The Emancipation of Women and the bicycle

[itself]

Great read. Bicycling in the 1890s did more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.

http://www.annielondonderry.com/womenWheels.html

[Pax]

Wonderful story! I love reading about our foremothers, their lives were so much more difficult than ours, it makes you appreciate the path they helped lay out for us.

I especially liked this paragraph:

But the constant drumbeat of warnings about cycling’s ill effects on women throughout the early 1890s also brought forth pointed rebukes, such as this one in the Chicago Daily News: “When woman wants to learn anything or do anything useful or even have any fun there is always someone to solemnly warn her that it is her duty to keep well. Meanwhile in many states she can work in factories ten hours a day, she can stand behind counters in badly ventilated stores from 8 o’clock to 6, she can bend over the sewing machine for about 5 cents an hour and no one cares enough to protest. But when these same women, condemned to sedentary lives indoors, find a cheap and delightful way of getting the fresh air and exercise they need so sorely there is a great hue and cry about their physical welfare.” 11 Clearly, with the advent of cycling as a recreation for women, the gauntlet over woman’s rights had been thrown down.