Motivate kicked off Women's Bike Month with a group bike ride on October 1st in New York City, led by the Co-Chair of the New York City Council Women's Caucus, Council Member Carlina Rivera. On October 20th, the young leaders of Girl Up chapters in the New York City metropolitan area will come together and lead an additional group bike ride. More events are ongoing in seven Motivate bike share systems across the country. Additionally, for the entire month of October, each new rider in these systems gets their first ride free and $1 per new rider is donated to Girl Up's SchoolCycle program.
"This Women's Bike Month, we celebrate our women riders and recommit ourselves to doing everything we can to close biking's gender gap," said Julie Wood, Motivate Vice President for Communications and External Affairs. "We're working with our bike share systems across the country to promote urban cycling for all and encouraging riders to take a ride and give a ride for a good cause."
"For many girls in countries like Malawi and Guatemala a bike is the difference between staying in school and having to drop out due to distance. We're happy to be partnering with Motivate so riders can help more girls get quickly and safely to school through our SchoolCycle program," said Melissa Kilby, Girl Up Co-Executive Director.
Recognizing the need to draw attention to and shrink the gender gap in cycling, Motivate inaugurated Women's Bike Month in 2016. This year, seven Motivate systems are taking part in the campaign. The bike share networks that will host group rides and events are in New York City (Citi Bike), Jersey City (Citi Bike), Washington D.C (Capital Bikeshare), Chicago (Divvy), the Bay Area (Ford GoBike), Portland (BIKETOWN), Minneapolis (Nice Ride) and Columbus (CoGo).
Motivate is also partnering with global leadership development initiative Girl Up to increase access to bicycles and increase female bike ridership. For every new rider who uses the promo code GIRLUP18 to try bike share for the first time in October, Motivate will donate $1 to the Girl Up SchoolCycle program — which provides bikes to girls to help them access education and stay in school.
As urban biking becomes more prevalent, there still is a marked gender disparity in who rides. Only a quarter of all bike trips in the United States are taken by women. The gap closes slightly when looking at bike share ridership, with one-third of bike share members identifying as female. Still, more must be done to create spaces where women and girls feel comfortable exploring their cities on two wheels.
For more information, visit www.womensbikemonth.com.
