Biking gender gap narrows

Biker Chicks, photo courtesy of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition

By SUSAN SWARTZ

When Sandra Lupien was living in Oakland, she decided to go green and bicycle to work.

“I never considered myself a particularly athletic person, and the last time I rode a bike was in high school,” she said. Plus, she was daunted by Oakland city streets.

Lupien asked a biking friend to ride along and discovered, “Once I started doing it and riding correctly, it felt quite safe. People in Oakland are accustomed to seeing bicycles and sharing the road. And it’s urban, where the speed limits are lower and bikes go at the same pace as traffic.”

Then she moved to Santa Rosa and had to get used to “more suburban wider streets with fewer bicyclists.”

Now she lives in Graton, which calls for rural riding, with “fewer cars but winding narrow roads.”

Her experience is useful in her job as outreach coordinator for the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition.

“When you’re encountering a new environment, it’s typical to be nervous at first,” she said, “especially for women, who tell me their key concern is riding on the roads.”

A national and local advocate for women bicyclers, Lupien was part of a national bicycle forum for women this spring in Washington, D.C. Locally, she organizes group rides, including the Biker Chicks, the brainchild of Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane.

Though bicycling is relatively inexpensive with virtually no age limit and is something many women did as a kid, it’s a male-dominated sport.

“Nationally, 24 percent of bicyclists are women,” said Lupien.

And in Sonoma County, where the No. 2 tourist draw is bicycling, only 21 percent of cyclists are women, according to the Sonoma County Transit Authority.