Not so long ago, customers walking into a bike shop looking for a women’s-specific bike would be offered a good selection of models designed with women in mind.
These bikes varied significantly; some offered different colourways to the unisex options, many had narrower handlebars and a women’s saddle, and a few were even designed for women from the frame up.
Yet today, besides the dedicated women’s cycling brand Liv, few companies still offer women’s bikes.
We spoke to industry movers and shakers including American pioneer Georgena Terry; and Bonnie Tu, the founder of Liv Cycling; Ribble Cycles’ product development manager Kathy Beresford; and global communications manager Ben Hillsdon at Canyon, to help us dig deeper into the history of women’s-specific design and consider why women’s bikes are not as commonplace as they once were.
The birth of women’s bikes
Georgena Terry is regularly credited as the inventor of women’s-specific bicycles.
A combination of passion for cycling, which had started a few years after finishing college, and her training as a mechanical engineer, led Terry to start hand-building her own bicycle frames in her basement in Pennsylvania in the early ’80s.
“Once I started doing it,” Terry explains, “I found that a lot of potential customers who were coming to me were women, and they all had very similar complaints.”
Terry found two major problems. Firstly, smaller women couldn’t straddle the top tube, as bikes were built with horizontal rather than sloping top tubes back then.
The second issue was reaching the front wheel, as the fore-aft distance was often too long.
“So I started thinking, why should I start competing in a market that already has tons of builders for men? Nobody’s doing anything for women, that should be where I go.”
When Terry first started making bikes for women, the reception was terrific. “I think I hit a nerve when I came out with Terry’s Bicycles,” she recalls.
“As I went to different trade shows and consumer rallies to show the products, I was often taking orders for them before people even had a chance to ride them.”
Since the 1980s, Terry has designed and manufactured thousands of bikes for women globally, both with her ongoing hand-built custom frames, and a line of mass-produced models from overseas between 1985 and 2012.
Beyond the frame itself, Terry also went on to establish women’s clothing and componentry lines, including award-winning saddles.
Going mainstream
In the years that followed Georgena Terry’s groundbreaking designs, more manufacturers started to adapt their approach.
In the early 2000s, major brands started to introduce women’s-specific lines that ranged from the tokenistic ‘shrink it and pink it’ tactic through to completely different bicycles designed and built for (and by) women.
The most notable of these manufacturers is Liv Cycling, founded in 2008 by Bonnie Tu as Giant’s sister brand.
Tu was Giant’s chief financial officer and had joined Giant group founder King Liu for the Tour of Taiwan bike race.
“In preparing for the ride, I couldn’t believe that the selection for women was so limited, in terms of bike and gear offerings,” Tu says. “This was the inspiration for Liv.”
Tu’s working group identified three key pillars for the new business: offerings, experiences and opportunities.
Not only did they set about designing bikes, apparel and gear for women, but they also spoke to women about their retail experiences, aiming to create an atmosphere that was friendly and welcoming, and Tu intentionally employed women in leadership roles across the new business to ensure a female business focus.
“There were limited women’s-specific offerings,” Tu explains, “and they were often just downsized versions of the men’s options, with different paint jobs. As we noted, they would shrink it, pink it and put flowers on it. We chose to do it differently. We believe that empathy is the key to unlock great design.”
The initial reception to Liv was good, with internal support from Giant recognising the gap in product offering.
The Taipei urban market was a testbed for Liv, and after an enthusiastic response, the brand was expanded into other markets and cycling genres over the following years.
Today, Liv is a global brand offering a comprehensive range of bikes from urban commuters and ebikes to road race bikes gracing the WorldTour with Liv AlUla Jayco, alongside premium cross-country whips ridden by the Liv Factory Racing team plus a whole host of other top-end bikes ridden by privateer triathletes, as well as gravel, cyclocross and mountain bike racers through the Liv Racing Collective.
Bikes from Liv are designed with specific frame geometry, based on women’s body-fit data as well as input from review editors, professional athletes and everyday riders.
The most significant difference compared to unisex or men’s frames is a shorter reach, and Liv bikes often also feature lower standover height, as well as being built with narrower handlebars and women’s-specific saddles.
“We’ve heard from riders that Liv bikes feel best out of the box. You know it when you feel it,” says Tu.
Reflecting on the impact that Liv has had on the cycling industry, Tu says it’s been far more than simply engineering and supplying women’s-specific bikes and size-inclusive components.
“I’m proud of the number of women and opportunities generated by the Liv approach to doing business differently,” says Tu.
“It isn’t just about the product, it’s a part of the greater package of investment in the growth and future of cycling. At Liv, we invest in women’s cycling: product, programming, education and community-building.”
Back pedalling
With the exception of Liv, almost no major manufacturers are offering women’s-specific bikes any more. But does that mean they have chosen to no longer cater for women, or is there more to it than that?
One of the biggest players in the global cycling industry – Specialized – has moved away from producing gender-specific products, stating that it “only make[s] male- or female-specific products when there’s data to support the decision and a true performance benefit”.
The company used to produce women’s-specific bikes across different models until relatively recently, but it was the acquisition of Retül, a bike fit and data-capture company, which sparked change, and the launch of Specialized’s ‘Beyond Gender’ concept in 2019.
