The Inaugural National Women’s Bicycling Summit

The first National Women’s Bicycling Summit took place last week in Long Beach, California. It was tacked on to the Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference and drew some of the same participants, a bunch of new faces and whole lot of positive energy.

This summit provided women cycling advocates the opportunity to talk about topics that aren’t often programmed into bicycle conferences. The question driving the summit was: What do we need to do on a national level to get more gender equality in the bicycling world? Specific break-out topics in this year’s conference included family biking, equity, marketing, and participating in the political process.

The energy and connections built in this first national women’s bicycling summit will lead to more organized discussions on these topics in conferences to come. The goal: By 2025, 50 percent of U.S. cyclists will be women.