Statistics Alone Paint an Incomplete Picture of Women and Bicycles

"I think [the bicycle] has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can't get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."  -- Susan B. Anthony, 1896.

Photo: richardmasoner.

According to the statistics, there is a dramatic imbalance in bike riding along gender lines, with men using the bicycle as a primary means of transportation at a rate more than double that for women. 

Data from the 2008 US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey found that 2.7 percent of San Francisco's population commutes to work by bike. The survey reports that 3.7 percent of men ride to work, while only 1.6 percent of women do. A 2009 study in Scientific American found that men's cycling trips surpass women's by at least 2:1. In the competitive arena, 87 percent of competitive cyclists are male, according to 2009's active member demographic conducted by USA Cycling. 

These bicycle commute numbers also skew pretty far from commute rates by other modes. As noted in a Transportation Research Board survey by Susan Handy, a professor of environmental science at the University of California, Davis, "82 percent of the bicycle commuters were men and 21 percent were students, compared to 54 percent and 11 percent of all commuters, respectively." 

So what do these numbers mean about bicycling in the Bay Area?

Many researchers, including Handy, believe the presence of
women on bicycles is an important indicator of how bike-friendly a city
is. Research shows the better a city's bike infrastructure, the more
commuters there are, including more women, seniors, riders with special
needs and children. 

Ironically, many of the people working hardest to create more bike
infrastructure in the Bay Area are women, including the directors of
five bicycle coalitions: The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC),
Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC), Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition
(SCBC), and Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC), and Walk Oakland
Bike Oakland (WOBO).

Many of these women leaders don't see gender, theirs
or among cyclists in general, as having much to do with the coalition's
goals and projects. 

Christine Culver, the Executive Director of the SCBC, says that
while SCBC is working hard to make streets more attractive to all
riders, they aren't doing anything specifically catered to women. 

"I guess I just don't see the divide between men and women as that
significant or worth mentioning," says Culver. "I think by making the
divide a bigger deal than it is just perpetuates the stereotype that
bikes are for men." 

Culver notes, however, that there are a number of teams and bike
classes in Sonoma County that are geared toward women, including Team
Speed Queen, Nimble Training, and Early Bird Women's Developmental
Cycling Team. 

Furthermore, the Census statistics don't necessarily match up
with coalition membership.

"Based on a survey we did of our members and fans in February 2010,
55 percent are women," said WOBO's Executive Director Cassie Rohrbach. "For the most part at
WOBO, we do not target our events, programs or campaigns specifically at
women. Our goal is that as we grow, we represent the diversity of
Oakland, including the geographic, racial, cultural, socio-economic, age
and gender diversity of this city."   

WOBO does have Women's Rides every second Sunday of the month. They
also offer "Kidical Mass" (I bet you say that out loud after reading
this) which gets families out and about.

For the SFBC, the focus on women cyclists is part of the larger
effort to increase safety in the streets.  

"The SFBC has done a few
things to focus specifically on women cyclists -- we have done a
women-only urban cycling workshop, and have also organized cultural
history tours with topics of interest to women," said Renee
Rivera, SFBC's Acting Executive Director.

"The top
priority for the SFBC is to work with the city on improving our streets,
and increasing bike ridership overall, to make the streets safer for
everybody, and through doing that I believe that women will feel safer
and more confident to bike."

Personally, as a woman and a regular cyclist, I think the indicators don't adequately match the conditions on the streets. Everywhere I go, I see women riding and it makes the

numbers hard to believe. What's more, Census commute statistics can't adequately measure the
participation of women in Bay Area bicycle culture.

Bikes and the City, a regular online source for bicycle news and fun, recently started a series
in conjunction with Bike NOPA called "Women Who Bike," which chronicles the
experience of an array of woman and their pedal-powered locomotion. Velo Vogue, another local blog, documents the growing
trend of Cyclic Chic here and in cities worldwide. And how could you not be
inspired to ride (no matter your gender) after watching The Derailleurs perform a
scintillating routine?

I live in the Mission and I've commuted to work in SOMA for two years by bike. Now, at eight months pregnant, I work from home but still ride my bike to run errands. My fiance and I are investigating bike seats for kids. We're having a girl.

So if the statisticians out there are concerned, that will be one more female riding a bicycle.