Toward Feminist Geographies of Cycling

Lea Ravensbergen-Hodgins

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Geography, Department of Geography and Planning University of Toronto

Lea Ravensbergen-Hodgins

Doctor of Philosophy

Geography, Department of Geography and Planning

2020 Abstract

Transport cycling uptake is on the rise in many cities; in Toronto, Canada, cycling is the fastest growing mode of transportation. In many of these cities there is evidence that cycling participation rates are not distributed equally across the population. Notably, a gender-gap in cycling has been observed in many cities with low cycling rates, including Toronto, whereby approximately two thirds of commuter cyclists identify as men and one third identify as women. This thesis is concerned with gender and cycling. Drawing from perspectives from feminist geography, this research examines how the embodied experience of cycling shapes, and how is it shaped by, intersecting axes of identity. A critical literature review of articles concerned with gender and cycling finds that two hypotheses are commonly explored to explain the gender-gap in cycling: (1) that women cycle less than men due to greater concerns over safety and (2) due to their tendency to complete more household-serving travel, a type of travel said to be more challenging to do by bike because it often involves carrying goods and/or children. The social factors underpinning these trends, as well as the ways in which other axes of identity intersect with gender to shape cycling behaviours is lacking from the current literature. This research aims to address this research gap by providing a feminist geography of cycling. To do so, a research project was completed in collaboration with Bike Host, a cycling mentorship program targeting immigrants and refugees in

Toronto, Canada. Amongst other research activities, semi-structured interviews were completed with participants to explore the embodied experience of cycling. Key results from this study are ii presented in three chapters. The first examines the gendered and classed embodied practices that shape and are shaped by cycling. Then, the social, temporal, and spatial dimensions of many different types of fear of cycling are explored. Finally, the ways in which participants used bicycles to complete household-serving travel, a gendered mobility, are reported. Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates the role patriarchal and classist power relations play in shaping who cycles.

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Acknowledgments

This dissertation would not have been possible without the support, inspiration, and encouragement of others.

Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Ron Buliung. Over the past six years, Ron has shown an unwavering support for my work, both for my MA and my PhD. Thank you, Ron, for the countless rounds of feedback on my chapters, articles, and awards applications, and for the many stimulating conversations about transport, gender, and equity over the years. I am also grateful to my PhD committee members Nicole Laliberté and Paul Hess. Nicole, thank you instilling confidence in me to do a qualitative and critical research project, and for pushing me to be a committed teacher and a better rock climber. Paul, thank you for all of your support and feedback, your comments on my PhD proposal were particularly helpful in shaping this project. I would also like to thank my external examiners, Dr. Sarah Wakefield and Dr. Susan Handy. I greatly appreciated their feedback during my final oral exam and their encouragement to continue doing research on equity and cycling.

Financial support for this research was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in Science & Technology, the Joseph A. May Scholarship, the RBC Scholarship, and the University of Toronto Doctoral Completion Award. I would also like to thank the UTM Graduate Expansion Fund for conference and research support throughout my graduate studies.

This project would not been possible without my research participants. They were all new to Canada and only settling into their new lives in Toronto, and yet they made time in their busy lives to meet with me. I truly enjoyed getting to know them and hearing their stories. I would also like to thank everyone involved in the Bike Host program, particularly Kristin and Rubeen, for supporting this project.

This project would not have been possible without support from my colleagues. A special thank you goes to members of my cohort, the Geography and Planning Writing Group, my accountability group, and all Writing Workshop members. Valentina, Emily, Roxana, Jennifer, Ewa, Naomi, Trudy, Asya, Nickie, and Leah: thank you for all of the support. I am grateful for all my supportive

iv friends outside the department as well, Joel, Rachel P., and Paulina. I would like to thank Rachel Harris in particular for helping me celebrate the end of my comprehensive exams.

A few professors not directly involved in this project were exceptional mentors. Steve Farber, Amrita Daniere, Charles Levkoe, and Kathi Wilson, thank you for guiding me. A special thank you goes to Nancy Ross who encouraged me to pursue graduate studies.

To my parents, Frances and Glenn, thank you for being such incredible sources of support and love. Mom, thank you for all the bike rides over the years; Dad, thanks for all the tune-ups. You two made my defense celebration extra special and memorable. I am also grateful to my grandmother, my Oma, for bringing her love of cycling to Canada with her, and for passing it on to her children and grandchildren. To my siblings and siblings-in-law, Freya, Ché, Aiden, Clinton and Valérie, thank you for the support and encouragement. Freya & Ché, thank you for teaching me to ride a bike all those years ago (and thanks mom for encouraging them to do so!). Freya and Clinton, my time in Toronto would not have been the same without you. Thank you for the friendship, the family meals, the board game nights, and the beers around your kitchen table. I already miss living across the street from you. Ché and Valérie, your generous loan of a car for the summer of 2016 made my comprehensive exam experience one of a kind – it was such a treat to do nothing but read, camp, and hike for a summer. And to my nieces Aria, Nora, and Nell, thank you for reminding me of all the wonders in the world. I can’t wait to teach you all to ride!

Finally, thank you to my biggest supporter Shane. You have been a defining part of my graduate school experience. Thank you for everything.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments...... iv

Table of Contents ...... vi

List of Tables ...... ix

List of Figures ...... x

List of Appendices ...... xi

Chapter 1: Introduction Taking Gender ‘For Granted’ in Cycling Research ...... 1

1.1 Theoretical Perspectives ...... 7

1.2 Research Design Overview ...... 11

1.3 Chapter Synopsis ...... 12

Vignette 1: Historical cycles ...... 17

Chapter 2: Literature Review ...... 20

2.1 Review Process ...... 21

2.2 Results ...... 23

2.2.1 Concern Over Safety ...... 24

2.2.2 Trip Characteristics ...... 25

2.3 Discussion ...... 26

2.4 Ways Forward ...... 28

2.4.1 Performativity, Intersectionality, and Embodiment ...... 28

2.5 Conclusion ...... 32

Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 36

3.1 Research Context ...... 37

3.1.1 Built Environment and Transportation ...... 37

3.1.2 Immigration and Citizenship...... 40

3.2 Research Design ...... 43

3.2.1 Community Partnership ...... 43 vi

3.2.2 Methods...... 45

3.2.2.5 Recruitment ...... 50

3.2.2.5 Analysis...... 52

3.2.2.6 Sample...... 54

3.3 Researcher Reflexivity and Positionality ...... 57

3.3.1 The “Real Canadian” Researcher...... 58

3.3.2 The Feminist, Cis-Female Researcher ...... 64

3.3.3 The Material Researcher ...... 65

Chapter 4: “I wouldn’t take the risk of the attention, you know? Just a lone girl biking”: Examining the Gendered and Classed Embodied Experiences of Cycling...... 69

4.1 Theoretical Approach ...... 70

4.2 Methods ...... 73

4.3 Cycling as ‘Intense Embodiment’ ...... 76

4.4 Regulating and Resisting the Gendered, Classed, and Aged Cycling Body ...... 78

4.4.1 Embodying Femininity on Two Wheels ...... 78

4.4.2 Embodying Class ...... 81

4.4.3 The Intersectional Aging Body ...... 84

4.5 Conclusion ...... 85

Vignette 2: Embodied Gender, Embodied Class, Embodied Skill ...... 89

Chapter 5: Fear of Cycling: Social, Spatial, and Temporal Dimensions ...... 91

5.1 Safety, Risk & Fear of Cycling ...... 92

5.1.1 Objective Safety, Risk, and Danger: Individual and Built Environment Scales ...... 93

5.1.2 Perceived Safety, Risk, and Danger: Individual and Built Environment Scale ...... 95

5.1.3 Fear and Cycling ...... 97

5.2 Methods ...... 98

5.3 Results ...... 99

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5.3.1 Fear of Injury ...... 101

5.3.2 Fear for Personal Safety ...... 108

5.4 Discussion ...... 111

Vignette 3: Joy of Cycling ...... 116

Chapter 6: Vélomobilities of Care in a Low-Cycling City ...... 117

6.1 Literature Review ...... 118

6.2 Methods & Study Context ...... 121

6.3 Results ...... 123

6.3.1 Completing Household-Serving Travel by Bicycle ...... 125

6.3.2 Meanings, Competencies, and Materials for Household-Serving Trips ...... 130

6.4 Discussion ...... 134

Vignette 4: Why Focus on bikes? ...... 138

Chapter 7: Conclusion...... 141

7.1 Research Contributions ...... 141

7.2 Policy Implications ...... 144

7.3 Future Research ...... 146

7.3.1 Expanding on my dissertation ...... 146

7.3.2 Additional papers ...... 147

References ...... 152

Appendix A: Summary of Articles Examining Gender and Cycling ...... 172

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Components of the Methods ……………...…………………………………………..42

Table 3.2 Research Codebook…………………………………………………………………...50

Table 3.3 Research Participant Demographics……………………………………………….51-52

Table 5.1 Examples of the different approaches to study cycling safety, risk, and danger……...91

Table 6.1 Examples of meanings, competencies, and materials needed to complete vélomobilities of care…………………………………………………………………………………………...134

List of Figures

Figure 1.1. Cycling rates in Toronto: Bicycle Commute Mode Share in Downtown Toronto and the Inner Suburbs (top) and Proportion of Female Cyclists in Toronto (bottom)………………….2

Figure 1.2 Riding my winter bike (top left), my mother & I on a bike ride in Hemmingford, Québec in the 1990s (bottom left), my grandmother, aunts, and mother on a bike ride in Pointe-Claire, Montréal in the 1960s (right)………………………………………………………………………3

Figure 2.2 Overview of the Systematic Review Process………………………………………….22

Figure 3.1. Toronto’s Cycling Infrastructure……………………………………………………..35

Figure 3.2 Changes in Cycling Commute Mode Share from 2006-2016…………………………36

Figure 3.3 Bike Host Bicycle Rides: Small group (left) and large group (right) rides…………..46

Figure 3.4 Recruitment…………………………………………………………………………..47

List of Appendices

Appendix A: Summary of Articles Examining Gender and Cycling…………………………..167

Chapter 1: Introduction Taking Gender ‘For Granted’ in Cycling Research

Bicycle ridership is on the rise in many North American cities, leading some to claim we are experiencing an urban bicycle “renaissance” (Pucher & Buehler, 2012). In many of these cities, bicycle plans are materializing, infrastructure is being built, and an ever-increasing number of commuters are opting for two-wheeled mobility (Forsyth & Krizek, 2011). In fact, cycling levels have doubled or even tripled since the 1990s in many American and Canadian cities - and this after decades of stagnation (Pucher & Buehler, 2012). In Toronto, cycling is the fastest growing mode of transportation (City of Toronto, 2019). While cycling participation is on the rise, bicycle mode share is still low at 2.7% (Spurr & Cole, 2017). However, these rates exhibit high spatial variability. For instance, cycling in Toronto is primarily concentrated in the downtown core, at least for commuting purposes (Figure 1.1). In some of these downtown neighbourhoods approximately 30% of commuters are cyclists (Spurr & Cole, 2017).

