Toronto’s Bad Girls Bike Club seeks to get more women on bikes
"It's such a traditionally male-dominated industry, and women are just slowly beginning to make their way into it"
There can be sexism in cycling, whether it takes the form of a smug bike-shop attitude or something worse.
The Bad Girls Bike Club, described by the CBC as a Toronto cycling club intended to serve female-identifying youth, hopes to do away with those ride-spoiling attitudes—or at least provide a safe, dedicated space for those commonly affected by them. The club leads rides and workshops for its members.
In the CBC’s report, Claire McFarlane, one of the club’s co-founders, spoke about one of her first encounters with gender-based discrimination in cycling. She said it happened when she had a problem with her rear wheel and took it to a local bike shop to have it looked at. “They disregarded my opinion,” she said, “and told me, ‘No, there’s nothing wrong with this,’ and they sent me on my way.” Eventually, she had to go back, and through a process of convincing, eventually got mechanics to fix what she had told them all along was a real problem.
That, however, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what women have to deal with in cycling, McFarlane said.
“It’s such a traditionally male-dominated industry, and women are just slowly beginning to make their way into it,” she said. Even at the unnamed bike shop where she makes her living, she says that customers often want to talk to a male mechanic and not her.
“[Customers] will come in and I’ll try to explain something to them and they won’t take my word,” she said. “They’ll go speak to my male colleagues and get the same answers.”
Though issues of sexism in cycling will likely require a long process of untangling, the idea of dedicated group rides and workshops for female-identifying youth is meant to move that process along, and also to get more women riding.
