Calgary and it makes you wonder what makes her an anomaly why is she able to ride her bike when so few others do but I think I see some of the conditions on her ride that we also saw in some of those High cycling countries that we talked about earlier for sure for sure she has h a protected route if she rides along the river or if she’s riding in residential areas there’s a low speed limit uh and she also sort of has that cycling culture on a on a mic level in in her life she has family members who cycle it’s sort of seen as a legitimate and ordinary form of Transport for her so Suki doesn’t see herself as an anomaly right she just loves the joy and the freedom that comes with riding a bike I feel like in the morning it’s really nice to ride because it gives you like a little bit of freshness before school obviously like being outside before school is good for you because it kind of clears your mind more so I feel like riding clears my mind and gets me ready for the school day the people that I know that ride is pretty balanced between male and female I don’t really think of gender when it comes to cycling and imagine if more people if more women girls were able to experience that too thanks for watching we’ll see you next time [Music]