Cycling participation rates vary not only spatially, but also across demographic groups. Notably, in many cities a gender gap exists in commuter cycling: men have been found to cycle more for both recreation and transportation purposes as well as to cycle longer distances than women (Garrard, Handy & Dill, 2012; Heinen et al., 2010). In fact, approximately two thirds of commuter cyclists are men in Canada, the USA, the UK, and Australia (Garrard, Handy & Dill, 2012). Furthermore, there is some evidence that cycling rates vary by other axes of identity as well such as age, class, and ethnicity. For example, research suggests that Toronto’s utilitarian cyclists are not only predominantly male, but also between the ages of 35 and 44 (Toronto Cycling Think & Do Tank, 2013). Similar trends have been observed in many other North American urban contexts (Ogilvie & Goodman, 2012).

Gendered cycling participation patterns are spatial as well. For one, the gender-gap appears to exist only in cities with low cycling rates. In cities with high cycling rates, such as Amsterdam, the overall proportions of men and women who cycle for transportation are equal (Garrard, Handy & Dill, 2012; Heinen et al., 2010). Similar trends can be found at smaller scales as well. For instance, in Toronto data from the 2016 census indicates that 63.14% of those who commute to work by bicycle are male (Statistics Canada, 2019). However, as Figure 1.1 demonstrates, females

1 2 make up at least 50% of cyclists in some census tracts and over 40% of cyclists are female in many downtown neighbourhoods.

Figure 1.1. Cycling rates in Toronto: Bicycle Commute Mode Share in Downtown Toronto and the Inner Suburbs (top) and Proportion of Female Cyclists in Toronto (bottom)

This dissertation is about the gender-gap in cycling in Toronto. My motivation to study the gender- gap in cycling is both intellectual and personal. I love riding my bike in the city (or should I say all my bikes, I currently own three). I love how easy it is to get to the places I need to go, I love how it makes me feel, the speed, and the wind blowing through my hair. Over the past decade, my main mode of transportation, regardless of season, has been the bicycle (Figure 1.2). I inherited this love of cycling from my family, and particularly from my mother who frequently rode with me as a child, just as her mother, an immigrant from the Netherlands who used the bicycle as her primary mode of travel before moving to Canada, had done when she was young (Figure 1.2). As a person who identifies both as a woman and as a cyclist, and as someone whose love of cycling was ‘inherited’ primarily through the matriarchs of my family, I was eager to read the emerging literature on gender and cycling. As I began reading the literature on the gender-gap, however, I had a nagging feeling that something was missing. This feeling motivated this dissertation.

Figure 1.2. Riding my winter bike (top left), my mother & I on a bike ride in Hemmingford, Québec in the 1990s (bottom left), my grandmother, aunts, and mother on a bike ride in Pointe-Claire, Montréal in the 1960s (right)

I was motivated to pursue this dissertation research because many of the gendered experiences I and other friends have had while cycling are not present in the current literature. For example, little research discusses street harassment as a barrier to cycling, or the strategies and tactics some women adopt to avoid it (e.g. avoiding certain clothing items or bike frames). None of the research I read reflected the apprehensiveness to cycle that I have witnessed, mostly by

4 women who have little experience cycling, due to the worry they will be too slow to keep up, too wobbly, or too embarrassing. How about the experience many female bike mechanics face when customers assume they do not know what they are talking about? And what about the difficulty some experience wearing dresses? How about the challenge of carrying purses, bags, or even children by bike? Knowing how to do so requires additional skills and knowledge. With the exception of my gender, I fit the description of the typical Toronto cyclist - I am an able-bodied, white, upwardly mobile, urban-dwelling, female-identifying, adult cyclist - and yet I did not see many of my experiences reflected in this literature. If this literature didn’t represent my experiences, I had a hunch it also did not represent the experiences of many other women.

As I discuss in the literature review of this dissertation (see Chapter 2), most research on gender and cycling uses a binary conceptualization of gender, a cross-sectional research design, and quantitative analysis to examine male-female differences in cycling behaviours, stated concerns, correlates, and barriers. The two hypotheses at the centre of most of this work are: (1) that women cycle less than men due to greater safety concerns and (2) that women cycle less, or at least use bicycles differently than men, because of their more complex travel patterns that can arise from greater household responsibilities. While the literature identifies differences in male- female cycling patterns, it rarely sheds light on the social underpinnings of such differences. While I do not doubt that the current literature is based on rigorous evidence and analysis, I do worry that focusing on male-female differences without discussing identity relationally or how identities are produced could give rise to problematic interpretations of the relationship between gender and cycling.

To begin, the very conceptualization of gender in much of this literature rests on the idea that there are two distinct and opposing genders, a view that, amongst other things, ignores those whose identities do not conform to a two-gender system.1 Beyond this, I believe the literature on

1 Though there are many ways in which people can experience and express gendered identities, I use the terms “women” and “men” in this dissertation to refer to people who self-identify as women and men.

5 gender and cycling often, in Scott (2010)’s words, “take[s] the meaning of ‘women’ for granted” (p. 225). In research concerned with gender, gender should be understood as historically and geographically situated and as connected to dynamic, unstable, and power-laden systems of gender relations (Scott, 2010). To avoid taking gender ‘for granted’, research should not solely focus on differences assigned to men and women; it should also focus on the construction of sexual difference itself (Scott, 2010). The gender and cycling literature focuses a great deal on differences between men and women; however, the construction of gendered differences such as household responsibilities and concern over safety are not adequately or deeply considered.

Take, for example, the following quote from an issue of the magazine Scientific American:

Studies across disciplines as disparate as criminology and child rearing have shown that women are more averse to risk than men. In the cycling arena, that risk aversion translates into increased demand for safe bike infrastructure as a prerequisite for riding (Baker, 2009)

I take issue with this assumption that all women are unquestioningly more risk-averse than men. For one, “women” are not one monolithic category; it is problematic to assume that everyone identifying with a gender label shares the same characteristics, in this case risk-aversion, in other cases a propensity to complete household labour. Secondly, this assumption is troubling because it ignores the processes that shape outcomes like risk-aversion and household labour. Women are not born more risk-averse or prone to complete household-labour than men, rather societal processes shape these outcomes. And yet, little research examines these underlying processes by considering the social constructions of masculinities and femininities and examining power relations between these gendered categories.

Furthermore, there are personal and societal costs to these assumptions. For one, viewing women as more fearful than men and more inclined to perform unpaid household labour reinforces patriarchy. It can also inhibit people from fully expressing themselves, for example, some men may downplay their fear of cycling because they worry expressing these emotions would be emasculating. This view could also lead to the omission of women in cycling planning. For instance, there could be less incentive to implement programs that encourage women to cycle, or to ask for women’s feedback on a cycling project if the category “woman” is conceptualized as naturally less suited to this transport mode. For these reasons, it is important to consider the societal

6 reasons behind why women are associated with risk-aversion and household responsibilities. Sadly, this kind of thinking rarely appears in cycling research.

The frequent omission of considerations of gendered social relations in this literature is all the more surprising when one considers that social historians have written at length about the role of the bicycle on shaping masculinities and femininities of the past. As I discuss later2, the emergence of the safety bicycle acted as a disruptive force, "threatening" the normative framing of gender identities and roles (Strange & Brown 2002; Garvey, 1995; Mackintosh & Norcliffe, 2007). The safety bicycle was easier to ride than past models (notably, it had two similarly sized wheels and pneumatic tires) resulting in the bike boom of the 1890s - and the new inclusion of women in the sport. To some, women cycling was cast as inappropriate because it was masculinizing, threatened their health, and jeopardized their sexual purity (Garvey, 1995; Strange & Brown, 2002). Others believed that the bicycle had the potential to be an important tool to free woman from patriarchal social norms (Strange & Brown, 2002). Not only could cycling instil courage, self-reliance, and self-respect in women, it also offered women an escape of the physical confines of the home, thereby challenging the doctrine of separate gendered spheres (Strange & Brown, 2002). I was inspired by this historical research. If historians could look to the past to understand how cycling shaped and was shaped by gender, surely geographers could shed light on these processes across place in the present.

Another research gap that motivated this research is the lack of cycling literature that accounts for difference in cycling motives and experiences within gender categories. While many feminist scholars have highlighted the importance of intersectionality, i.e. the complex and cumulative interaction of intersecting axes of identity, privilege, domination, and oppression (Crenshaw, 1991; Lugones & Spelman, 1983), much of the current literature does not explicitly address how a ‘woman's experience’ or a ‘man’s experience’ of cycling is the same for all, regardless of ethnicity, age, ability, class, or sexuality. Accounting for difference may add nuance to the gendered cycling trends currently observed. For instance, in the North-American literature on gendered automobility women have been found to drive less than men in terms of both distance

2 Please see the Historical Cycles vignette on pages 16 to 18.

7 and time (Crane, 2007; Polk, 2003; Root et al., 2000). However, when quantitative studies analysing travel surveys incorporated other axes of identity into their analysis, a more complex narrative around driving and identity was exposed. For example, early work by McLafferty and Preston (1991) investigated the effects of gender, race, and class on car commutes. They found that while men commuted longer distances by vehicle than women overall, commuting distances based on gender are smaller than those based on race. White-identified people spent the least amount of time commuting by car, followed by Hispanic-identified individuals, and African Americans. More recent work has found that the effects of race and gender on commute times vary depending on the locations of places of residence and work (Johnston-Anumonwo, 2014; Preston & McLafferty, 2016; Sultana 2005). As with these examples, cycling patterns may be more complex than “women cycle less than men”. Given that my motivation for this research was to uncover the societal factors underpinning why women may cycle less than men, I felt it important to also consider the role of power relations across multiple intersecting axes of identity.

