Guardian · 6 hours ago

‘They Were Told Bikes Were for men’: How Latin America’s City of Cycling Is Breaking Gender Barriers | Cycling |...

In Bogotá - a city of nearly 900,000 daily bicycle trips - officials are working to close a stubborn gender gap, where women account for fewer than 30% of those journeys, held back by fears of assault, traffic, and a lifetime of being told that cycling simply wasn't for them. At the city's Bike School, where 80% of participants are women, instructor Sergio Prieto witnesses something quietly transformative each day: "Many older women come here because they were never allowed to ride a bicycle as girls - here, those barriers and stereotypes are left behind." Eliana González, who founded a community called Mamacitas en Bici after strangers shouted at her for cycling with her baby, understands that reclaiming the road is about more than transportation. "I realised how important it is to have safe spaces where we can move through the world as women, in a body that is treated differently by society and subjected to violence," she says. What Bogotá is discovering is that a city's infrastructure reveals its values - and that when a woman learns to ride a bicycle at sixty, or carries her children through morning traffic on a cargo bike, something larger than mobility is being claimed.