The rise of women-only events

Cycling tips has an interesting article on women-only events today: http://cyclingtips.com.au/2015/10/men-not-allowed-are-womens-only-events-working/

No real conclusions to it, as it says, it's early days. I do find Anthea Hargreaves' quote about “We thought we could reach equality by providing the same opportunities for both sexes. But it hasn’t worked.” quite telling - that's something I see mentioned quite frequently in local racing. Large numbers of women just aren't really turning up to take part in mixed events.

Will be fun to see where the trend takes us.

I was at the Rapha Supercross this weekend. One of the things they included in the schedule was a Women's Only race on the Saturday. Despite offering that, there wasn't a great field. 27 on a course designed for 100+. On the Sunday, it was back to the usual Yorkshire cyclocross categories with women being mixed in with V45 men and upwards. There were 17 entries.

There were some notable absences from the Saturday race including the women who were taking part in the elites invitational race but also some regular faces from the league races. Of course with this not being a league race and on a Sunday, riders may have been off doing those other things they might otherwise sacrifice or put off. But there wasn't a particularly strong uptake from new riders taking advantage of riding competitively on a course without men there as well.

The same might be considered true in the National Trophy races the weekend before. In 2014 there was a big push to get a Women's V40+ race in the schedule and a lot of chivvying behind the scenes to get people to prove it was wanted. This year's opening round in Southampton had a small field for that category.

I'm not sure what the anwer is here. I do wonder if for some people it's just a bit too late and the focus needs to be on that tricky transition between racing as a youth and racing in the junior category. I think these days there are less social barriers to women carrying on being competitive and athletic beyond school age. But that's just guess work. However, there were some telling comments on Sunday after the races. Some of the women were glad to be back racing with the men again. There was more action going on on the field, more wheels to chase and more competitors to battle against. I think for some of those Saturday 27, it was a bit lonely out there. Perhaps tellingly though, those comments did come from experienced riders.

I'm not going to say that cyclocross isn't for women, it obviously is. But is it maybe too niche? Or is there something else going on acting as a barrier to entry that needs to be worked on first?

Looking to the next events, outside of national level races the other Women only event I can think of in cyclocross is Ripley Castle in the New Year. They've stated an aim to get 100 women on the start line. I hope they get a lot closer than this weekend did.

We talked about it a little bit at the London league this Sunday actually.

This is my first ever season of cross, and of racing in general. But what I've enjoyed most is that, despite how good or bad I race, at any one time on the field I race with other people.
It doesn't matter to me that the butt in front of me is a men's or a women's.
If there was no one on the field in front of me, or chasing me, I wouldn't progress half as fast. I wouldn't progress at all.

What I like about the league is that I get to race with insanely strong women as much as with others who are closer to my abilities. I feel very inspired and learn a lot from trying to stick to their wheel as much as I possibly can (for about 35 seconds). It's great.
And vets being on the course facilitate that learning. If they weren't there, how would I learn to overtake ? How would I learn anything at all, lost and all alone in the middle of a really spread out course ?

It'd be great to have a women only race one day. When there's enough of us to make it interesting. And I'm sure it will happen eventually.
Until then, I'm really happy to share the field with the vets.
And I'm pretty sure they are happy with that too.

But then, I would have probably never gotten into cross it if it wasn't for the cross skills sessions we did last year, which was a women's only event.
Looking back at it, I'm pretty sure it was just the guarantee to be around similarly skilled people, with similar mentalities, that made me want to do it. Not the fact that we all happened to be women.
I just knew I could show up and do what ever, I wasn't going to be judged, because we would all be in the same bucket. And I don't think that had anything to do with gender. More to do with trust.

I'm thinking a lot about this whole thing and parallels that can be drawn between women in the cycling scene and women in tech, because they are two things which matter a lot to me.
I'm not sure where my head is at with it yet.

I'm not sure there is any conclusion to this either.
As far as I'm concerned, when it feels forced or staged, I'm running away from it.

Our Club is organising a womens only Road Race on Sun 20th March:

https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/events/details/140405/Bristol-South-Women's-Road-Race

Cat 2,3,4

The course is rolling and pretty scenic, its laps of Chew valley lake - which is the course we use for our weekly timetrials, rather than using the Stowey circuit which is VERY hilly.

i've got lots of thoughts on this but as ever i think the best way to progress is just keeping talking about it (thanks @bothwell) and keep listening to women's opinions. like @ecunard i don't mind racing with vets, men, women, kids (even if the youths wipe the floor with me). i actually don't really enjoy racing (any discipline) but i give it a go and try and get involved and support women's cycling where i can.

to me, the issue revolves not just around women-only events, but about getting women engaged with cycling and as TSK mentioned particularly the socio constructs which are (i hope) lessening every day. i have a little group of female friends (not a CC) who train and race together - for fun, but working hard - because we knew we'd get more done, push each other, and that little unit is great for us. but it's not suitable for everyone, and some people want an organisation or a cycling club to do that for them anyway - so again it (to me) boils down to providing opportunities, creative ways to engage and welcome women (i'm an occupational therapist - it's my job to think about engagement). we got together because (taken from our site):
Sport England has published that 69% of women in the UK have stopped all sports by age 21. We think that's bogus and are setting out to change the statistic for the better – by creating an all-women, grassroots team of amateur track & fixed cyclists in London, who train, race and ride regularly.

like i said - it's not what everyone wants, but the evidence is showing more and more that there ISN'T just a one size fits all "solution" to the "problem" of unequal numbers of men and women in cycling, and in racing.

(also big lol at assuming that just providing the same opportunities for women as for men like levels the playing field somehow?!?!)

one thing i'd like to say is organisers: i'm aware that you sometimes (often, more like!) lose money and time putting on female-specific events that have a low turn out. please don't despair. it's so appreciated that you do it. but let's also go back a few steps and make sure there's enough women getting into cycling in the first place, and getting the training, the understanding of how races work, the time to get confident - it's getting there, slowly. please don't give up or stop putting them on, unless the women really dont want their own event, or you can't afford it. keep asking about where to promote your event where it will reach the highest number of interested parties.

massive hats off to Celeste and the team at HHV who now run a women's track league during the summer, have an absolutely blossoming women's group, and recently branched out to form London Women's Racing.

women's cycling and especially women's racing is gaining traction which is super positive. i'm not surprised it's slow, and i can't say i'm anywhere near satisfied, but it's better than it's ever been. that's great.