Why Aren’t More Women Riding Citi Bikes?

It’s an interesting question, why does the US have fewer female riders? The question extends beyond BikeShare or bicycle commuting to a broader range of physical activity. I think there’s merit in the appearance/pressure-to-primp theory, the safety concerns, and also the perceived time-saving advantages of other transportation modes. But I feel like these are only part of the puzzle. I’ve watched female neighbors take up bicycle commuting and not get hooked…. Sometimes I wonder if some females just don’t enjoy these sorts of sweaty sports quite so much. Bicycle commuting is hard work, especially in a hilly town like Arlington.

It’s difficult to generalize, but at least one author seems to suggest that at least some females have different perceptions of exercise. Maybe more guys are hard-wired to love it?
For many men, “working out is a sport, and they do it because it’s fun, it’s competitive, and it’s something that they’ve always done,” says Lori Incledon, author of Strength Training for Women. “For women, fitness is a superficial issue. They do it because it will help them look better.” http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/his-hers-fitness

Hard to know. Some of us with x chromosomes live for sport. It’s a high, as much mental as physical. But maybe there are simply more men on this end of the sweat-loving spectrum. However this would not explain the greater numbers of female riders in Europe. I’m not so familiar with conditions over there… for example whether things are closer together or whether the terrain is flat or hilly.

Infrastructure plays a big part of it. The perception of infrastructure and safety also plays a major role. Many people (men and women) think that riding in car traffic is dangerous. This causes them to avoid city cycling, except for the occasional weekend ride on “recreational” trails.

I guess the numbers say there is a large gender disparity, but I see a lot of people of all ages, men and women, riding around central DC. My riding has been more focused on RackSpotter lately, instead of traveling from one point to another point as efficiently and directly as possible. This means I’m doing a lot of stop-and-start riding, and a lot of very slow riding (because I’m looking for bike racks and I’m frequently riding on the sidewalks). This gives me more of an opportunity to notice who is riding.

I’m located near a delivery center that uses bike couriers (probably on a contract basis). I’d say about 95 percent of those couriers are men. But the office workers who head out on their evening commutes around 6 or 6:30 are far more mixed. It seems more like 55/45, give or take a few percentage points. It’s not a comprehensive study obviously, but that would be my educated guess, after observing cyclist patterns day after day for the past few months.

I wonder if the surveys are introducing error because they tend to reach people who think of themselves as “Cyclists” (including regular commuters, athletic cyclists and other frequent riders). Others might ride frequently but they don’t ride fast and they may think more along the lines of a Dutch rider, that riding a bike is just something they do, but it doesn’t define them.

I thought that Cabi had been showing higher participation rate for women. Anecdotally I too see more women around these days. I look forward to seeing the results of another count

Some reasons why women bike less:

• Women are more risk averse. And biking is more dangerous than driving per mile traveled, at least if you look only at accident rates. Yes, the health benefits likely outweigh the risk of accidents, but the accidents are what get people’s attention. Plus, the advertised health benefits often relate to reducing the likelihood of heart attacks, which are less frequent among women than among men during the prime bicycling years.
• Women are expected to do more about their appearance in professional situations. A man who bikes to work often thinks that wiping off with baby wipes is enough to make him presentable for the day. Women often need to rewash and restyle their hair, reapply make-up, etc.
• Women are more concerned about biking after dark, due to safety concerns. This affects not only actual biking after dark, but biking during the day if the trip home might require biking after dark.
• Women get more harassment on the streets. This includes both obvious things like catcalls and even physical attacks, and less obvious things like male drivers1/ “explaining” that what they are doing is all wrong, even when it isn’t. The “explaining” often includes yelling and cursing, which tends to make the trip less pleasant.
• Women are expected to take on more responsibilities for child care, shopping, etc. In some instances, this means not holding paid employment at all, which rules out commuting. Even if commuting is theoretically an option, for a child under a year old, the American Association of Pediatrics says they should not be carried on a bike. I know a fair number of parents who disagree with them, but this view certainly affects many parents. Even after that, a child or children adds a lot to the weight you’re needing to haul with a bicycle. Carrying a week’s worth of shopping on a bike often doesn’t work. So if you’re having to combine picking kids up from daycare and going shopping with your commute, a bike may be a less practical option. And if you have primary responsibility for housework and childcare in addition to a full-time job, the time for cycling will be more limited.
• Women are socialized to engage in more social activities. So they often go for a group exercise class, for example, rather than more solitary activities like commuter cycling. Yes, there are group rides, but people who commute daily tend to rack up more miles than people who only go on group rides.
• Women are on average less physically strong than men, and slower cyclists. So they are less likely to get bike messenger jobs, which obviously require a lot of cycling. And commuting the same distance may be a bigger challenge in terms of time for a woman than for a man.
• Bikes are often made more for men than for women. For example, smaller women may have more issues with wheel strike if the frame is smaller, but the wheel diameter is not. And even when appropriate bikes are available, bike shop employees (who tend to be male) are often less aware of women’s needs (e.g., for differently shaped saddles), so women often end up riding less comfortable bikes, which tends to discourage biking.

I don’t think that aversion to exercise is a big part of it. Looking around my gym, there are far more women than men there, even after work hours. And women are even more overrepresented in group exercise classes.

1/ For the record, I have almost never experienced a female driver doing this, but it happens to me several times a week from males.

Tania:

You might want to consider attending one of the many women-lead (ond usually women-only) rides at Phoenix Bikes. They also do mech skills training with women instructors. There’s one tomorrow night.

https://www.facebook.com/events/106986469645154/

Henry

From the article, this is a pretty interesting observation that supports the safety/infrastructure argument:

In her own research:…..On a busy weekday and on a busy London street, Ralph kept count of the bike share users she saw; less than 20 percent were women. But on the weekend, when traffic had slowed, about 40 percent of bike share users she observed at the same spot were women. “Better still, in the parks, over half of them were women,” Ralph said. “So that’s an indication that it’s not that women don’t like to bike,” it’s that safety plays a huge factor in whether or not they decide to do so.

@cvcalhoun 120097 wrote:

Women are expected to take on more responsibilities for child care, shopping, etc.

Not all of them.

@cvcalhoun 120115 wrote:

True. But we’re talking about why more men than women bicycle, so averages count.

Women are on average expected to take on more responsibilities for child care, shopping, etc.

There. Fixed.