This Week in the Mercury
Monday, September 28, 2009
Bikes Fewer Portland Women than Men Ride Bikes. Why?
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 2:07 PM
Last week's announcement that Portland is America's #1 bike commute city created a lot of discussion on the blog, so check out this statistical tidbit: there's a roughly 3 percent bike gender split among Portland bike commuters. In 2008, 7.3 percent of Portland males reported their bikes are their primary mode of transportation to work compared to 4.4 percent of women.
This is a nationwide trend that likely has a lot of roots and Portland has recently started organizing women on bikes promotion programs. I called up two female bike advocates to see what they thought creates the biking gender split.
- Via Sprockettes.org
- FACT! Women outnumber men on tiny pink and/or blue bicycles 2:1
Bicycle Transportation Alliance staffer Steph Noll is coordinating this year's bike commute challenge and attributes the gender split mostly to safety concerns. "The conventional wisdom is that women identify themselves as more concerned about safety. Conditions have to feel safer for women to bike," says Noll, identifying infrastructure like bike lanes and separate bike boulevards as key to getting more women on bikes. "There’s a lot of situations where people are just as safe riding in traffic, but they don’t feel safe so they’re not going to try it."
In places without many bike lanes or good paths, women can get turned off to biking because it requires a more aggressive attitude, says Noll. "Years ago in any major American city you had to feel tough and aggressive to bike in any major American city and assert yourself on the road."
The Mayor's Transportation Director Catherine Ciarlo, who bikes with her four and seven year old kids on an Xtracycle, points out child-rearing duties as a factor keeping women off bikes. "Women are often tasked with more household and child responsibilities, which means multiple trips and different kinds of bikes and different kinds of arrangements. It’s kind of a supernatural feat to make it work by bike and I mostly do, but there aren’t a lot of models out there to make that easy," says Ciarlo. Not only do you need a bike that can safety fit your kid, but to see other women riding bikes, too. "Picturing yourself doing it is easier because someone else who’s perfectly normal is doing it."
Update 2:43 pm— A couple readers sent along this interesting Scientific American article about women on bikes. It quotes a PSU researcher and notes that the U.S. biking gender split stands in contrast to biking demographics in Europe.
P.S. The crappy graph on last week's post about commuting made it look like the number of people using public transit had dropped. The numbers from the Census show that 12.7 percent of Portlanders used primarily public transit to get to work in 1998 compared to 13.4 percent in 2008. Carpooling, though, dropped two percent and driving alone fell from 68.6 percent to 64.6 percent. Just FYI.
Showing 1-20 of 20
I've got some survey data on one household that might prove illuminating:
My household can report that men commute to work by bike way more often than women because women have no space at their office to keep clothes, or to take a shower. Men have plenty of space to change clothes at work, and just keep some underarm deoderant in their desk.
Household women also have to go to work "at the crack of fucking dawn," skewing the results somewhat from men's "whenever the fuck I want" work-report time.
So your conclusions are that 1) women aren't brave enough and 2) they're taking care of the kids? That made me laugh. I guess the ones that aren't housemoms don't ride bikes because it's hard to pedal with stripper shoes?
Survey 'data?'
Why do women have no space but men do?
Ever seen those plush women's lounge restrooms?
Who has a "whenever the fuck I want" work report time and why is it defined by gender?
@D - C'mon, fire up a brain cell. Those are specific reasons why he rides and his wife doesn't. He didn't really mean they were universal facts. It was a funny post.
That's right, the women are smarter.
Hey - so was mine. They have chaise lounges in there, I'm pretty sure.
Bicycling in stripper shoes is super easy.
Jennifer Dill also recently published a report showing how bike facilities are used by different people. Among her findings was that women were likely to bike much farther out of their way to use a bike lane/bike trail (aka "safer-feeling") route than men, and the report implies that building more of these facilities would encourage more women to take to the roads with two wheels instead of four and thus encourage a better mode split. Interesting stuff.
It is obvious from that picture that women are more willing to bike-pool.
Hm. I also bike by Xtracycle, with my 4 and 7 year old. Seriously. Every day. And it's definitely not easy -- I drop the kids at day care before I go to work, and then pick them up again after. My experience is that moms are more often the ones doing this, so I could see that being a barrier to bicycle commuting.
But, as Reymont mentioned, not all women have kid issues. I do think the clothing issues are more difficult for women than for men, especially in more formal work environments. I'm lucky enough to be able to dress casually.
Safety isn't really an issue for me. I don't feel particularly unsafe most of the time, and I don't think I worry about it any more than male cyclists do. If I had to take my kids on busy streets, I might feel differently. And I *do* know other women who think it isn't safe. One told me she was thinking about riding to work, but her husband didn't want her to do it because he didn't think riding down SE 122nd was safe.
One thing I've noticed is a lot fewer women wear helmets than men.
I've recently starting being a full-time bicycle commuter, and I'm very happy with my Xtracycle and front hub electric motor - I can haul the things I need for work (giant stack of hula hoops, or bags of yarn and knitted samples), a full change of clothing (including my wet weather gear), my normal shoulder bag, plus laptop, and an armful of various locking mechanisms.... and if I just had a regular bike with a couple of panniers, I couldn't do it. In a few years, I'm planning to add kids to the mix (including reworking the hoop rack so it doesn't lean too far into the snapdeck's area where the kids will be)... and I'm guessing that the couple years without will be good practice!
I split my ride between bike routes and non... and definitely feel my stress level go up when I'm in traffic due to a heightened awareness of safety (or my perceived lack thereof)... and the bike route ride is lovely and relaxing, but I'm still feeling a dent in the 'personal time' that I used to have on the bus, to read or knit or chill.
I agree with the posters above talking about needing to see more women on bikes for the idea to sink in that it is do-able. The one thing I haven't figured out yet, is how I'll be biking with a newborn before the age that ze can use a baby seat. Anyone?
@kmcdade:
What do you do in the winter? Do you lug your kids around in the rain?
I'm female and have many friends (in various places around the country) who commute by bike. Every single person I know who commutes by bike has been in an accident at one point-some far more serious than others. I even have a friend who was hit by another cyclist on a bike only path (broke her collarbone). The interacting with cars factor definitely keeps me off my bike and on public transit instead because it doesn't seem like a "maybe" you'll get hit, but more like "when".
How about showing a photo of a mom on an Xtracycle with two kids and a load of groceries, going about her daily tasks in comfort and style?
Personally, I find the accompanying photo of a GUY on a bike with two women as his sideshow act to be really, really annoying.
Here, try a relevant photo this time. You can use one of mine:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mslaura/34690… or how about this one?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mslaura/33838…
The key word there is "comfort." I am genuinely curious what you do in January.
What makes you so sure that is a female on the far side of the bike?
Hey GLV - yes, we do bike in the winter and in the rain, using rain gear. I do only ride about half a mile with kids, then 2 miles by myself. Occasionally, I will ask the day care provider to pick them up, and then I take a bus - but this makes me late for work.
what I've noticed this summer is that there are tons of hot young women on bikes in PDX
we've been way ahead of the national curve for years now
@ mslaura
That guy happens to be the side show, as well as a good person. Apparently you are unfamiliar with the sprockettes?
Leslie and The Badgers
About Portland Mercury
RSSGoing to Seattle?
Comments (20) RSS