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stravaimagewomenscyclingukcreditstrava.jpgStrava poll: Nothing stops majority of female users cycling
Most female Strava cyclists don’t feel there is a barrier to cycling, according to a survey of 5,024 users of the cycling social media app and website.
Just 40% of women respondents to the survey, which ran 7-10 June 2016, ahead of the Aviva Women’s Tour, thought there were barriers to women cycling. The results may surprise some – among surveys of the general population, most of whom don’t cycle, fear of traffic remains a major barrier to cycling.
While it's a moot point how representative of the wider population of cyclists users of Strava either male or female are, most will take it as a postive that so many women aren't put off cycling either for sport, fitness or recreation by what others perceive as barriers to entry.
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Strava’s aim was to determine motivations, influences, buying attitudes and any barriers to entry for women’s cycling. Of respondents, 62% took up cycling for general fitness, and 61% said they were inspired by professional cycling. It would be interesting to know how this compares to male users of Strava. We asked Strava's representatives how many women use their app as well as the male/female split, but they don't share this information publicly.
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Olympic 2012 Gold medallist and Wiggle-High5 rider Dani King, said of the report: “With women’s cycling growing both professionally and recreationally I was delighted when Strava asked me to get involved with this report. Since I’ve been cycling I’ve consistently heard two things. 1. Women aren’t interested in professional cycling and 2. There are significant barriers in place that prevent women from cycling. This report addresses these often quoted stereotypical views and shows them largely not be true.
“There is however still more to achieve and with growth of media coverage surrounding women’s cycling and increased focus from the industry, I hope women’s cycling can reach its full potential; both in a sporting and recreational context.”
Of women surveyed, 13% started cycling less than a year ago, while 52% had been cycling between 1-5 years. 25% had cycled for more than ten years. The average expenditure on cycling was £1050.
Of those who felt there are barriers to cycling, 78% cited perceived danger, while 71% felt mechanical proficiency was a barrier, 59% cited body image.
Sadly the full report Strava Women’s Cycling Report is only being made available (free of charge) to the UK cycling and sports industries but if that is you and you'd like a copy you can get one by emailing strava [at] fusion-media.co.uk.
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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15 comments
presumably strava sell this and other data so I guess this article counts as a successful bit of advertising that they have data available - not news just a press release plug?
one potential barrier I've come across is the attitude of some bike shop staff:
2 examples - anecodotal but sad
mrs antigee (and no i shouldn't have had to go along) explains wants a road bike to do some alpine passes with a friend that lives in france, already has a womens specific mountain bike used for commuting and wants a wsd frame road bike as previously riding had caused back pain - suggests a model would like to try that had been listed on the shop's website - guy comes back with a hybrid saying "we sell a lot of these to women" - we walked out
youngest daughter antigee needed a new bmx - medical reasons very small for age - I'd already been in the shop to check out what on offer and see if had any as rare as hen's teeth 18" wheel bmx's and a guy had offered to get a model he thought most suitable from another branch to try at the weekend - anyway this guy isn't around but after a not sure wait the bike is produced but as a standard 20" wheel bmx was just too big - guy goes off and fetches a 16" wheel pink BSO with dangling streamers - well it would have been a bargain at less than 20% of the price of the bike we'd wanted but wouldn't have looked too cool at the pump track
If women are anything like my wife then they simply can't be arsed to cycle.
I have had a treadmill, a multigym, a vibration plate, a wii fit and finally a bike that never got got used for more than about a week. I've given up trying now but it's annoying when people complain about putting weight on when the answer is very simple.
Aye, my missus is the same. Have to drag her into everything. Once a certain momentum builds up she'll carry on by her own accord.. for a while. Then go back to watching shitty TV shows.
Couldn't find the sporty women store when I was shopping for one
Only reason she does anything is so she can take a pic and post it on social media really.
I'm jealous of female cyclists.
They get to buy some great cycle clothing and cooler colour schemes.
Men's clothing is boring.
Hopefully the designers will transfer the greater choice this to guy clothing when more females ride.
Non-boring men's kit is to be found here: http://casp.cc/collections/jerseys
Isadore and Stolen Goat have some good stuff too.
You could always cross-dress?
Surely selection bias in its purest form but I do think that as people cycle the more they realize that it's less dangerous than they thought. Well, once they get past the first few weeks where they learn basic roadcraft and how to get over the occasional stupidly close pass.
Circle-jerkery. Useless.
Moot indeed. It's like asking drug addicts what puts them off drugs.
You misunderstand how the question was posed. It asked what we think stops other women from getting into the sport.
Fair play, it is somewhat useful, but the general critique here is that if you want to know what's stopping women from cycling, it's preferable to ask women who're stopped from cycling, and discover those reasons.
Women who're out there on the road already, especially those who take up the sport/mode of transport entirely of their own accord and haven't been chaperoned by a man in their life are a very small proportion of the UK. A few percent I imagine. Polling them isn't greatly useful in terms of representativeness.
That said, Strava can only work with what they've got and it's great that they're putting their data collection towards activism. I'd rather they did the poll than didn't, put it that way.
Yes you're right we were contacted to complete the survey because we use Strava! But I can answer the question fairly well as I talk to people regularly about cycling, and female friends and acquaintances will say "I would love to take up cycling, but I concerned of the dangers of riding on the road" amongst other reasons. So we're still aware of the barriers.
But I'm glad a higher percentage of respondents thought nothing stops them, as that should be the true answer!
Yeah that was class, love seeing a woman out on the road battling along. Bit sexist but always think kudos just because it's less common and I know that it can be tough out there
But all the stats show that generally male cyclists out number female cyclists by a huge margin. In bascially all fields- transport, leisure, competitve sport. For transport, only one place in the UK is even close to parity- Cambridge. In terms of countries, it's only really the Netherlands where there's parity.
It would be really useful to understand why this is. Clearly, "ask female strava users" turns out to be a really poor idea as they apparently think there are problems.
So not even cycling in general?