Taken together, my personal experiences and these research gaps inspired me to pursue a PhD on gender and cycling, and specifically to complete a research project that went beyond identifying differences between men and women, and instead approached the topic with an intersectional lens with the aim of understanding the power-laden underpinnings of the gendered trends we observe in cycling. In other words, a research project on gender and cycling that does not take gender ‘for granted’. In doing so, I view this work as a feminist contribution to cycling research. In this introductory chapter, I begin by describing the key theoretical perspectives guiding this work. Then, I review the research design of my work, concluding with a brief summary of the dissertation’s chapters.

1.1 Theoretical Perspectives

This project was inspired by and takes up numerous feminist theoretical perspectives, though the main concept guiding this research is embodiment. The body has been a subject of much philosophical debate through the ages. In the seventeenth century, Descartes coined the mind-body dualistic concept, which views the mind as the center of intelligence, consciousness, and therefore selfhood and the body as a separate entity that is but a machine for the mind. This conceptualization of the body has had profound implications for the present-day conceptualization of the body and, more generally, on western thought. In fact, many present-day philosophies are framed by the

8 mind-body and other dualisms where a binary dichotomy is perceived between social elements such as nature/culture, man/women, and global/local (Berg & Longhurst, 2003; Longhurst, 1997; Massey, 1994). Not only do we conceptualize these terms as two self-contained opposites, these terms also have hierarchical ordering where one term has an independent existence and a positive status, while the other is defined negatively: as what the other is not (Berg & Longhurst, 2003; Longhurst, 1997; Massey, 1994; Massey, 2007; Mohanty, 1984).

These dualisms are also gendered, for example the mind along with ideals of human reason are often associated with masculinity, while the body and its associated emotions and reproductive roles are associated with femininity. While both women and men do, of course, have bodies, it has been argued that men’s bodies in western culture are viewed as “a container for the pure consciousness it [holds] inside” (Longhurst, 1997, p. 491). In the words of Grosz (1994) “women are somehow more biological, more corporeal, and more natural than men” (p. 14). Indeed, stereotypes of women being hormonal and emotional prevail to this day (Brescoll, 2016; Longhurst, 1997; Shields, 2002). Other work has shown how this closer association to the body has also been attributed to colonised people and people of lower socioeconomic classes (McClintock, 1995, Alcoff, 2006).

This gendered mind/body dualism has played a role in determining what counts as legitimate knowledge. Rationality assumes that people must separate themselves from their body, emotions, and past experiences in order to hold true knowledge. The fact that “legitimate” rationality comes from the mind and is associated with masculinity has implications on what topics of study are considered “legitimate” and who is perceived as a “legitimate” knowledge holder. In order to confront these problematic assumptions and to deconstruct binaries such as mind/body, sex/gender, nature/culture, feminist thinkers have tackled the body as a subject of academic inquiry. Notably, Judith Butler’s work on embodied performance was influential in deconstructing the sex/gender, nature/culture dualisms. Rather than conceptualizing sex as the biological basis of the socially constructed gender, Butler (1990) rejected the conception that biology underlies the categories of gender or sex, and their associated assumptions of heterosexuality. She argued that “sex” is not a biological fact separate from society because the sexual organs we are born with are used to discipline us into masculine or feminine comportments. Butler theorized gender as performative, as the “repeated stylisation of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid

9 regulatory framework that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (1990, p.33). Gender performances are acted out to conform to social scripts prescribing ideals that are impossible to meet, but provide a framework for our behaviours. Butler (1990) identifies how gender is performed, regulated, and “done” at the scale of the body. In her words: “the regulatory norms of ‘sex’ work in performative fashion to constitute the materiality of bodies and, more specifically, to materialize the body’s sex, to materialize sexual difference in the service of the consolidation of the heterosexual imperative” (p. 2). While Butler focuses on gender performativity, aspects of her theories have also been applied to other axes of identity such as race, class, and age (e.g.: Ehlers, 2012).

Butler’s theory of gender performativity was highly influential in the social sciences, including in geography where it was used to consider relationships between gender, sexuality, space, and place (e.g.: Bell et al., 1994; Valentine, 1996). However, her work has been assessed critically over the years. Notably, Nelson (1999) critiqued this work for prioritizing discourse over the materiality of bodies and for overlooking agency in the doing of identity. Longhurst’s work (1997, 2001, Johnston & Longhurst, 2010), in particular, was influential in bringing the materiality of bodies back into the spotlight. Longhurst (2001) highlighted how social constructionism can wrongly “render the body incorporeal, fleshless, fluid-less, little more than a linguistic territory” (p. 23). Not only did she argue that material bodies with fluid identities played a role in our understanding of place, she also argued that bodily fluids, such as blood, vomit, farts, and urine, were important topics of academic inquiry. She argued that these fluids are mediated through cultural representation: bodily fluids challenge conceptions of the body as bounded and secure and are considered ‘messy’. Furthermore, these fluids are associated with other dualisms that help construct people’s relationship to space. For instance women are often understood as having more leaky bodily boundaries than men (for example, due to menstrual blood or breast milk) and it is commonly thought that leaky bodies are not to be trusted in public spaces. Longhurst posited the study fluid bodily boundaries as a way to challenge these dualisms and current masculinist modes of knowledge production.

Another influential embodiment scholar is Iris Marion Young. Young’s (2005)3 work critiqued the ways in which mainstream American discourse interprets differences in male-female bodily movements. She observed that women generally are not as open with their bodies as they walk, sit, throw, or carry things as men – i.e. their legs stay closer together, they take smaller strides, they hold things close, moving the entire body less. This way of moving is frequently interpreted as a biological, natural, difference between the genders, but Young (2005) interpreted it as a way in which patriarchy influences mobility at the scale of the body. She argued that feminine movement displays an ambiguous transcendence (i.e. women’s bodies being lived as a burden), an inhibited intentionality (i.e. holding back while also committing to a task), and a discontinuous unity with its surroundings (i.e. the disunity between the parts of the body that commit to the task and the part that do remain immobile). These gendered experiences of mobility are internalized and result from the situation of women in a patriarchal society. According to Young’s analysis, in mainstream American culture women are not encouraged to use their full bodily capacities and to develop specific bodily skills in comparison to men. Young girls acquire many “subtle habits of feminine body comportment” (p. 43) that they conform to throughout the life-course in order to perform their sex/gender. Gendered discrepancies in physical activity levels and sport participation persist to this day in western countries (Evans, 2006; Slater & Tiggemann, 2011); and recent scholarship continues to engage with Young’s (2005) work on embodiment to understand these discrepancies (Evans, 2006).

In recent years, there has been much growth in published academic work in geography that considers post-structuralist processes and is grounded in material bodies and experiences (Longhurst & Johnston, 2014). These recent works cover a range of themes from maternal bodies, to geopolitical bodies, to trans geographies (Longhurst & Johnston 2014). One field where theory of embodied identity is lacking is in the mobilities literature, and specifically where the cycling body or bodies come into view. This dissertation contributes to this knowledge gap by exploring the gendered embodied experience of cycling. Furthermore, because there is no one “woman’s” or

3 Though I draw from her book chapter published in 2005, the essay was first presented at a meeting of the Mid-West Division of the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) in 1977

“man’s” experience, this research employs an intersectional approach that considers how gendered cycling intersects with other axes of identity such as class, race, and age.

1.2 Research Design Overview

Guided by theories of embodiment, my doctoral thesis was undertaken with the intent of highlighting how power relations influence or shape the experience of urban cycling across intersecting axes of identity. To do so, I asked the following research question: How does the embodied experience of cycling shape, and how is it shaped by, intersecting axes of identity? Within this question, I asked: (1) How have performances of identity influenced participants’ decision to take-up or give-up cycling throughout the life course? And (2) how do bodies shape, and how are they shaped by, the experience of cycling in Toronto?

To answer these questions, I performed a qualitative research study in partnership with CultureLink, a not-for-profit settlement service agency. Amongst other initiatives aimed at helping newcomers feel at home in Toronto, CultureLink offers a cycling mentorship program called Bike Host. Every year, Toronto-based immigrants and refugees with an interest in cycling are invited to participate in this cycling mentorship program. They are loaned a bicycle, helmet and lock for the summer and are put into groups with a Toronto-based mentor who is a confident cyclist. Over the course of the summer months, the newcomer participants and their mentors engage in bicycle- based social outings around the city, both as part of their mentor’s group, and by attending events organized for all participants in the program. This partnership was chosen for many reasons. For one, much of the cycling literature focuses on individuals who are already keen cyclists – i.e. those who have overcome the barriers associated with this mode of transport. Learning how to bike in a city is an understudied and potentially revealing experience. By focusing on the experience of those enrolled in this bike mentorship program, I hoped to shed light on what makes people eager to try cycling, the initial barriers to cycling, and the reasons for which some continue to cycle and others do not. Working with CultureLink on the Bike Host program was also a suitable collaboration given my interest in how the experience of cycling shapes and is shaped by intersecting axes of identity. Bike Host participants live in diverse neighbourhoods across the city, have moved to Canada from many different countries and cultures, and tend to be diverse with regards to gender, income, and ethnicity.

During the summer 2017 iteration of the program, I invited participants to take part in my research project. Among other research activities, participants were invited to complete two interviews: one at the beginning of the program that focused on the participant’s mobilities life history & perceptions of cycling in Toronto and one at the end of the program meant to capture the new cyclists’ experiences biking over the summer. During the first interview, I asked participants about their experiences using different transportation modes, and specifically cycling, from childhood to the present day. I also asked about their perceptions of cycling in Toronto as well as how they hope to use their loaned bicycles over the summer. Finally, we discussed identity and cycling, and more specifically potential identify-based barriers to cycling. During the second interview, I asked participants about their embodied experiences in the Bike Host program. I also asked how their experiences cycling over the summer compared to their initial perceptions and whether they will continue cycling now that the program is over.

The interviews generated ample data across various themes and experiences. In this dissertation, I present the results of three major themes. The first is concerned with the embodied experience of cycling in the city. Here, I find that this experience is discursive and material – as well as dynamic across time and space. By focusing on the gendered and classed cycling body, I identify how power relations shape cycling bodies. The next two themes coincide with the two gender-gap hypotheses most commonly identified in the literature: concern over safety and household labour. In the chapter related to cycling safety, I explore the multitude of fears associated with cycling that were expressed by the research participants. In this chapter, I argue that fear of cycling is dynamic, and has temporal, spatial, and social dimensions. In the chapter on household-serving travel, I explore how gendered travel and labour is completed by bicycle by the participants in this study. In doing so, I add nuance to the assumption that all household-serving trips are difficult to complete by bike.

