{"id":628,"date":"2025-03-14T10:53:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T10:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/?p=628"},"modified":"2025-03-14T10:53:58","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T10:53:58","slug":"womens-rights-and-bicycles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/blog-posts\/womens-rights-and-bicycles\/","title":{"rendered":"Women’s Rights and Bicycles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Grace Kostrzebski<\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 13, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bicycles offered a route to freedom \u2013 in more ways than one, especially for women. In the nineteenth century, American upper and middle class women were expected to stay at home, raise children, and keep house. The transportation available to women at the time discouraged their travel. While trains, cars, and streetcars were becoming more common in cities, rural areas still largely depended on horses \u2013 especially carriages. Women needed men to care for horses and hook them to carriages as doing so without a man\u2019s help was seen as unfeminine. Travelling almost anywhere for women was dependent on a man. Yet, bicycles soon revolutionized women\u2019s ability to travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Bicycles were affordable and practical: they were widely available, easy to learn how to use and maintain, and were light and small to store. Men and women suddenly could afford a convenient way to travel \u2013 and the popularity of the bicycle exploded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A cartoon published in the humor magazine Puck in 1897 illustrates this transformation in roles. The title, \u201cHer Choice,\u201d the dialogue, \u201c\u201cI\u2019m going to take a spin on my wheel, and will be back in two or three hours,\u201d and the clothing worn by the woman all emphasize the liberating potential of cycling. The tire of a bicycle is just visible behind the chair. The three children, the distraught husband, and the man\u2019s memories of courtship provide further illustrations of how the bicycle could emancipate women from these traditional duties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The opportunities for emancipation coincided with the movement for women\u2019s liberation \u2013 particularly the campaign for the right to vote. Existing suffragists could get to and from meetings quickly, and women of lower socioeconomic status could finally afford to travel to attend meetings with the bicycle. The bicycle soon came to be adopted by the women’s suffrage movement as a symbol of women\u2019s liberation. Susan B. Anthony, a leading suffrage activist, said bicycles have \u201cdone more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel\u2026the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.\u201d Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a close contemporary to Anthony, said of bicycles that they \u201cwill inspire women with more courage, self-respect, [and] self-reliance.\u201d Fighting for the right to vote for white women, both activists agreed that bicycles were an important step towards women\u2019s liberation and eventually a woman\u2019s right to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


The legacies of women\u2019s suffrage movements in the late nineteenth century are complicated, as leaders did not extend the same commitment to emancipation to African Americans in the South or to marginalized and vulnerable populations. Suffragist Mary Johnston, whose life is the focus of the Episode 18: Buchanan<\/a> of the Bike 76 VA podcast, was unusual in arguing that the right to vote should be extended to all women regardless of race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aspiration to achieving freedom by cycling remains a powerful legacy of nineteenth century emancipation movements such as the suffrage campaign. Cycling advocacy groups have recently introduced the slogan<\/a>, \u201cBicycling delivers the freedom that auto ads promise,\u201d thus returning to a theme present in American culture more than a century ago. Bicycles were, and still are, powerful tools and symbols of liberation. Freedom is owning and riding a bicycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Grace Kostrzebski March 13, 2025 Bicycles offered a route to freedom \u2013 in more ways than one, especially for women. In the nineteenth century, American upper and middle class women were expected to stay at home, raise children, and keep house. The transportation available to women at the time discouraged their travel. While trains, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":634,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}