On International Women’s Day, a look at why far fewer women than men ride bikes, and how we can fix this.
In some countries like Denmark, you see lots of women on bikes. In other countries, not so much. As part of their International Women’s day coverage, Tiffany Lam wrote in the Guardian about How to get more women cycling in cities, because “To cut greenhouse gas emissions we need to increase cyclist numbers and that means getting more women on their bikes.”
Transportation accounts for up to one-third of greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s biggest cities and traffic is the largest source of toxic air pollution. To create sustainable, healthy and liveable cities, we need to increase the number of cyclists on our streets, and that means getting more women on their bikes. In San Francisco, only 29% of cyclists are women; in Barcelona, there are three male cyclists for every female cyclist; in London, 37% of cyclists are female.
She mentions the need for better infrastructure and secure parking, prioritizing women’s safety, and looking at the data more carefully; women have different riding patterns- in one example from San Francisco, men dominated in peak commuting times, but “when the city looked at the gender-disaggregated data, they discovered that far more women were using the routes for their commute than previously thought, but were choosing to travel outside peak hours when the roads and cycle lanes were quieter.”
© Yvonne bambrick / Photo credit Tammy Thorne, dandyhorsemagazine.com