1.3 Chapter Synopsis

This dissertation is made up of seven chapters: this introduction, a literature review, a methodology chapter, three chapters presenting empirical results titled: “Examining the Gendered and Classed Embodied Experience of Cycling”, “Fear of Cycling: Spatial, Temporal, and Social Dimensions”, and “Vélomobilities of Care in a Low-Cycling City”, and a conclusion. This thesis takes the form of a ‘paper thesis’ in that it consists of four journal articles; as such, there is some repetition in

13 content, particularly around research methods. In between many of the chapters I have added short vignettes on additional themes related to, but outside the scope of, the formal chapters. These vignettes are meant to personalize the researcher and research participants, broaden the discussions put forth in the chapters, and draw parallels between the chapters. The literature review and three empirical chapters, the four chapters which will be published in academic journals, are briefly reviewed below.

Chapter 2 presents the results of a critical literature review of academic journal articles on gender and cycling. Using a systematic search strategy, I identify and review 61 articles published since 2000 on gender and cycling. Most studies use a cross-sectional research design, and quantitative analysis to examine male-female differences in cycling behaviours, stated concerns, correlates, and barriers. Two hypotheses are commonly discussed in this work: that women cycle less than men due to greater safety concerns and that women cycle less (or differently) than men because they complete more household-serving travel. While the literature draws attention toward travel characteristics, it often relies on a simple binary conceptualization of gender. In doing so, it identifies differences in male-female cycling patterns, but it rarely sheds light on the gendered processes underlying these differences. In this chapter, I argue that research into cycling could be strengthened by engaging with feminist theory, an approach which could advance a more nuanced understanding of how gender and other axes of identity are intertwined with cycling. A version of this chapter was published in Geography Compass in June 2019 (see: Ravensbergen et al., 2019). It outlines the critique and theoretical approaches guiding this dissertation.

In Chapter three, entitled ““I wouldn’t take the risk of the attention, you know? just a lone girl biking”: Examining the Gendered and Classed Embodied Experiences of Cycling”, I describe the embodied experience of bicycling as performative and material. While literature on the cycling body exists, it focuses on embodied processes as they relate to cycling as a form of mobility, all the while overlooking how these cycling bodies are also gendered, racialized, classed, or queered. To address this gap, I highlight how context-specific social norms exist around who is read as cycling appropriately. Three norms consistently discussed are that cycling can be at odds with femininity, that it is a symbol of poverty, and that these norms vary across one’s life-course. These norms act as discursive regulatory frameworks for gender and class performativity. Cycling can also be an experience of ‘intense embodiment’ in that it can bring the absent body back into

14 consciousness. This experience is dynamic and elicits diverse emotions. Furthermore, cycling is not only found to increase people’s awareness of their materiality, but also their bodily fluids challenge the notion of ‘secure’ bodily boundaries. These material processes can be gendered and/or classed, and can affect access to mobility and public space. By studying identity formation processes as they relate to cycling, this chapter sheds light on the power-laden underpinnings of identity-based differences in cycling. A version of this chapter was submitted for publication in Social & Cultural Geography in August 2019.

Chapter four focuses on the most common hypothesis put forward to explain the gender- gap in cycling: concern over safety. Rather than focusing on the often-studied concepts of safety, risk, or danger, this chapter focuses on fear as an emotional response to thinking about or engaging in cycling. In this chapter, entitled “Fear and Cycling: Spatial, Temporal, and Social Dimensions”, I draw on participant interviews to show that there are many fears associated with cycling, and that these fears are dynamic and have social, temporal, and spatial dimensions. The two most frequent fears described were fear of injury and fear for personal safety. Fear of injury varied across the city, throughout the day, was shaped in relation to past experiences cycling, and diminished over time. Fear of injury can also be social, for instance, gendered access to opportunities to cycle throughout the life course shape this fear. Fear for personal safety was primarily expressed by women, was often shaped by past experiences of street harassment, and changed throughout the day, across the city, and was understood in relation to other places. Other fears described by participants included fear of bicycle theft, fear of getting lost, fear of encountering mechanical problems, and fear of getting in trouble with law enforcement. This chapter contributes to the literature by expanding the discussion of fear beyond that of injury. Furthermore, it demonstrates how fears can be produced socially, as well as change across time and place. I intend on submitting this chapter for publication in the Critical Vélomobilities special issue in the Journal of Transport Geography in December 2019, a special issue that I am guest editing with three other scholars.

Chapter Five examines the second most frequently discussed hypothesis for the gender- gap in cycling: gendered mobilities of care, i.e. the travel required to meet household needs such as shopping, running errands, or escorting children. This type of travel is often understood as difficult to complete by bicycle because it tends to involve transporting goods or people. Because women tend to complete more unpaid household labour than men, the bicycle’s supposed

15 incompatibility with household-serving travel has even been put forth as a reason for which women have been found to cycle less than men in low-cycling cities. However, the ways in which people use the bicycle to complete this form of travel in these low-cycling cities has yet to be studied. This chapter, titled “Vélomobilities of Care in a Low-Cycling City” addresses this gap in the literature by providing a detailed account of how cyclists use their bicycles to complete mobilities of care. Results indicate that traveling with children and grocery shopping in bulk is generally considered difficult to complete by bicycle. Buying small amounts of groceries and trip-chaining, however, was usually perceived as convenient to do on two wheels. This chapter also frames participants experiences completing this type of travel by bicycle with social practice theory to demonstrate how even difficult household serving trips are possible by bicycle when equipped with certain meanings, competencies, and materials. This chapter contributes to the cycling literature by demonstrating the ways in which people use bicycles to complete mobilities of care in a low-cycling city. By highlighting the challenges people face, as well as they ways in which some overcome these challenges, it also points to possible policy interventions that could encourage city cycling. A version of this chapter was submitted for publication in the Gender, Culture and Transport Special issue in Transport Research Part A: Policy and Practice in July 2019.

Chapter 6 concludes this dissertation by reviewing its key contributions. I then discuss the implications of this research for policy and practice. This is followed by a discussion of additional findings that will inspire writing beyond this dissertation. I conclude by discussing future research avenues this work may motivate.

To close this introduction, I’d like to note that this research is, at least in part, politically motivated. At the individual level, cycling is not only a practical way to get around, it also contributes to daily physical activity, aerobic fitness, and cardiovascular health, all the while helping to protect riders against obesity, diabetes, and several other diseases (Pucher & Buehler, 2012). Ensuring that these benefits are distributed equitably across urban residents, regardless of gender or other axes of identity, is a matter of equity. Furthermore, biking for transportation can increase the quality of life in cities by reducing the negative externalities of car traffic in terms of emissions, noise, congestion, and accidents (Borjesson & Eliasson, 2012; Pucher & Buehler, 2012). To attain these benefits, we need a critical mass of cyclists – a feat that would be hard to accomplish if female

16 cycling participation remains low. It is my hope that this dissertation will make a small contribution toward the creation of thriving and equitable cycling cities.

Vignette 1: Historical cycles

“Let me tell you what I think of the bicycle. I think it has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a bike. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood” – Susan B. Anthony, 1896

References and sketches of two wheeled cycling devices date back to the seventeenth century and early versions of the bicycle, such as Baron Karl von Drais’ velocipede, which lacked pedals (it was instead propelled by the riders feet pushing against the ground) date back to 1817. Cycles did not become a common technology, particularly among the elite, however, until the advent of the penny-farthing in the 1870s and early 1880s. The penny-farthing bicycle, also known as the ordinary and the high wheel, had an enormous wheel in the front driven by the pedals at its axel and a single small wheel at the back, and was difficult to mount and dangerous to ride (Garvey, 1995; Strange & Brown, 2002). Those who participated in early cycling were almost exclusively men from wealthy middle-classes (Kossuth & Wamsley, 2003; Mackintosh & Norcliff, 2007). In 1886, the advent of the safety bicycle, which looks much like bicycles we see today with two similarly sized wheels and pneumatic tires, revolutionized cycling and attracted many more riders (Strange & Brown, 2002; Garrard, Handy & Dill, 2012). Unlike its predecessor, the safety bicycle was easier to ride resulting in much broader appeal – including amongst women. During the bicycle ‘craze’ of the late 1800s, the bicycle was linked to women’s emancipation, albeit only wealthy women could afford this mobility at the time. Later, though mass production, individuals of lower socioeconomic classes were finally able to access this machine (Kossuth & Wamsley, 2003).

Social historians have shown how these emerging cycling technologies shaped constructions of masculinity and femininities. For example, some have argued that early high wheeled cycling played a part in defining and reinforcing social constructions of class and masculinity (Kossuth & Wamsley, 2003; Mackintosh & Norcliff, 2007). Focusing on the Forest City Bicycle Club of London, one of the first of such clubs in Canada, Kossuth and Wamsley (2003) demonstrate how the high wheeled bicycle was a symbol of wealth and masculinity. Membership in bicycle clubs offered social status through the high cost of ordinary bicycles, the military style ranking the members had, and the gentlemanly manner in which the members were meant to behave. Furthermore, sporting events allowed competitors to demonstrate their masculine

18 traits such as bravado, courage, competitiveness (Kossuth & Wamsley, 2003; Mackintosh and Norcliff, 2007). By the early 1880s, cycling was considered by many a passing-trend, a hobby of interest to athletes (Strange & Brown, 2002).

The arrival of the safety bicycle, however, resulted in the new inclusion of women in the sport, which caused quite the stir because it contradicted normative framing of gender identities and roles (Strange & Brown 2002; Garvey 1995; Mackintosh & Norcliffe, 2007). To some, the idea of women cycling was inappropriate and immoral because it was masculinizing, threatened their health (e.g.: the physical effort was too strenuous, or it could lead to diseases), and jeopardized their sexual purity (Garvey, 1995; Strange & Brown, 2002). Some women’s rights activists, and notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton, believed that the bicycle had the potential to be an important tool to free woman from patriarchal social norms because it offered women an escape of the physical confines of the home, thereby challenging the doctrine of separate gendered spheres, all the while instilling courage, self-reliance, and self-respect in women (Strange & Brown, 2002). It also led to some dress reform. For example, because long heavy skirts and corsets were impractical for riding, fashion developments such as bloomers appeared. Some suffragettes even became cycling advocates. For example, Alice Hawkins, a British suffragette, cycled around Leicester in 1914 to promote the women's rights movement – and in doing so caused a scandal by being one of the first women to wear pantaloons publicly (Dawson, 2011). As the quote opening this chapter demonstrates (Macy, 2011), other eminent suffragettes such as Susan B. Anthony saw the mobility and the independence the bicycle provided as liberating for women.

