APPCG gather in Westminster for Women and Cycling discussion
Posted on in Business News , Cycles News , Political News
On Tuesday 29th November the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group (APPCG) brought together a number of speakers to share their views and experiences of women and cycling.
Click on the links to see the full presentations.
Dr Rachel Aldred, from the University of Westminster shared academic research on why women do not cycle. By comparing the UK to the Netherlands, where women actually have a higher mode share than men, suggests the current environment for cycling in the UK is particularly off-putting to women as they generally prefer to cycle away from motorised traffic. Evidence from the Netherlands shows that good infrastructure does equal more women cycling.
Hannah Chivers, Community Cycle Clubs Project Manager for Cycling UK discussed how a tailored approach encourages more women from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities to cycle. Chivers stressed that it's important to work with the community to understand their specific needs and interests when encouraging cycling. For example, one group of Pakistani heritage women wanted access to bikes and training, while a similar group in a different area were more concerned about protecting their religious modesty.
Philippa Robb, lead cycle instructor at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea shared details of her programme provided by her local council designed to encourage more women to get on their bikes. Many of those who start cycling with the project subsequently take it up independently and make local journeys by bike.
Helen Hiley, Senior Coaching and Education Officer at British Cycling, talked about #weride, an initiative to get 1 million more women involved with cycling by 2020. Since launching the Breeze programme five years ago, British Cycling has engaged with 87,000 female cyclists and there has been a 70/% increase in qualified female coaches.
Emily Chappell, introduced the Adventure Syndicate - a collective of extraordinary cyclists who happen to be women and who aim to challenge what others think they are capable of. She believes that if you challenge women's assumptions about what they can do, it will be a win-win for everyone.
Samantha McClary helped to found pedElle, group of women in the property industry who take part in cycling events. Within the property world, cycling is a valuable networking opportunity - one that many women were missing out on by not riding. By providing a safe and attractive environment for women they could make use of cycling as a valuable business tool.
Sheridan Piggott of York Bike Belles has welcomed 7,000 people to her community project. They organise fun activities that help to encourage women to ride, such as the recent illuminated bike ride, encouraging people to decorate bikes with bright lights and ride through the streets of York. They also provide female-friendly bike maintenance workshops with women mechanics where possible top give riders the confidence they need to not only ride their bikes but also look after them.
Katyja Leyendecker, PhD researcher in Architecture and Built Environment at Northumbria University focused her talk on the fact that it's not just women who aren't cycling, but everyone. Echoing the thoughts of Dr Aldred earlier in the day Leyendecker suggests that street design currently stops both genders from cycling in the UK, compared to countries such as the Netherlands. She suggest the focus should be on 'interested but concerned' groups who would be interested in cycling but for the lack of segregated infrastructure to service their needs.
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Nigel Roberts, Managing Director of Trek Bikes UK spoke about making the retail sector accessible for women, who are currently underrepresented. Trek University, a training course for bike shop employees, has a module on how to make women feel more catered for in shops. The company also tracks which products are selling to which genders and encourage shops to employ more women. Trek has a wide range of women's bikes and encourages women to demo them. Products arranged together rather than spread around the shop also engages more with the way women tend to shop.
Claudia Corrigan, Principal Cycling Programme Officer at Transport for London, discussed their target to reach 1.5million cycle trips every day in London through proper segregation, better design, infrastructure i.e. Cycle Superhighways and programmes to support more cyclists such as the Breeze network.
