There are too many of them to put on a poster or on the side of a milk carton. And it’s not that they were taken, or that they ran away, it’s that they never existed. And yet, still we feel their absence keenly.
Look anywhere in recorded history and you will find the names of men, read about their groundbreaking work and ideas. Where are the women?
It is manifestly not the case that men are smarter than women, right? Where are the female physicists? There are a few of them, sure, scattered here and there, making themselves known despite myriad systems forbidding them access, counter examples to make the point. Where are the women prime ministers? That you can name one does not answer the question.
Ask any bike company who their customers are, and even the most aggressively progressive will tell you it’s 70% men. From the top down, cycling is built for men. It encourages men. It cultivates men. The obstacles for women might be fewer today, but they remain.
And don’t misunderstand me. I don’t occupy any moral higher ground here. This isn’t about scolding or shaming, or even laying out a road map to achieve a goal. There are a hundred reasons cycling is like this and none of them are good. Culture takes a long time to develop and can take a long time to change.
This is sadness.
The bike has given me so much, and I hate to think others have been denied the opportunity to feel the freedom, joy, inspiration and confidence that riding bikes offers.
When I read physics or history now, I wonder where the women were. For every Einstein, we are missing one genius. For every Roosevelt, we are missing one leader. The ratio is 1:1. And for every dude I see riding a bike, I know there is another rider missing. How many? Not just in my town, or in this country, but in the world, and back through history.
Where are they? What would they have done? How much more incredible might riding bikes have been if every one of them had been able to, had been encouraged to ride?
When I first got into geosciences, women faculty, at least on tenure track, were rare. Just looked at my old department at the U of Hawaii. Quite a bit better. 14 guys, 8 women.