While some activists saw the bicycle as a tool for social reform, others believed that cycling could be feminine and even reinforce traditional gender roles (Garrard, Handy Dill, 2012). For example, Frances Willard, an American suffragette and advocate of the temperance movement, believed that women’s cycling would strengthen the family, and keep men away from sinful temptations such as alcohol (Strange and Brown, 2002). Furthermore, analysis of historical magazines demonstrates how advertisements and stories at this time did not sell the bicycle to women as a tool for liberation. Instead, they depicted cyclists in traditional gender roles, included statements about the benefits of cycling to women’s health, and even advertised bike seats designed specifically to ensure women’s sexual purity. This was done to ensure that manufacturers could make as much money as possible with this new market while also not disrupting gender norms of the time (Garvey, 1995).

Taken together, this brief vignette on some of the key historical research on gender and cycling demonstrates the role of bicycle mobility in shaping, shifting, and reinforcing masculinities and femininities at the turn of the 19th century. This work also demonstrates how you cannot take the role of the bicycle in shaping gender relations for granted: it is contested terrain, at times inspiring new constructions of gender, at other times reinforcing traditional gender norms. The following chapter will argue, amongst other things, that modern-day research on gender and cycling is lacking in this type of analysis: research that considers the role of the bicycle in shaping present-day masculinities and femininities.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

In the late 1970s, transportation research and planning was critiqued for being gender-blind: for ignoring gender-based differences in mobility and accessibility to urban space (Giuliano, 1979; Rosenbloom, 1978). While this critique resulted in a surge of interest and publications on the topic, the geographer Robin Law argued in her 1999 review paper that the issues and theoretical frameworks used to study gender and transport remained limited in scope. Specifically, she demonstrated that the field remained largely concerned with travel behavior and policy, and the debate about the shorter commutes of female workers tended to overshadow other research questions. Law (1999) proposed an alternative approach to the study of gender and transport, one that would use a more systematic theory of gender as a category in social life.

Eleven years following Law’s critique, Hanson (2010) reviewed research on gender and mobility to question how the then-current knowledge of these topics could inform development of sustainable mobility policies. Hanson (2010) identified two strands of thinking about gender and mobility in the academic literature that remained largely discrete and disconnected from each other. One of the two strands of thinking is concerned with how gender shapes mobility. These studies measure mobility or travel in great detail, generally through the use of large, national secondary datasets or activity-travel diaries, but tend to take a simplified view of gender as the male/female sex binary. This body of work is characterized by issues pointed out by Law (1999) in that it identifies patterns, but does not delve deeply into the gendered processes underlying such patterns (Hanson, 2010). The second stream of research Hanson (2010) identified is concerned with how mobility shapes gender, in which the social constructions of gender are thoroughly examined but travel characteristics are not deeply considered. These studies usually make use of qualitative methods that pay close attention to context, emphasize the social environment, and focus on women’s lived experience (Hanson, 2010). Hanson (2010) urged future researchers to integrate these two strands of thinking in order to pursue sustainable transport outcomes. For this chapter, I conducted a systematic review of transportation literature on gender, with a focus on cycling, in the two decades since Law’s (1999) critique and the nine years since Hanson’s (2010) work. I focus on cycling because it is gaining attention in contemporary research due to its potential to play a key role in sustainable urban mobility. Furthermore, as discussed in the introduction to this dissertation, this contemporary research focusing on urban regions in Canada, the U.S., U.K., and Australia has identified a “gender-gap” in this sustainable mode of

21 transport whereby men have been found to cycle more for both recreation and transport than women (Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009). In some cases, data suggest that as many as two-thirds of commuter cyclists are male in these places (Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009). The gender-gap appears to exist mainly in cities with low cycling rates, while in cities with high cycling rates, an equal proportion of men and women cycle for transportation (Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009)4. This gender-based mode share gap has been engaged with in policy and advocacy as well. As an example, consider the Copenhagenize Bicycle Friendly City Index, an inventory and ranking of bicycle-friendly cities, which includes a “gender split” parameter that awards cities points for exhibiting a small gender-gap in cycling (see: http://copenhagenizeindex.eu/criteria.html). While the bicycle is often discussed in relation to gender and sustainable mobility, the ways in which the recent academic literature has approached this topic, and more specifically whether it has incorporated thinking by scholars such as Law (1999) and Hanson (2010), has yet to be examined.

The chapter begins with a description of the systematic search strategy used to assemble the reviewed studies. Then, the literature on gender and cycling is summarized, and methodological approaches are reviewed. I argue that many of the problems identified through Hanson and Law’s earlier analyses of the literature persist today. Therefore, I call for more research on cycling that considers gender deeply, as well as research that integrates extensive analysis of mobility and intensive analysis of gender. To enable a feminist geography of cycling, the Ways Forward section begins to describe a project of working through and with three theoretical concepts used in feminist geography, namely, performativity, intersectionality, and embodiment, concepts that were discussed in the introduction to this dissertation. The chapter concludes by outlining the implications for cycling research and policy of framing gender and, more broadly identity, using feminist theory that has informed geographic scholarship.

2.1 Review Process

A systematic search and review process was used to identify peer-reviewed articles on gender and transport cycling. This type of review process aims to employ an exhaustive, comprehensive search strategy, followed by a critical review of the identified literature (Grant & Booth, 2009). I

4 It is important to note that this literature is predominantly Western-focused, therefore, these trends may differ in other contexts.

22 developed the search protocol with input from a reference librarian at the University of Toronto’s Robarts library. Searches for the following three terms in conjunction (using the “AND” operator) were applied to titles and abstracts of five multi-disciplinary databases (IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences), Sociological Abstracts, Geobase, ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts), and Medline): 1. Cycling: bike* OR bicycl* OR cycl* 2. Gender: sex* OR gender* OR m?n OR wom?n OR male* OR female* OR girl* OR boy* OR masculin* OR feminin* 3. Transport: travel* OR transport* OR commut* OR utilitarian OR "non-motori?ed mode*" OR "non-motori?ed transport*"

Searches took place in September 2018. Because my aim was to assess academic work published since Hanson’s (2010) and Law’s (1999) publications, articles also had to be published since 2000 and be peer-reviewed. No geographical restrictions were applied. All identified articles were written in the English language, which may have produced bias toward research performed in English-speaking places. The initial search produced 1,466 publications across five databases. The five databases did not include papers from the Transport Research Record (TRR), Journal of the Transportation Research Board. An adapted search protocol was used to engage directly with the TRR. The third search term “transport” was removed as all articles published in this journal relate to transport and the terms, gender and cycling, were only applied to article titles. This was done because the TRR’s database does not include an abstract search function. A total of eight articles were identified through the TRR search.

A multi-step screening process was used to distinguish articles relevant to the topic of gender and transport cycling (Figure 2.1). Duplicates were removed and then titles and abstracts were reviewed for relevance. Many papers were excluded during the title and abstract review process due to their clear focus on biomedical cycles, rather than bicycling (e.g.: menstrual cycles, hormonal cycles, etc.). The full-texts of the 125 remaining articles were assessed for eligibility. Articles that discussed cycling, but not in relation to gender, were excluded. For example, some examined gender differences in active travel, but did not discuss cycling separately from walking. Articles that reported male-female discrepancies in cycling behaviours without interpretation were also excluded. A total of sixty-four articles were excluded producing sixty-one articles (57 from the five databases, 4 from the TRR) for review.

Figure 2.1. Overview of the Systematic Review Process

2.2 Results

Most studies (n = 49) used quantitative methods to compare how cycling behaviours, correlates, barriers, or concerns varied between male and female respondents. A further seven articles used qualitative methods, three used mixed methods, and two were literature reviews. Most articles originated from the United States (n = 14), the United Kingdom (n = 9) or other European countries (n = 12), and Australia (n = 9). Twenty articles were primarily concerned with examining gender and cycling, while forty-one did so as a secondary focus. Two hypotheses were frequently discussed to explain the gender gap in cycling: women’s greater concern over safety and male-

24 female differences in trip characteristics, often in relation to women’s greater responsibility for household labour. In fact, thirty-six articles discussed the “risk-aversion” hypothesis, while fourteen articles considered male/female differences in trip characteristics. Six of these articles discussed both themes. A summary of all studies included is presented in Appendix A.

2.2.1 Concern Over Safety

The majority of articles that examined gendered risk arrived at this conclusion by comparing male and female responses (ascertained through self-identification) to travel survey questions (n = 15). Female respondents either identified safety indicators as greater barriers to cycling than male respondents (Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Dickinson et al., 2003; Troped et al., 2001; Van Bekkum et al., 2011; Wittmann et al., 2015), perceived roads or existing infrastructure as less safe or satisfactory than male respondents (Manton et al., 2016; Nelson & Woods , 2010; Stronegger et al., 2010), or described greater concern over safety indicators (e.g.: vehicular traffic, lack of bicycle infrastructure) than male respondents (Akar, Fisher & Namgung, 2013; Twaddle et al., 2010). Other survey-based studies found that safety indicators were statistically stronger correlates of bicycling behaviour for women than men (Akar, Fisher & Namgung, 2013; Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009; Mitra & Nash, 2018; Orstad et al., 2016; Van Cauwenberg et al., 2012). Furthermore, Alveano-Aguerrebere et al. (2017) and Van Holle et al. (2014) found evidence for women’s greater concern over safety by asking respondents to rate possible cycling commute environments.

Four observational studies found evidence for the risk-aversion hypothesis (Beechman & Wood, 2014b; Garrard, Rose & Kai Lo, 2008; Parker et al., 2011; Zanotto & Winters, 2017). Studies also found support for the safety hypothesis through reported behaviour (i.e. women reported cycling more frequently off-road while men reported doing so more frequently on-road) (Heesch, Sahlqvist & Garrard, 2012) or stated preference for greater separation from traffic (Aldred, Ellliott, Woodcock & Goodman, 2017). Women indicated greater concerns over safety than men in two articles using qualitative methods as well (Karkie & Tao, 2016; Mosquera et al., 2012). For example, in Mosquera et al.’s (2012) qualitative study, female interviewees and focus group participants stated that they felt more vulnerable to personal attacks, injuries, and theft while cycling than men. Four articles examined the effects of gendered parental perceptions of safety on children’s cycling behaviours (Carver et al., 2005; Hsu & Saphores, 2014; Nevelsteen et al., 2012; Trapp et al., 2011). Finally, some studies did not provide empirical evidence for the safety

25 hypothesis, but cited literature on gendered concern over safety (Bell, Garrard & Swinburn, 2006; Fishman, 2016; Ji et al., 2017; Noyes et al., 2014; Tayhan et al., 2016; Teschke et al., 2017; Wang, Akar & Guldmann, 2015).

