Women Mean Business

photo of Deadly Nightshades by Miguel Jacob

The League of American Cyclists have a new free webinar series. The first one was a great talk on "How to Start and Sustain a Women's Bike Club", which featured a talk by our lovely friend Sarai at GIRL BIKE LOVE. This Wednesday, February 27th, anyone around the world can join in on the topic of Women Mean Business: The Economic Impact of Women Bicyclists.  

 "Though underrepresented in many aspects of the bicycle movement, there's growing evidence that women hold the purse strings when it comes to the future success of the bike industry."

Women Mean Business also happens to be the theme of the upcoming Woman's National Cycling Summit on March 4th in the 'Murican capital of Washington DC.

"The Forum will include keynote addresses from industry pioneer Georgena Terry (pictured), Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and NYC Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, as well as break-out sessions, lunch plenary, networking and so much more."

The cycling industry may be the last one in the world to get that women have money, like to spend money, and will spend money on cycling products when given the proper chance. Even the PGA, the grand-daddy of Golf (a sport also referred to as the second board room), just announced it is targeting women to ensure the fiscal sustainability of the sport. Time has painted the picture of the growing spending power of women. Lil Wayne can sit down. Ladies are the ones making it rain.


It's time we had that talk Cycling Industry. It's not us. It's you. We have money. We want to bike. So if we aren't biking and we aren't spending, you're doing it wrong. That means you're not giving us good products, good prices and good distribution. It's not just making pink bikes with flowers. Or putting a model on a bike to pose in your ads. Or making biking to women only about being"fashionable". (I understand the irony of a Deadly Nightshade writing this.) Marketing lifestyle choices and marketing fashion apparel are different things at the end of the day.

Maybe some of you bike companies could take a hint from Elen DeGeneres.


But before products, women cycling is about advocacy and government lobbying. The car industry does that right. At Velo-City 2012,  I got to learn the hard data of getting more women cycling. It's all about safety, or perceived safety. Marisa Espinosa- Senior Manager of Service Planning, Translink BC, pointed out that their data shows that the cycling "gender gap" is also due to women being the primary child care providers in Vancouver, which means transporting young children. It means curating families and raising the next generation of citizens, and shaping the transportation choices they make in the future. Without proper cycling infrastructure like separated bike lanes, reduced car traffic speed and laws, few women are willing to look past the dangers of cycling on our car-ruled roads.

Let's take a minute to remember the late Jenna Morrison, her son, her husband, and her unborn child. Our traffic system, transport truck laws and justice system completely failed this family. How can we expect to get more families cycling when we don't address this? Ironically, cars kill more children via collisions and lifestyle diseases caused by sedentary lifestyle. (That's not even getting into environmental factors like local air pollution causing childhood asthma, or catastrophic climate change.) In the long run, we are hurting ourselves and children more by sticking to cars thinking they are "safe."

So it is a combination of solid safety infrastructure creation, and addressing the issue of the perceived safety issue. Throw in some pretty girls on bikes to make people smile, sure! I'm all for it. Let's be real for a minute; biking can be dangerous. We can fix that. Car culture, grid lock, and auto emissions are killing us everyday. Bikes can fix that.

Watch this speech by the Queen Elizabeth II - Diamond Jubilee Medal recipient Gil Panalosa. He is the executive director of 8-80 Cities, based out of Toronto. Wouldn't it be swell if our city actually took his advice? To bring it back, he talks about sustainable cities, children, the need for "complete street systems", proper road design, and the incredible force that is NYC Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.



Let's do this ladies. xo

The Right to Cycle

From June 26th to the 30th I was fortunate enough to attend the keynote sessions of Velo-City 2012 held here in Vancouver, BC.

For three days I was truly blew me away. There is a steep hill to climb and a lot of work to be done to make the rest of the world like Copenhagen, but with such brilliant and hard working professionals dedicated to this task, it's going to happen and it's going to be amazing.

I love Notable Quoteables, so took some of the best from the international speakers and submitted them Toronto's lovely Biking Toronto and Australia's Treadlie.  Broken down into four parts, (seriously so much good came out of those presenters) they are meant to inspire and inform. Follow the links wiki-styles and dive deep into the world of cycling politics and infrastructure.

“Creating cycle friendly cities. It’s child’s play.”
Dr. Paul Tranter- Associate Professor in Geography, University of New South Wales

This year the European Cycling Federation and Velo-City presented The Charter of Vancouver, which is a call to the UN and all nations to acknowledge the right for children to cycle. Biking improves so many aspects of a child's life; their health, independence, personal mobility, cleaner enviornment, and the list goes on and on.... You can read the notes from the Children's Keynote in Part 4 of the Biking TO segment. 



The closing of the conference called for all to sign the charter in suport. I was a privileged to ad my name, and signed on behalf of the Deadly Nightshades. It's not just NGO's who are working to make this world a better place to live and bike, us #girlbikegangs have a role too.

1Love.

xo

#MadeVisible- Women, Children & Poverty in America

This is a great video panel discussion on women in finance. There is a specific focus on American politics, as you may have guessed from the tittle. This means I don't think I understand all the nuances of the speakers and their messages in context with the current political atmosphere. Regardless, I think anyone who is interested in our economy and getting the world on track to a sustainable economy should watch this.

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What I can't believe is Sherily WuDunn supporting sweat shop work in getting women out of poverty. Leaving your traditional ways of life to be a slave-wage for multinational corporations who in turn ruin natural resources and ways of life with pollution is not a good way out of poverty. It's not a good economic model to thank and give credit to. It's like tipping a rapist.

There also isn't much talk of other alternatives to traditional jobs that don't bring in "paychecks"; like home sewing, urban gardening, and other arts and crafts products and services.

What is also left out of the equation is the issue of feminism and environmentalism. This surprised me. Gender inequality hurts our national resources too. "Ecofeminism" is a serious link in the out-of-poverty chain.

In entirety , the speakers and lines of dialogue, along with the stories and advice shared created a truly informative and inspiring looking into the roles of women in getting the world out of poverty.

Thank you Travis Smiley for putting on such wonderful 2 hours of enlightening discussion.