I’ve worked in the bike industry since 2019 and I joined BikeRadar in 2021. In the last three years, I’ve been to quite a few trade shows. This might be because I’m comfortable putting together a story crouched by the only available plug socket or because few of my colleagues fancy traipsing around stands hearing about new inner tubes – a level of masochism I was unaware I had.
Whatever the reason, one aspect of trade shows that has come to bug me isn’t the conversations about old products or the poor food. No. It’s the fact they’re populated almost solely by men.
If you go to one of these shows, you’ll see the cycling industry in its full male glory.
Of course, these shows aren’t attended only by men. But who are we kidding? Men are the overwhelming majority. This has been the case at all the shows I’ve attended, including Rouleur Live where, despite the magazine’s laudable commitment to women’s cycling, the gender disparity was openly acknowledged by a contact of mine.
Another contact raised it at Eurobike last year. The show covers a mind-boggling space, spanning multiple halls the size of airplane hangars at the Messe Frankfurt exhibition centre. Walking around the halls, I’ve found myself clocking up 20,000 steps a day as I try to navigate the stands and avoid getting lost in a sea of carbon, rubber and SRAM T-shirts while trying to pick out whoever I’ve hastily arranged to chat with, over yet another free espresso (“Water, please. I’m begging you”).
To help find one another, my contact texted me to say she‘d probably be “the only woman on the stand”. And she was.
This interaction is indicative of what men and women are doing at these shows. I almost always end up listening to men explain how their product is this much faster than their other one, or that much more comfortable.
I often end up having these conversations with men, who speak stats as if in tongues, after the meetings have been arranged by women. The gendered roles of interpersonal communication and factual authority have seamlessly entered this zone of watt savings and soft sells. Shocking, I know.
Fortunately, the days of “booth babes” at cycling shows are over, but these events are representative of how gender representation is an issue throughout cycling.
I’ve been on press trips with one, two or no women in attendance. And in cycling media, how many women do you see writing articles, especially about bike tech? Cycling media can be very boys and their toys, while women are commissioned to write about female athletes and women’s issues in cycling, which rings of tokenism.
It came as no surprise, then, to see a report last year that revealed 71 per cent of women working in the cycling industry are considering leaving. This is higher than other male-dominated industries, including automotive – where 40 per cent of women said they were considering a career change.
The report found that senior leaders in the industry are “overwhelmingly white, heterosexual men”, while only 8 per cent of workshop positions and 19 per cent of cycling retail positions in the UK are held by women.
The report's authors said qualitative data reveals “cultures of harassment and unfair treatment”. That’s something worth dwelling on if you find yourself using the argument that “women would cycle if they wanted to”.
Research by Dr Fiona Spotswood of the University of Bristol may also dissuade you from making such points. She found only 15 to 25 per cent of mountain bikers are female. Spotswood identified that many women feel disconnected from mainstream mountain biking culture, which is often portrayed as extreme and adrenaline-fueled with media coverage centred heavily on men.
Despite the growing popularity of events such as the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, things aren’t much better in the professional side of the sport.
The Cyclists’ Alliance is a labour organisation representing professional female cyclists. Its 2023 annual report found 70 per cent of female professional cyclists outside of the WorldTour reported earning less than $10,000 a year. Furthermore, 25 per cent reported earning nothing at all. Unsurprisingly, then, only 46 per cent rely on cycling as their sole means of income.
The report also highlights how the burdens aren’t purely financial. Outside the WorldTour, fewer than 30 per cent of riders receive opportunities to develop in their team and a positive, safe environment is also less common.
If a focus on professionals, the industry and hobby cyclists isn’t a compelling enough case for women’s poor treatment in cycling, try the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) report What Stops Women Cycling?.
The LCC found less than a third of the capital’s daily cycle journeys are made by women, in contrast to Dutch cities, where women make up more than half.
According to the report, women regularly faced abuse while cycling and a fifth of respondents stopped cycling as a result. LCC says its findings echo a UK study, which found women are more likely to experience ‘near miss’ passes from vehicles compared to men. “It seems that abuse towards women cycling has become normalised,” the LCC’s report says.
I haven’t personally witnessed gendered abuse towards women cyclists while out riding, but I have seen men make jokes about women cycling. I have heard people in the industry laugh because “women who cycle don’t matter”. And I’ve heard from female friends, time and again, that they aren’t taken seriously when they step into bike shops, where it seems cycling’s exclusionary culture breeds bad business. You’d think retailers would want to make as many customers as happy as possible, considering the industry is in tatters.
At the grassroots level, there are many women doing great things to improve participation in cycling. There are also brilliant things happening to improve LGBTQ+ inclusion, including groups such as the New Forest Off Road club, and Marlon Lee Moncrieffe’s latest book New Black Cyclones shows the anti-racist organising that’s happening in cycling.
But I still dread the next time I step into a trade hall and wonder how long it will take for cycling to change, if it truly can.