Concern over safety frequently refers to concern of physical injury due to collisions or accidents, often in relation to infrastructure presence (Akar, Fisher & Namgung, 2013; Damant- Sirois & El Geneidy, 2015; Manton et al., 2016). Sometimes, however, stated safety concerns related to fear for personal safety (e.g.: crime, attacks, assault, etc.) (Van Cauwenberg et al., 2012), or to both injury and personal safety (Mosquera et al., 2012). In one article, women’s greater concern over safety was discussed in relation to air pollution and related illnesses (Zhao et al., 2018). At other times, the source of this concern remained unspecified (Troped et al., 2001). Males also tended to have safety concerns or a preference for cycling infrastructure, but appeared to raise such issues less often, or to a lesser extent, than females (Aldred, Ellliott, Woodcock & Goodman, 2017; Heesch, Sahlqvist & Garrard, 2012).

2.2.2 Trip Characteristics

The second frequently discussed theme concerned male-female differences in trip characteristics. Eight articles found that men and women use bicycles for different activities (e.g.: Beecham & Wood, 2014a; Brey et al., 2017; Damant-Sirois & El Geneidy, 2015; Fyhri & Fearnley, 2015; Goodman & Cheshire, 2014; Ji et al., 2017; Nehme et al., 2016b; Sahlqvist & Heesh, 2012). These gendered differences in cycling activity-travel or trip-characteristics are frequently discussed in relation to the unequal distribution of household labour. Women today still tend to hold greater responsibility household tasks such as grocery shopping, chauffeuring children, and running errands (Scheiner & Holz-Rau, 2017). When this is the case, women tend to organise their daily trips into efficient trip-chains: i.e. making one or more stops on the way to the final destination (e.g.: dropping off children during the commute to work) in order to balance employment, household, and caregiving work (Scheiner & Holz-Rau, 2017). Three articles examined how complex and gendered activity-travel or trip characteristics influenced cycling behaviours (Zhao, Wang & Deng, 2015; Brey et al., 2017; Eye & Ferreira, 2015).

Two articles argued that women cycle less than men, rather than exhibit different cycling trip-characteristics, because some of the activities associated with household labour may be more difficult to complete by bicycle than using other modes (Dickinson et al., 2013; Delmelle &

Delmelle, 2012). Furthermore, Prati (2018) examined the relationship between women’s participation in transport cycling and measures of gender equality in European Union states. The “time” domain of the Gender Equality Index (i.e. the gender-gaps in time spent on caring activities, cooking, and housework) was positively associated women’s cycling, suggesting that women’s greater role in household responsibilities may act as a barrier to participating in transport cycling. Two articles did not report male-female discrepancies in trip characteristics, but cited literature on the topic (Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009; Wang, Akar & Guldmann, 2015).

While the risk-aversion and the trip-chaining hypotheses were most frequently discussed, other gender differences in male-female bicycle behaviour were also considered. Two articles argued that females are more motivated to cycle due to environmental concerns than males (Sardianou & Nioza, 2015; Sigurdardottir et al., 2013). Furthermore, participants in Mosquera et al.’s (2012) study also commented on potential barriers women may face when trying to maintain a “feminine” appearance while cycling (e.g.; difficulty wearing high heels or skirts). Some articles examined gender and cycling without focusing on the dichotomy between men and women’s experiences. For example, Ferguson (2017) explored the experiences of female bike messengers with a focus on restroom access in two American cities.

2.3 Discussion

Findings from this review indicate that cycling research where gender is considered tends to focus on identifying male-female differences in behaviours, stated concerns, correlates, and barriers. Quantitative studies are conducted more frequently, and in most of these studies great attention is given to travel demand metrics such as trip purpose, trip type (recreational or transport, commute or non-commute), trip mode (private or public bicycle), or other characteristics (e.g.: travel alone or with other, location, time). In these studies, however, less attention is given to the conceptualization of gender. Gender is typically treated using a male/female binary, with data arising through self-report travel surveys. Much of the extant research on gender and cycling therefore falls under one of the two streams of inquiry identified by Hanson (2010): studies that examine how gender shapes transport using a simplified view of gender and data describing travel demand.

This focus on how gender shapes mobility produce a cycling literature characterized by the same issues identified by Law (1999): male-female patterns are identified, but the underlying

27 gendered processes that may produce observed outcomes such as risk-aversion or trip-chain travel characteristics in the first place are not adequately or deeply considered. For example, in their article on bicycle path preference across the sexes, Garrard, Rose and Lo (2008) stated that some population groups, such as women, have “greater sensitivity to adverse traffic conditions" (p. 56) and a “preference for less strenuous forms of physical activity” (p. 57). At no point do the authors attempt to explain why men and women’s behaviour may be different in this regard. Furthermore, in Heesch, Sahlqvist and Garrard’s (2012) research on cycling patterns, motivators, and constraints, they explain how men may cycle more frequently because “women are more likely than men to trip chain as part of their commute, given their responsibilities for transporting children and other household members and to do the household shopping." (p. 2). The authors, however, do not question why women experience additional labour and unpaid work in the first place. The reviewed studies are brimming with similar examples.

In the two decades since Law’s (1990) article, her call for transport research that engages fully with gender as a social category has yet to be broadly taken up by transport scholars engaged in cycling research. Current cycling research remains focused on only one of the two stands of studies identified by Hanson (2010), research that consider travel in great detail, but tends to take a simplified view of gender. Concentrating on how gender shapes mobility without considering how mobility shapes gender is problematic because it can result in studies that ignore the power relations that exist between these social categories. Furthermore, failing to do so can contribute to gender-based inequalities. For example, it can encourage harmful gender stereotypes (e.g.: girls don’t bike because they are scared), inhibit people from fully expressing themselves (e.g.: I can’t admit I find cycling dangerous because I will be called a sissy), or justify the status quo (e.g.: women will never bike as much as men because they are more fearful). I therefore argue for more geographically and historically situated research that accounts for the contested nature of identity - cycling research that asks how mobility shapes gender - as a way to complement the work of other scholars whose interests are more squarely focused on gendered patterns of transport outcomes. One way forward is to frame cycling with theories commonly engaged with by feminist geographers. Doing so could allow for more avenues for research and could also result in more context-specific options for policy intervention. The remainder of this chapter plots ways to advance toward feminist geographies of cycling by folding feminist theories used in geography into research and policy on gender and cycling.

2.4 Ways Forward

Given the scope and variety of feminist theories, there are many ways in which the cycling literature could engage with this field to produce more sophisticated and nuanced understandings of gender, identity, and cycling. In this section, three contributions from feminist theory that have had significant impact in the field of geography and may help scholars think about gender and biking differently are considered: performativity, intersectionality, and embodiment. It is important to note that the scope of this chapter only allows for introductory engagement with these concepts; therefore I recommend that readers refer directly to the vast feminist literature in order to properly engage with the complexity of these - and other- feminist theories.

2.4.1 Performativity, Intersectionality, and Embodiment

As discussed in Chapter 1: Introduction, the philosopher Judith Butler developed performativity as a concept to explain how gender is socially constructed, and not based on biology. At the time of Butler’s (1990) writing, there was agreement amongst feminist thinkers that sex (a biological category based off of one’s reproductive system) and gender (a social construct based off of one’s sex) were separate categories. However, Butler (1990) argued against this reinforcement of the sex/gender, and nature/culture binaries and disputed that sex is a biological category because the sexual organs we are born with are used to regulate individuals into masculine or feminine comportments and are therefore understood via cultural interpretations. To Butler, gender is a normative ideal, largely constituted of regulatory practices of gender formation throughout the life course. Our performances of gender go unnoticed because these “repeated stylization[s] of the body” (p. 43) are normalized; we are constantly performing our identity and reading, and reacting to, the performance of others. Butler’s work has had a significant impact in many sub-fields of geography where it has been used to examine gender, sexuality, space, and place (e.g.: Bell et al., 1994; Valentine, 1996).

Performativity might be helpful in cycling research to understand how the bicycle fits into the identity performances of some people, and not others. It may be difficult for some people to perform the identity of a “cyclist”, or to perform their own identity while they cycle. For instance, many could feel uncomfortable cycling in contexts where it is seen as a hypermasculine adrenaline sport. Informal regulatory practices may be used to encourage some bodies to cycle while discouraging others. There is some evidence of this occurrence in the literature (Bonham &

Wilson, 2012; Cavil & Watkins, 2007; Frater & Kingham, 2018; Osbourne & Grant Smith, 2017; Steinbach et al., 2011), though there is still much room for further analysis. For example, in Cavil and Watkins’s (2007) study on the use of a multipurpose trail in Liverpool, many young girl- identifying5 participants stated they refused to cycle because it has an “image problem”. Participants expressed that cycling was an appropriate behaviour amongst young boys, while they described the indignity of cycling themselves. These participant views demonstrate how, in this context, cycling is seen as performing masculinity and is regulated through social pressures for girls.

Another useful concept is intersectionality which is based on the theory that forms of oppression, associated with axes of identity (gender, class, race, ability, etc.), do not exist independently (Crenshaw, 1989; 1991). Crenshaw (1989) developed this to highlight how legal conceptualizations of discrimination were limited because they viewed racism and sexism as separate and singular issues, thereby ignoring the ways in which both forms of oppression impact black women. Few articles in this review considered difference amongst “women” or “men” (exceptions include Bonham & Wilson, 2012; Singleton & Goddard, 2016, and Steinbach et al., 2011). Instead, it is often assumed, implicitly or otherwise, that the "woman's experience" or the “man’s experience” of cycling is the same for all, regardless of race, age, ability, class, or sexuality. Many feminist geographers have warned against discussing gender without considering the role of difference (Hopkins, 2017; Valentine, 2007). When difference is not incorporated into our study of women’s experiences, the women’s voices we do hear tend to be from white, middle-class, heterosexual women (Lugones & Spelman, 1983).

