WABA Forum for Female Cyclists

Along with our website overhaul and creation of the WABA Forums, WABA has created a forum just for women’s cycling issues.  This is not to suggest that women are unwelcome on any other part of the forum.  But I do think there are certain issues that female cyclists deal with that male cyclists do not necessarily face in the same manner, and female cyclists should have  a place to discuss these issues. Admittedly, I’m generalizing here (having only experienced the male side of that equation).  But I do know from being married to a female cyclist that there are differences.  From certain types of harassment while riding to equipment design and clothing, there are some challenges of biking that are gender-specific, and we wanted to provide a place for those.  So if you’re interested in the age-old question “Why do they put a seat with a man’s-anatomy-placed-cutout on a step-through bike marketed to women?” you now have a place to ask it. We want to make cycling accessible to everyone, and we’re not the only ones working to ensure that women are welcomed in the cycling community.  We want to make this forum a place for our local bike shops to tout their offerings for women as well. And if you’re wondering, our most recent numbers show that roughly 30% of our members and 40% of our Facebook users are female.  So we know that there are committed, experienced female cyclists among our ranks with knowledge to share. So please take a minute to visit the Woman’s Forum, introduce yourself, and let your fellow users know what resources you have to offer, or what questions you’d like addressed. (To get things started, the first topic is from WABA’s own Chantal Buchser.  The next topic includes information from Angela at Revolution Cycles and from Erik from BicycleSPACE.  I know that they are both focused on engaging more female cyclists and providing the programming and merchandising to do so, so I emailed each of them asking what they were working on.  Rather than trying to fold their responses into the blog, I’ve posted them directly into the forum.)