Why Don’t More Women Cycle in the UK?

This was the question being asked at the inaugural  Women and Cycling Conference held in York last week, as the city got underway for its first Tour de Yorkshire.

So why a conference in the first place? posed City of York Council Chief Executive and fellow keen cyclist Kersten England.  Well, in the UK on average, men make three times as many cycle journeys as women; starkly contrasting with Holland where the majority (52%) of cycle trips are made by women, which in turn proves that this disparity in the UK can be overcome.

And so thinking caps were on as the Women and Cycling conference bought together a huge cross-section of representatives for women cycling across the UK, creating a platform for ideas and debate on the under-representation of women in the teams which plan, promote and support cycling and cycle infrastructure, the differences between perceived barriers to women cycling and men cycling, and addressing the under-representation of women within the retail environment.

It was fascinating to be given this platform from which to discuss the barriers to women cycling and to hear what strategies were being put in place to overcome them.  As a woman who is relatively new to cycling herself I was able to impart some of my own experience and first-hand fears with cycling and it cemented for me the work that we are doing to try and improve safety in real terms and the perceptions of safety.

Implementing safety improvements to cycling in terms of both infrastructure and technology (one lady lamented that there didn’t appear to be anything new in the way of safety technology for cyclists since the polystyrene helmet, before I presented a Cycle Alert tag) appears to be of paramount importance to encourage increased cycling.

This was reinforced by TfL Senior Planner Claudia Corrigan who relayed that the premeditated concerns over cycling ability and lack of fitness (which make up 12% and 14% of deterring factors to cycling respectively) are hugely overshadowed by concerns about safety, weighing in at 71%.

Claudia, herself, was knocked off her bike by an HGV but fortunately survived to tell the tale and has since become a passionate advocate of making HGVs safer.

Safety aside, there were a whole host of other hurdles that I had had first-hand experience of but had confined to my subconscious; it was only during these open discussions on women and cycling that they reared their head and I saw them for what they were….ugly little monsters that had prevented me from taking part in much sport at all until these last couple of years where age has made me a little more comfortable in my own skin.

Tackling the monsters - the “I have to look a certain way”; “sweat isn’t feminine”; “I’m not an athlete therefore I am embarrassed to try” type critters - is the hugely successful #thisgirlcan campaign from Sport England, presented to us on the day by Regional Strategic Lead, Judith Rusmussen.  It’s the video I shall leave you with, it’s one I never get tired of, it’s one that makes me want to get up and go and I hope you enjoy as much as I do. 🙂