Interesting take on the cycling gender gap

[OakLeaf]

http://www.grist.org/biking/2011-06-20-bicyclings-gender-gap-its-the-economy-stupid


Bicycling is, in much of the car-centric U.S., either a privilege or a punishment. That's why more women aren't bicycling. It isn't because we're fearful and vain; it's because we're busy and broke and our transportation system isn't set up for us to do anything but drive.

[malkin]

Interesting.

Even the public transportation here goes from parking lot to parking lot. It can be quite a hike to get to an actual destination...unless you are parking your car in the ever present convenient parking.

[bmccasland]

Makes perfect sense to me. If more guys picked up / dropped of the kids, ran to the dry cleaners, grocery; maybe more women would have time to ride? I see mainly women in the mini-van & SUV cue (que?) picking up their kids at the school just up the street.

[grey]

There is definitely still a huge gap between the amount of work most women handle, and the work most of their their male counterparts handle. There are so many days I wish i could just leave home in the morning, go to ONE JOB all day long, and come home, eat dinner, play with the dogs, browse the Internet, and go to bed. And gripe about how hard I work.

We don't even have kids, and the gap is there. I can't tell you how much I admire American women who manage to juggle job, house, and kids. That's amazing to me.

Still, I drew the line on the bicycling. I said this is for ME, and I am going to wedge this in, no matter that I have to get up at 5am and don't make it to bed until 11 to do it. But if we had kids, I can tell I'd only be able to ride on the weekend, when I could convince the hubby to take the kiddos for a few hours.

[lph]

"And twice as many trips as men's are at the service of passengers -- that is to say, the school drop-off, soccer practice, and the play date wedged in there between the grocery run and the commute to work (...) We can hope that one day none of these duties will be tied to gender. "

I was thinking that we should hope for a bit more than that - that one day none of these duties will be tied to driving a car.

Interesting article, though.