‘They were told bikes were for men’: how Latin America’s city of cycling is breaking gender barriers

Eliana González has a busy morning ahead of her, dropping off her son at school and picking up groceries. Her trusted vehicle to get around in Bogotá is a colourful cargo bike, adapted to carry her two children and occasionally her dog.

“For me, my cargo bike is a way to carry my children safely and comfortably without polluting the environment,” she says.

Widely regarded as a global cycling success story, the Colombian city of 10 million people records nearly 900,000 bicycle trips each day – more than any other city in Latin America.

Now, city officials are working towards another milestone: achieving gender parity in cycling by 2039. Women accounted for only 28% of Bogotá’s daily bicycle trips in 2023, according to the city’s latest mobility survey. “Our goal is to move from a [nearly] 30–70 split to 50–50 parity,” says Claudia Díaz, Bogotá’s secretary of mobility.

Closing the gender gap makes for a more inclusive city, but also brings environmental benefits. Transportation is Bogotá’s largest source of greenhouse emissions, and officials say that boosting the number of female cyclists could support the capital’s goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

“The challenge we face is how to increase the number of cycling trips,” says Díaz. “The more we increase the number of cycling trips, the more environmental benefits we see for our city.”

Experts say gender equality is essential for cities to fully realise the benefits of investing in sustainable transportation, which can lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions, cleaner air and reduced traffic congestion.

“Those impacts aren’t really going to happen if only half the population is ever going to use that [transport] system,” says Dana Yanocha, a senior manager at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, a nonprofit organisation promoting sustainable transport.

Increasing women’s participation in cycling remains a challenge, especially across the global south, Yanocha says. In many of the cities where her organisation works, women make up only a small share of cyclists, often accounting for less than 10% of daily bicycle trips.

In 2021, Bogotá adopted a new cycling public policy, the first of its kind in Colombia, that incorporated a gender perspective. As part of the initiative, researchers with C40 Cities Finance Facility, a programme that helps cities develop climate infrastructure projects, looked at why women cycle less than men in Bogotá.

They identified several barriers. About 60% of women surveyed said they avoided cycling because they feared theft or assault, 40% expressed concerns about being hit by a vehicle and nearly one-third said they had never learned to ride a bicycle.

One way officials have since been addressing safety concerns is by building more cycle lanes, which research shows helps female cyclists feel safer. Bogotá’s network of protected bike lanes – the largest in Latin America – now spans 425 miles (683.9km), according to the city council.

The city is also repairing deteriorated lanes, installing lighting, improving connectivity and increasing police patrols along busy cycling corridors. “By improving infrastructure, we can help women feel that riding a bike is a viable option for them,” says Diaz.

For many women, however, the biggest barrier is simply never having learned to ride. Sergio Prieto helps to oversee Bogotá’s Bike School, a city programme that teaches about 40,000 residents to cycle each year. He says that about 80% of participants are women.

“Many older women come here because they were never allowed to ride a bicycle as girls,” Prieto says. “They were told bikes were for men, that women shouldn’t be riding them. Here, those barriers and stereotypes are left behind.”

In 2018, González founded Mamacitas en Bici an initiative that encourages mothers to cycle. Her work addresses an often overlooked reality: the leading reason why women move across Bogotá is for caregiving trips, such as taking children to school, according to one study.

But caregivers face discrimination for choosing to cycle, González says. When she first started riding with her baby, strangers shouted at her, calling her irresponsible, she says. But rather than quit, she created a community, helping mothers customise their bikes to safely carry children, organising group rides for families and teaching women and children to cycle.

“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.

González says she encourages women to take up cycling because of its social benefits, including greater independence and improved health. But for her, riding a bicycle is also a way to help shape the kind of city she wants for herself and her children.

“We still have so many green spaces in our city, and I want to do my part to help protect them,” she says. “If I get around by bicycle, I’m contributing to that environmental effort.”

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.