Equipped with a database of over 8,000 global bike fits, Specialized engineers found that the generalised differences between genders was less pronounced than anticipated.
“We’ve learned that there is likely to be more difference between two male cyclists, than a male and female,” explains head of human performance, Todd Carver.
However, one area where the fit data does show a significant difference between the sexes is sit-bone width.
With data from over 95,000 riders, Specialized found an average sit-bone width difference of 2cm between men and women, with women usually having a wider measurement – not surprising as women give birth.
As there’s still a good range of variability among men and women, Specialized continues to offer a range of saddle widths for both unisex and women’s-specific models: 143mm, 155mm and 168mm widths are offered for all saddles, while the narrowest 130mm width is produced for unisex saddles only, reflecting the findings from the bike-fit data.
The findings have also led the design team to supply bikes with either 143mm or 155mm saddles across the range of sizes. Specialized fits wider saddles fitted to smaller bikes of 52cm or less, which are more commonly ridden by women. According to Specialized, this fits 85 per cent of riders.
But what if you fall outside the 85 per cent? In our bike reviews, we often comment if brands will allow component swaps free of charge, and it’s a mixed bag. Some offer it as a brand policy, some don’t, while others leave it up to their dealers or shops to make their own decisions. For Specialized, the latter applies.
Some stores offer a parts exchange from new at no extra cost – though you won’t be able to do that if you’re buying directly from Specialized online, meaning you’ll potentially have to pay extra to get the right fit.
Going unisex
Canyon is another major brand that has pivoted away from producing women’s-specific bikes, or the ‘WMN’ models, as they were named.
The manufacturer started to invest heavily in women’s pro sports in the 2010s, such as sponsoring the CANYON//SRAM Racing Women’s WorldTour team – which it still does today.
“At the time [road and mountain bikes marketed for women] helped educate the industry towards the needs of female riders at a point where the bike industry wasn’t clearly speaking to women, especially in sports performance,” recounts Canyon’s global communications manager Ben Hillsdon.
With support for women at the pointy end of racing in tandem with producing and marketing women’s-specific offerings, Hillsdon says that today you can see the effect in much greater representation and choice.
However, Canyon found that the strategy of offering WMN bikes across its whole line-up wasn’t supported by fit data, sales figures or athlete feedback.
“Our future direction is to judge bikes on a case-by-case basis, going with more of a gender-neutral offering in a very wide range of sizes – starting at XXS on many models – to ensure we can cater for riders of all sizes,” Hillsdon says.
By collecting consumer bike-fit data from its female customers, Canyon designs its sizing splits accordingly.
“In all categories, we are very mindful of the type of bikes our female customers are looking for, and we make sure we have an excellent range in terms of size and style,” Hillsdon confirms.
“Some of them just don’t happen to say ‘WMN’ on them any longer.”
Everybody is different
British brand Ribble Cycles offers comprehensive customisation of its bikes, to the point where it doesn’t do gender-specific bikes.
“Women’s-specific ranges have always been a continuous topic of conversation, especially around range changes, and our approach remains consistent – to allow the rider to take control, as our bikes can be fully customised for each and every rider,” says product development manager, Kathy Beresford.
Ribble’s frames range from XS to XL and the builds can be fully customised, including stem and crank length, seatpost type, handlebar shape and width, and saddle (including women’s-specific options), at no additional cost (assuming a like-for-like swap).
“To further assist, we also have experts on call throughout the day via a one-way video call alongside experts in one of our four showrooms, who can help you through the process and help you select the bike and level of componentry that is right for you,” Beresford adds.
In addition to a great range of component choice, you can also pay a little extra for Ribble’s CustomColour programme to create your dream paint, whether that’s a pink sunset fade or absolutely not pink.
As Georgena Terry highlights, the main change over the last few years, which impacts both men and women, has been the development of bike fits.
Back in the 1980s, there were only three or four simple tests to determine whether a bicycle fitted you, but now it is very much a science, with highly trained specialists.
“I think [bike fitting has] certainly opened the bicycle industry’s eyes a bit as to what women need from a bike fit versus what men need, and it’s encouraged manufacturers to look at that a little more closely,” says Terry.
Personal touches
On a personal level, I’ve reviewed many of Liv’s women’s-specific bikes, which I’ve found work very well for me in its standard set-ups (I’m 165cm tall), and I have also ridden unisex bikes that have been built well or modified to suit my bike-fit data. Often, these offer the same (good) level of comfort and performance.
Where we as consumers can suffer is when standard components need to be replaced post-sale to suit our fit – such as swapping setback seatposts for in-line models, or adjusting stem length or handlebar width – which costs us more. It would be great if more brands could offer this option at point of sale.
Now that fewer new complete bikes are designed (and marketed) specifically for women, it can be something of a PR challenge for brands and the industry at large, though.
We chose to pen this feature, for example, because there simply aren’t enough new women’s-specific bikes to create a competitive and worthwhile Bike of the Year category.
It seems that this latest situation has evolved mostly because, according to the bike-fit data some brands are using, sex-based bodily differences aren’t as clear cut as was previously thought.
This should mean then that, with the right help from bike fitters and other industry professionals, there’s hope for everyone to get a well-fitting and comfortable ride at all performance levels, whatever your size and shape regardless of gender.