Many articles that engage with theories of gender performativity do so in an intersectional manner. As an example, consider Bonham and Wilson’s (2012) research that identified key life- course moments in which women either started or stopped cycling in Adelaide, South Australia. The first moment was learning to ride as a child; a time when cycling was associated with freedom, socializing, and enjoyment. Most women gave up cycling in high school for one or more of the

5 I continue to use the terms “women”, “men”, “girl”, and “boy” in this paper because the people in question self-identify with these terms. However, I wish to highlight the many ways in which one can experience and express these identities.

30 following reasons: increased demands (e.g.: homework, new activities, etc.), the physical and spatial dimensions of secondary school (e.g.: longer trip to school, need to carry more things, etc.), or a feeling that cycling wasn’t “cool” anymore. Some women started cycling again when they had children, or even grandchildren, so that they could participate in this activity together. Here, contradictory feelings emerged when it came to cycling and performing “good motherhood”. Some women viewed cycling with their children as performing “good motherhood” as they were modelling healthy behavior and spending time with their children. Others expressed that safely chauffeuring their children around to many different opportunities by car made them feel like a “good mother”.

In this article, Bonham and Wilson (2012) engage with performativity by demonstrating how in certain contexts it can be challenging to perform “cool” female adolescence or “good mothering” while cycling. Though they do not consider the racialized experience of cycling, which is not only an axis of identity key to the conception of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), but also one that scholars have suggested tends to be ignored when feminists discuss intersectionality (Mollett & Faria, 2013), the article begins to grapple with an intersectional approach by considering both gender and age. By engaging with both concepts, Bonham and Wilson (2012) are able to provide a more complete understanding of the dynamic barriers to cycling women might face. The authors demonstrate the many ways in which context-specific gender roles can influence the decision to bike. Furthermore, they contribute to policy in a unique way because they are able to point out key moments in women’s lives when they are more likely to either take up or give up cycling. Armed with these findings, policy makers can craft interventions that target these identified barriers at these specific life-course moments. Future work could also expand upon Bonham and Wilson’s (2012) study by examining how these life-moments vary across other axes of identity such as race and class.

Finally, I turn to the utility of embodiment theory in exploring gendered differences in cycling. While some historical work has unpacked gendered bodily comportment while cycling (e.g.: Garvey, 1995), present-day cycling research has yet to fully engage with embodiment. Contemporary geographers have engaged with embodiment in a multitude of ways (for example, see Cresswell, 1999; Longhurst, 2001), and I argue that Young’s (2005) work on feminine bodily experience could shed light on the structural underpinnings of the present-day gendered “risk- aversion” hypothesis. As discussed in Chapter 1: Introduction, Young (2005) critiqued the ways

31 in which mainstream American discourse interprets differences in male-female bodily movements. She observed that women generally are not as open with their bodies as they walk, sit, throw, or carry things as men – i.e. their legs stay closer together, they take smaller strides, they hold things close, moving the entire body less. This way of moving is frequently interpreted as a biological, natural, difference between the genders, but Young (2005) interpreted it as a way in which patriarchy influences mobility at the scale of the body. She argued that feminine movement displays an ambiguous transcendence (i.e. women’s bodies being lived as a burden), an inhibited intentionality (i.e. holding back while also committing to a task), and a discontinuous unity with its surroundings (i.e. the disunity between the parts of the body that commit to the task and the part that remains immobile). These gendered experiences of mobility are internalized and result from the situation of women in a patriarchal society. According to Young’s analysis, in mainstream American culture some women are not encouraged to use their full bodily capacities and to develop specific bodily skills in comparison to men. Young girls can acquire many “subtle habits of feminine body comportment” (p. 43) that they conform to throughout the life-course in order to perform their sex/gender. These gender processes outlined by Young (2005) may contribute to some women’s tendency to have less confidence in their cycling abilities; a factor which may be voiced as greater concern over safety. This analysis will be explored in Chapter 5: Fear of Cycling: Social, Spatial, and Temporal Dimensions.

Embodiment also intersects with the theories of performativity and intersectionality. For example, some girls may receive less encouragement to ride a bicycle than their male counterparts throughout their lives. This could be due to gender performativity (e.g.: regulating this “masculine” activity by calling a girl who cycles a “tom boy”). When girls are discouraged from cycling, they may be prevented from fully developing this bodily skill. This could produce less confidence in their riding abilities, something that could be expressed as a greater concern over safety. Regardless of gender, lack of experience could result in lower confidence in one’s cycling abilities. However, as Young (2005) discussed, women are more likely to be prevented from fully developing these bodily skills than men in patriarchal societies because cycling is at odds with performing some forms of femininity. Furthermore, as Crenshaw’s (1991) work on intersectionality reminds us, one must also consider the race, age, sexuality, and the other axes of identity experienced by the girl in this example to fully understand her experience with cycling. These examples demonstrate how framing cycling with a feminist geographical lens could move

32 the field toward deeper understandings of gendered differences in cycling behaviours that consider power relations and the contested nature of identity.

2.5 Conclusion

The bicycle not only has the potential to play a key role in a more sustainable transportation future, it is also a clear example of how gender and mobility “are completely bound up with each other” (Hanson, 2010, p. 6). In this chapter, a systematic search strategy is used to identify the academic literature on gender and cycling. Results indicate that the bulk of this research was quantitative and explored gendered differences in cycling behaviours, barriers, concerns, and correlates. Two themes emerged: (1) women may cycle less than men due to their greater concern over safety, and (2) women may cycle less than men, or may have differing trip-characteristics than men, due to their greater responsibility for household labour. Reflecting on this literature in relation to the gender and mobility critiques by Law (1999) and Hanson (2010), I have demonstrated that most articles examined how gender influences mobility, one of the two streams of gender and mobility studies identified by Hanson (2010). These studies make use of multiple travel demand metrics and rely on simple binary conceptualizations of gender. In relying on normative male/female binary metrics, the societal processes behind why women are associated with childcare, household responsibilities, and concern over safety are not adequately or deeply considered in the current literature. These findings indicate that Law’s (1999) critical review of transport research is still relevant to the study of cycling today. There is a need for more research on identity and cycling that moves beyond identifying male/female differences and considers the underlying social, political, economic, and historical reasons of such differences.

A question that remains to be answered is why the current literature has skewed towards one of the two strands of research identified by Hanson (2010) and has not incorporated the critiques made by Law (1999) two decades ago. One possible reason for this lack of engagement is the multidisciplinary nature of cycling studies; some cycling researchers may not be aware of contributions by geographers such as Law and Hanson. Furthermore, this review demonstrated how the bulk of current research uses quantitative methods, realist ontology, and positivist epistemology. It is admittedly easier to engage with the feminist theories discussed above using qualitative methods, relativist ontologies, and interpretivist epistemologies that can delve into the nuance of individual experiences. However, it is important to note that research using quantitative

33 methods can also answer this call for feminist geographies of cycling. In fact, some of the reviewed articles using quantitative methods acknowledged the complexities of gender. For example, in Aldred et al.’s (2017) systematic literature review, they found that women have a stronger preference for greater separation from traffic than men. However, the authors framed their results in the context of their study by stating the following:

Gender differences were clearer among studies in low-cycling countries. In such settings, cycling is often perceived or experienced as risky, suitable only for the brave and confident (Horton & Jones, 2015). Men may be less concerned about risks than women, or more reticent about voicing their fears because these do not fit with dominant constructions of masculinity (Steinbach, Green, Datta, & Edwards, 2011) (p. 49).

Here, by discussing how cycling is perceived and gender is performed in the context of the study, these authors acknowledge the limitations of the study in capturing the full experience of gender, all the while highlighting the importance of context in interpreting their study’s results. Furthermore, quantitative studies can also contribute to our understanding of how intersectional identities influence cycling. In fact, one study in this review did so by engaging with both gender and class (Singleton & Goddard, 2016). This article found that for women, indicators of higher socioeconomic status (e.g.: income, education, employment, etc.) were correlated with greater participation in cycling, while the opposite held true for men (Singleton & Goddard, 2016). While this study did not shed light on the societal underpinnings of these findings, it shed light on an important pattern that can be further analyzed.

I call for feminist geographies of cycling in this chapter to broaden possibilities for both research and policy. The subject area of much of the research identified in this review was restricted to gendered behavioural differences. Using feminist geography frameworks could broaden the scope of cycling studies, and transport research more broadly, as scholars are not only free to explore the many societal reasons behind the observed gender-based patterns identified in the current literature, but can also examine how intersecting axes of identity influence experiences of cycling. To do so, they can ask different questions or use different methods or epistemological and ontological approaches to produce context-specific research. I call for such research on the topic, and I put forth in this chapter just three concepts that could move the field forward: performativity, intersectionality, and embodiment.

Furthermore, while these feminist concepts were discussed in relation to gender in this chapter, these theories can also be applied to the study of racialization, sexuality, class, and other axes of identity. Some articles in this review begin to engage with these topics: however, these examples remain rare. More research that draws on these theories, as well as the intersections of these theories, is needed. I call for such research not just to move the academic field forward, but also because of the potential interventions this proposed research could identity. Context-specific research that embraces feminist theory and feminist geography could help in the development of specific policies or programs to encourage cycling for everyone. For example, if future research finds that some women are less confident in their embodied cycling abilities due to lack of encouragement in childhood, bike-to-school programs that emphasise girls’ participation can be created.

While Hanson (2010) argued for research that thinks deeply about gender and considers complex travel metrics, feminist geographies of cycling hold the potential to engage with these and other geographic framings of concepts such as mobility and place. While this chapter focused on cycling as one specific type of mobility, transportation, future work could examine whether the field could benefit from cycling being framed within the broader social and cultural geographies of mobility, an approach that has been used to study other travel modes (e.g.: Bissell, Vannini & Jenson, 2017), and gendered mobility (e.g.: Clement & Waitt, 2018). A second concept that may warrant further investigation is place. In fact, while many of the articles in this review examined the relationship between cycling and built form (e.g.: Trapp et al., 2001; Van Holle et al., 2014), few examined the social, political, historical context of places. In doing so, much of the current literature is informed by a spatial science approach whereby generalizable laws are derived from ‘objective’ data (Cresswell, 2015). Using this approach, place can be reduced to the description of a location, and the ways in which places are constructed, embodied, and produced is overlooked (Cresswell, 2015).

