When we talk about women’s cycling, we often focus on gender rather than other forms of their identities. Women’s barriers to cycling are shaped largely by gender oppression, including gendered expectations of child rearing, fear of public spaces and the threat of harassment, and an underrepresentation of women cyclists leading to isolation from the cycling community. For women, these barriers into cycling are an extension of larger social and cultural dynamics. When gender and other identities of race, class, and other marginalized identities intersect, cycling spaces reinforces these systemic forms of oppression and inequality. In order to increase bike ridership among women and women of color, we must consider the exclusionary and unequal spaces and access they face.
Mainstream, white, cisgender, able-bodied, and middle-class, heterosexual liberal feminism has always been the center of mainstream feminism and women’s cycling empowerment. Under this, the cultural framework of historical feminist movements for gender equality has long perpetuated “the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members, often fail to represent them,” says Kimberle Crenshaw.
This kind of systemic erasure is not unique to women of color. Women of color within LGBTQ movements, women within immigration movements, trans women within feminist movements, poor women within movements for reproductive freedom, women with disabilities within movements against police brutality, and the list goes on. These constituents all face significant vulnerabilities that are unique to their experience and warrant specific policy solutions and acknowledgement.
Kimberlé Crenshaw first coined the term “intersectionality” nearly three decades ago in an attempt to “make feminism, anti-racist activism, and anti-discrimination law do what [she] thought they should — highlight the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppression were experienced so that the problems would be easier to discuss and understand.” In introducing the term “intersectionality,” Crenshaw hoped to shed light on the experiences of black women within movements for gender and racial equality.
Adopting an intersectional approach isn’t just about being “politically correct” or perpetuating “identity politics.” This inclusive lens can make the difference between life and death for women in public spaces. How we address issues like street harassment, for instance, doesn’t just matter to all women, it matters especially to trans women, who experience not only more harassment, but significantly higher rates of assault than other women. Half of the 28,000 transgender respondents in the 2015 National Center for Transgender Equality survey were sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, and 9 percent were physically attacked because of their trans identity. If we erase the significant differences in experience for trans women and “all women,” then those populations who need our support most won’t necessarily get it.
Many women of color speak of their experiences not only as women but also as Black, Latina, Asian, or Native women. These identities cannot be separated, and in some instances, race is more salient that gender. No matter how much empowerment we try to help women draw from their womanhood to cycle for the love of cycling, the construction of gender and race identity cannot be separated from their experiences in cycling spaces.
For women, our experiences in cycling is an extension of larger social and cultural dynamics. When we look at theories of spatial inequality we find that women are acutely impacted in their use of public space by fear of violence and harassment. Gill Valentine calls the inhibitive nature of women fearing crime in public spaces the “geography of fear” in her book (1989). This concept is illustrated concisely when a Brown or Black woman says that she decides where to bike based on her how she feels unsafe and restricted in her movement when choosing where to or not bike in certain neighborhoods at night. When women must consider where it is dangerous for them to bike, they often choose to avoid certain neighborhoods, or biking, altogether.
Cycling culture is also embedded as masculine spaces, essentially as elite, white, male, fit, hipster or lycra clad archetypes, that exclude marginalized cyclists. The dominant image of physical domination of space or mountains, aggression, speed, power, risk, KOMs, expensive carbon bikes, The Rules – maintains that cycling culture is accessible to certain men while fostering unwelcome and exclusionary cycling spaces to women.
Due to their heightened visibility when biking, women experience aggression from male cyclists as a form of masculine domination of bike lanes and bike spaces. Furthermore, women are sometimes discriminated against in bike shops and cycling clubs. Women’s bodies are subjected to the male gaze, scrutiny, and harassment merely by riding their bikes. From a lifetime of gendered experiences, women have a perception of threat, meaning they fear crime, violence, or harassment, which translates to fear in public spaces; this is no different while cycling.
Furthermore, underrepresentation of cyclists of color indicates a larger demographic difference in cycling, and in fact implicates racial discrimination as shaping the resulting barriers to cycling. Women of color specifically often feel scrutinized as women cyclists when media images are controlled with femininities and color. Meaning, that when women in media are represented as hyper feminine, thin, and white, it compounds to awareness that they do not fit the mold of an “average” cyclists. Already women of color have awareness of their racial status but when institutional spaces like the media or sport exclude them from bike culture, their underrepresentation perpetuates inequality for them when they don’t see themselves in numbers when entering cycling spaces.
Public spaces today are highly politicized. When cities decide to chooses public planning without regard of the needs of women and communities of color, they further imbed gender and racial exclusion into the cycling spaces. By not facilitating change and resources for marginalized groups, cities sends a message to these populations that it will not design the city for their diverse needs. Not only do marginalized cyclists have to face the day-to-day interpersonal barriers in cycling from the bike culture, they also have to navigate being physically carved out of it or excluded by design.
The call of this post is the integration and participation of a diverse range of inclusivity in representation, planning, and activism and a space for dialogue that takes into account characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, age, religion and disability, among others, into consideration.
Women and POC will continue to cycle in face of significant barriers. Despite the many disparities and barriers, they will continue to be optimistic about cycling and the potential for changes that would make cycling more inclusive. Still cities and bike culture have a lot to do and we all have a responsibility to make cycling welcoming to each other. Our collective goal, therefore, should be to create inclusive platforms where knowledge and ideas strive to achieve a cycling life that is free from any kind of discrimination.
Image: Lonely Planet