paper on cycling and gender balance

Following on from a discussion about the high proportion of female cyclists in British cities which have a fair bit of cycling, I had a look through the UK Census 2001 figures. I also examined the LATS 2001 figures for Greater London, comparing between the boroughs, and with a piece of market research from Spring 2005. I also checked out the equivalent statistics for the Netherlands too.

And I found positive correlations between % of population cycling, and % of cyclists that are female, across the board: I found it a rather convincing repeated pattern. So I've written a short summary paper on cycling, gender and critical mass.

I'd appreciate an email to let me know if you're going to cite or quote this paper.

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Abstract

In this paper, I examine the evidence for the proposition that places with high cycling tend to have a higher proportion of female cyclists. Positive correlations supporting this are found within two separate data sets: the 2001 Census, and the London Area Travel Survey 2001.

Comparisons are made to results from the Dutch annual national travel survey, which shows high cycling figures nationally and by individual province, sustained high modal share across all ages, including the over-75s, and a consistent balance between the numbers of male and female cyclists.

Recent increases in the amount of cycling in Greater London (40% growth on the main road network, the TLRN, between 2001 and 2004), have been accompanied by an increase in the proportion of women within the cycling population, from 27% in 2001 to 40% in 2005.

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