Analysis of the way people in the UK travel to work by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that cycling has the second greatest gender gap when it comes to how people commute.
Only motorcycling showed a greater imbalance between men and women, while motor cars were the most “equal” mode of transport, as well as the most popular one.
With men making up 74 per cent of people who cycle to work, they outnumber women bike commuters by three to one.
The data does need to be treated with some caution – taken from the quarterly Labour Force Survey which has a robust sample size of 40,000 people in work aged 16 or over, it is taken from the period October-December 2017.
That, of course, is a time of year when with poorer weather and the nights drawing in, some fairweather cycle commuters may put their bikes away until the springtime.
The ONS said that at 65 per cent, men are twice as likely as women to undertake long commutes lasting an hour or more.
Women, meanwhile make the majority – 55 per cent – of trips of less than 15 minutes’ duration, which is coincidentally the average commuting time across the UK as a whole.
As a result, men are more likely to take the train, where use rises in line with length of commute, while walking and travel by bus is more popular among women given the shorter trip duration.
Journey times generally are lengthening – there has been a 31 per cent rise in commutes of an hour or more, and that change is more marked among women than men.
Despite study after study highlighting the benefits of active travel to work, and cycling in particular, the motor car dominates as the choice of transport – an astonishing two in three workers travel by that mode across the country as a whole.
For all the benefits, there are of course barriers – among those the perception of danger, lack of safe infrastructure and the lack of facilities for showering, changing and parking a bike at the workplace, as well as people simply considering the distance too far to ride by bike.
30 thoughts on “Cycling has second-greatest gender gap among ways Britons commute, official statistics show”
The fact that women don’t
The fact that women don’t ride bikes much is a reflection of how dangerous cycling is perceived, and where cycling is safe, many more women cycle, so the proportion of women cycling is an indication of its safety. We won’t get more women cycling until it is seen as safe, but with the utterly pathetic levels of funding, this will never happen.
I for one am grateful that we have such a green government, which wants to reduce pollution and congestion and has recently called for everyone to take better care of their health by getting more exercise, and is committed to making cycling safe by fully funding the revolution in transport that we need to achieve the switch to mass cycling.
From https://ecf.com/news-and
From https://ecf.com/news-and-events/news/freedom-ride-women-and-cycling:
It is therefore imperative to make cycling safer, more comfortable and a viable alternative to other modes of transport to increase its use. In countries that invested in cycling infrastructure, like Denmark and the Netherlands, women commuting “account for just over half (55%) of cyclists”. As Gil Penalosa (chair of the Toronto-based consultancy 8-80 cities) points out, “if there aren’t at least as many women as men, then usually it’s because cycling is not safe enough. It’s an indicator that you do not have good enough cycling infrastructure”.
Another factor preventing women to use bicycles is the possibility of being bullied, shouted at or harassed by fellow cyclists and motorists. In either developing or developed countries there is a general issue about women’s lack of security related to public spaces and access to public transports. It is then essential to raise attention on the problem and promote public campaigns to denounce the problem: education and prevention are key words in this sense. What we need is to invest in a world in which cycling is gender-neutral and in which no person should face any obstacles in riding a bike.
Worth watching Jordan
Worth watching Jordan Peterson’s talks on Equal opportunity and Equality of outcome, very interesting and adds much needed knowledge to this somewhat nonsensical ‘gap’ issue.
bechdan wrote:
If I wanted to become a basement dwelling 4chan browsing saddo I too would follow this ”advice.’
roadmanshaq wrote:
Funny. I happen to agree with a lot of what JP says. I have never been on four chan and although my house has a basement, I dont actually dwell in it.
Care to throw around any more stupid generalisations? Or are we going to get to the part where you blame this on Patriarchy or toxic mascilinity or whatever?
Who wants to learn anything, right? When we can just toss knee jerk reactions, buzz words and insults at each other?
bechdan wrote:
It was worth reading burt’s post before you made yours as to why women are something of a barometer of safety, and understanding a bit more about safety in numbers, before you indulged in your weird agenda that is surely irrelevant here. Do you really think this is about some Politically Correct overreach?
In short: more women cycling is good news, and the converse is also true, unless you’re happy sacrificing your own safety just to keep women off bikes.
From a quick look at that
From a quick look at that chart, cycling comes 3rd not 2nd, after the motorcycle, whatever “other” is comes 2nd. What is “other”?
ktache wrote:
Without the totals for each commute type, Other could be one family that commute by hang glider.
Morat wrote:
I have commuted by ferry a couple of times in my life. For a few months I crossed the Clyde at Yoker and the other time was across the entrance of Portsmouth Harbour to Gosport
ktache wrote:
Looking at the raw data, with “Other” only really registering (40%+) for respondents who said their workplace is outside the UK, and being nearly ten times more popular in Scotland (0.9%) than London (0.1%), I would hazard a guess that it’s mostly flying. Boat is also missing from the other categories; Thames river services carry 10m passengers per year, so river commuters will also be in “Other”.
ktache wrote:
Well, I bought a toilet brush once which said on its ‘health and safety tag’ :”Not for peronal hygiene or the other use”—- perhaps it has something to do with that?
madcarew wrote:
NOW you tell me.
ktache wrote:
Speedboat and jetski winners from Bullseye.
I wonder how much of this gap
I wonder how much of this gap is a result of unfair expectations regarding dress and appearance compared to their male counterparts.
It’s because you’re a sad,
It’s because you’re a sad, vulnerable, small minded man desperately clinging to a toxic pseudo masculinity Campy. Like Peterson and the rest of the alt right you have a rotten inadequacy complex which is dragging you over to bullshit ‘scholarship’ about ‘what real men are’ and so on. Thankfully your lot are on the way out and you’ll be in the dustbin of history within a few decades.
roadmanshaq wrote:
Soooo youre not actually interested in learning anything and its a green light on the epiphets and out and out jingoism then?
Jolly good.
Im not going to mention that I am for equality, but not equality for equalitys sake. Or that Im a socialist with centrist leanings – the right (alt or otherwise) just doesnt engage me. Or that JP is at best a centrist. There is nothing alt right about him.
… you dont have purple hair, do you?
Of course real men don’t have
Of course real men don’t have purple hair do they. That’s for SJW soyboys, that man on the internet told me!
roadmanshaq wrote:
Youre funny. I bet youre a blast at parties.
roadmanshaq wrote:
No more soy lattes for this man, bartender. He’s had enough for now. He needs for raw carrots to strip all that excess estrogen out of his system as he’s getting emotional.
In all seriousness can we not just accept there MAY BE a gender gap in EVERYTHING as men and women are not THE SAME THING. Don’t hear any great call to close the gender gap on wearing make up or working in certain woman orientated activities. HR in my place must be 90% female.
Women ARE NOT INTO MOTORBIKES in general as it’s a risky activity on paper. Women are NOT inclined towards high risk activities, they don’t drive as fast and do stuff like fall off the roof doing DIY or smash bottles in people’s face because….alcohol.
Pretty sure I read something saying women’s mental health has declined as the push for them to do more traditionally male activities has increased. Let men be men, not plastic ridden, soyboys who think the new way of finding a mate is virtue signalling, growing a crap beard and pretending you remember the 80s and collecting pop culture when you’re 29.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
What about small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri?
What about those of us who already have a “mate”, already have a beard (crap or otherwise) and really do remember the 80s?
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
But in places where cycling is relatively safe, there’s much less of a gender gap, because cycling is safer and more normal. Therefore, either women cycle more when cycling is safer, or more women cycling makes us all safer, or both. More women cycling would be a good thing (and actually, it’s both, so we should be aiming to get more women on bikes as well as hoping to sit back and observe it happening).
You don’t have to be a SJW hoping to turn everyone into beige hermaphrodites in order to want more women on bikes. I’m kind of proof that it also applies if you’re a selfish prick who just wants there to be more chance of him making it home safe to his family each time he goes out on his bike.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
Except there isn’t a gender gap for cycling where the environment makes it safe and non-stressfull, and that’s what needs to be aimed for.
So all this Jordan-Peterson-type crap is irrelevant anyway. A minority of manly-men might like cycling as an extreme sport where they can boast of technical prowess and tweak the nose of motorised menace. But that’s a tiny minority of the population so I don’t think it matters much waht they want.
When I’m commuting in central
When I’m commuting in central London, I would say women make up about 35-odd% of riders, but in the outer suburbs it is a fair bit less – maybe 5%. But when I go on a mid-week club ride, sometimes I am the only bloke in a group of 8!
That is exactly it. I get
That is exactly it. I get very few honks and mornings when I’m solo or with a male mate out on a ride dressed in black. But as soon as I’m riding alongside a woman the contrast is immediate within minutes; intimidating close passes, honks, gestures galore.
I don’t think an information campaign will suffice; I want cyclists and other active road users like horse riders to be listed as protected minorities and harassment activities like horn leaning and abuse treated as prosecutable criminal offences with the potential for custodial sentencing and withdrawal of licences. Carrot and stick.
I’m not that bothered about
I’m not that bothered about swelling the cycling ranks just for the sake of it as uncoordinated, lazy idiots in cars are probably best left there. On the rare occasions I ride into a city I find myself getting annoyed by people with the balance of a weeble (the old wobble but not fall down somehow) and zero bike handling skills. God knows what would happen if all the drivers suddenly took up cycling. Probably loads of cycling accidents.
Pretty much still of the opinion that cycling being dangerous is just a get out from actually not really wanting to do it and danger is a convenient excuse. Car driving is statistically quite dangerous I suppose but everyone is willing to put it to the back of their mind.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
And correspondingly fewer car accidents. Which tend to be far more dangerous. You might want the uncoordinated idiots in high-momentum metal boxes, I’d rather they were on bikes, myself (OK, ideally, on foot, but that’s asking too much). They’d take less space, I’d find them less threatening and maybe I’d get better air to breath.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
Even if you follow your argument, you only end up annoyed at uncoordinated idiots. You know how many people die of being annoyed?
Meanwhile, you know how many people die of uncoordinated idiots being in charge of heavy machinery?
Also, you know how much safer you are where all sorts of idiots ride bikes, yes?
(to FKoT’s point – if being uncoordinated and idiotic is the preserve of females, they do well at disguising it in KSI statistics.)
If only there was some way to
If only there was some way to find out why women aren’t cycling…
Infrastructure,
Infrastructure, infrastructure, and more infrastructure.
Dr. Rachel Aldred has published extensively on cycling and diversity. E.g.:
https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/item/9z502/cycling-provision-separated-from-motor-traffic-a-systematic-review-exploring-whether-stated-preferences-vary-by-gender-and-age
https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/item/9675z/does-more-cycling-mean-more-diversity-in-cycling
Henz wrote:
Funding, funding and more funding.