Mobility and place are also implicated in the construction of gender (Massey, 1994). For one, places are gendered through their symbolic meanings, the messages they transmit, or through straightforward exclusion (Massey, 1994). For example, many bicycle shops are masculinized spaces: the workers and clientele tend to be male, and women are often assumed to be unknowledgeable or incapable of fixing bikes in these spaces (Furness, 2010). Furthermore, the

35 meanings associated with masculinity and femininity vary not only across time, but also across place (Massey, 1994). For instance, cycling with your child may be constructed as “good” mothering behaviour in Amsterdam, but “risky” behaviour in Canadian cities. Mobility is highly implicated in the construction of gender as well, frequently through the limitation of mobility in space through consignment/confinement to particular places (Massey, 1994). For example, some women may be advised not to bike in public after dark unescorted.

In this research, participants engaged with place in numerous ways. For instance, during the interviews many participants mentioned specific aspects of the physical environment that affected their cycling experiences such as infrastructure presence, traffic speed, or the presence of on-street car parking. At other times, however, they would discuss other interpretations of place, such as when female participants expressed feeling uncomfortable cycling alone on certain streets at certain times. As such, many of the different meanings of place shared by participants are discussed at various points throughout this dissertation. This dynamic relationship between gender, mobility, and place will be explored in depth in future research (see Chapter 7: Conclusion).

Chapter 3: Methodology

Recent research suggests that approximately one in three cyclists in Toronto identify as female, a trend in keeping with other North American cities (Garrard, Handy, Dill, 2012). As discussed in depth in the previous chapter, much of the existing work on gender and cycling uses positivist epistemologies, realist ontologies, and quantitative methods to identify male vs. female patterns in cycling behaviour. The two most common results from that work are that women cycle less than men due to greater concerns over safety and due to complex trip-characteristics deriving from household-serving labour. While this literature identifies these trends, it struggles to explain the societal factors underpinning these trends. Furthermore, much existing work considers gender without accounting for how gendered experiences vary by or intersect with other axes of identity such as race, class, age, and ability. To counter these research gaps, this study relies on interpretivist epistemologies, relativist ontologies, and qualitative methods to shed light on the gendered experiences of cycling. Specifically, my goal was to answer the following research question: How does the embodied experience of cycling shape, and how is it shaped by, intersecting axes of identity?

Within this question, I asked:

1. How have performances of identity influenced participants’ decision to take-up or give- up cycling throughout the life course?

2. How do bodies shape the experience of cycling in Toronto, and how does cycling shape embodied experiences?

To answer these questions, I relied on a combination of in-depth interviews, mapping interviews, and mobile ethnography with participants of a cycling mentorship program targeting newcomers (i.e. immigrants and refugees) called Bike Host. In this dissertation, I only make use of the data compiled from the in-depth interviews. Bike Host participants are loaned a bicycle, lock, and helmet for the summer and are put into mentorship groups with someone who identifies as a confident cyclist, and who lives within Toronto. Over the summer months, the participants cycle on their own, as part of their mentor group, and as part of larger Bike Host social rides. Participants of the 2017 iteration of the program were invited to take part in this research project.

36 37

This chapter describes the methodology undertaken to answer my research questions. Following this introduction, the context for this research is explored. Specifically, I briefly review the built environment, the transportation systems, and the immigration patterns for the City of Toronto. Then, the research design is reviewed where I describe the community partnership, the methods used, recruitment, analysis, and the final sample of research participants. The chapter concludes with a reflexive discussion about my positionality.

3.1 Research Context

3.1.1 Built Environment and Transportation

This research project took place throughout the City of Toronto, the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populated Canadian city (population = 2,731,571) (Statistics Canada, 2019). Located on the shore on Lake Ontario, the City of Toronto has a diverse built environment. In this dissertation, I refer to downtown Toronto using the municipal boundaries pre-dating the amalgamation of the original six municipalities in 1998 (Figure 3.1). It is the most densely populated part of the city that is made up of a mix older neighbourhoods and new condominium neighbourhoods. The inner suburbs refer to the former municipalities of Etobicoke, Scarborough, York , East York, and North York, which are characterised by post-war development. Toronto’s cycling networks include a range of different types of infrastructure, such as cycle tracks, bicycle lanes, shared roadway routes, and multi-use pathways (City of Toronto, 2019). The majority of transportation cycling infrastructure, both existing and planned, is concentrated in the downtown core of Old Toronto, and not in the suburban areas of Etobicoke, Scarborough, and North York which are characterised by arterial roads and longer distances to destinations (City of Toronto, 2016). As Figure 3.1 demonstrates, not only is Toronto’s cycling infrastructure concentrated in the downtown core, the infrastructure that does exist in the inner-suburbs tends to be multi-use pathways. These routes are primary located in parks, or along ravines, making them more suited to recreation cycling than transportation cycling for most users (Ledsham & Savan, 2017). Nineteen research participants lived in downtown Toronto, whereas eleven lived the suburban regions of Scarborough (n=8) or North York (n=3).

Figure 3.1. Toronto’s Cycling Infrastructure

The most common mode of transportation for commuting purposes in the City of Toronto is the private vehicle (45.98%), followed by public transit (37.01%), walking (8.61%), being a passenger in a private vehicle (4.57%), and cycling (2.75%) (Spurr & Cole, 2017). The proportion of Torontonians who drive to work has declined by 7% over the last decade while the proportion of those who use public transit has increased by 7.7% (Spurr & Cole, 2017). Similar trends, though less pronounced, have been observed across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) (Spurr & Cole, 2017). Though the proportion of GTA commuters who drive has declined, there has still been an increase in the number of cars on the road in the city due to population growth (Spurr & Cole, 2017). The CMA of Toronto has the longest average commuting time of 33 minutes one-way (followed closely by Montréal at 31 minutes and Vancouver at 30 minutes); furthermore, 1 in 4 Toronto commuters have commute travel times of 45 minutes or more (Statistics Canada, 2016).

In Canada, cycling for transport is on the rise: the number of Canadians who use a bicycle as their primary method of commuting nearly doubled over the past two decades (Statistics Canada, 2017), and cycling is the fastest growing transportation mode in Toronto (City of Toronto,

2019). Between 2006 and 2016, bicycle commute mode share increased from 1.7% to 2.7% in Toronto (Spurr, 2017). As Figure 3.2 demonstrates, much of this increased mode share occurred downtown. As discussed in the Introduction chapter of this dissertation, there is considerable variation in the proportion of Torontonians who cycle to work, both spatially and across demographic groups. Notably, cycling is concentrated in the downtown neighbourhoods. In some of these neighbourhoods around 30% of commuters are cyclists (Spurr, 2019). Furthermore, as discussed in the Introduction and Literature Review chapters, a gender-gap in cycling exists across Toronto with data from the 2016 census indicating that 38.16% of Torontonians who commute to work by bicycle are female (Statistics Canada, 2019). Other research suggests that Toronto’s utilitarian cyclists are also predominantly between the ages of 35 and 44 (Toronto Cycling Think & Do Tank, 2013). The gender-gap in Toronto also varies geographically, for example, females make up at least 50% of cyclists in some census tracts and over 40% of cyclists are female in many downtown neighbourhoods (see Figure 1.1, Chapter 1).

Figure 3.2. Changes in Cycling Commute Mode Share from 2006-2016

In June 2016, the Toronto City Council approved a $153.5 million dollar 10 year Cycling Network Plan to grow, connect, and renew the city’s cycling infrastructure. The plan identifies approximately 560 kilometers of new infrastructure in every part of Toronto. Seeing as most recommended infrastructure in the Toronto suburbs of Scarborough, North York, and Etobicoke were not installed in the last iteration of the Cycling Network Plan, the current plan emphasizes re-evaluating what steps can be taken to encourage cycling in these areas of Toronto, all the while enhancing the current network downtown (City of Toronto, 2019). Two and a half years after the plan’s approval, cycling advocates voiced their concern that the city was not doing enough to meet their goals, by that point in time less than 6% of the planned bike lanes were built (Spurr, 2019). In the final weeks of writing this dissertation, the Toronto City Council voted for a cycling plan that aims to add at least 120 kilometers of bike lanes to the current network over the next three years (Rider, 2019). These new bike lanes will cover some major arterials, such as extending the protect lane along Bloor street between Shaw street and High Park and implementing a pilot lane on Danforth Avenue (Rider, 2019). This council vote demonstrates the growing interest in encouraging cycling in the City of Toronto.

3.1.2 Immigration and Citizenship

Because recruitment for this research project was focused on participants of the Bike Host program, all research participants were newcomers. In order to help contextualize this research, this section reviews some major patterns and concepts related to immigration and citizenship in Toronto, and Canada more broadly.

Canadian immigration patterns typify those of a post-World War II reception society (Hasmath, 2012). From 1945 to the late 1960s, a wave of mostly Western European migrants immigrated to Canada, most of which had low educational attainment and, if male, worked in manual labour jobs. At this time, Italians, Portuguese, and Greeks were the largest migrant groups and were predominantly considered “different” on cultural grounds, or as “ethnics” in Canada (Hasmath, 2012). In 1966, a marked change in immigration policies occurred: a points-based system based on qualifying characteristics superseded the once-favoured family sponsorship. This ended a pattern of chain-migration from Western Europe and resulted in high migration from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia. The term “visible minority” was introduced at this time to represent those migrants who could be identified by physical appearance alone as not being part

41 of the Charter groups (i.e.: non-British, non-French) (Hasmath, 2012). This wave of immigrants was not only more ethnically diverse, but was also more educated and had experience in skilled occupations (Hasmath, 2012). However, many of these immigrants experienced de-skilling: a process whereby immigrants’ skills and educational attainments are not recognized in Canada, resulting in high rates of highly educated but low-waged employees (Hasmath, 2012). In 1988, Canada adopted the Multiculturalism Act, which emerged from out of the 1971 policy announcement, and the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Hasmath, 2012). These documents were pivotal in shaping the ways in which Canada conceptualizes ethnic differences (Hasmath, 2012, p. 15).

Today, Canada and Toronto are regarded internationally as a nation and city in which ethnic differences are valued and appreciated, an image which is reinforced by the nation’s famed policies of multiculturalism (Hasmath, 2012). The City of Toronto adopted the motto ‘Diversity Our Strength’ in 1998 and has been described as the ‘world in the city’ and the ‘world’s most multicultural city’6 (Ashutosh, 2012). Just over half of Toronto residents (51.2%) are immigrants (i.e. born outside of Canada) and visible minorities (51.5%) (City of Toronto, 2019c). However, notwithstanding its high rates of diversity and its image of diversity, inequality between immigrants and Canadian-born residents persists in Toronto. For example, studies have found that recent immigrants (i.e. arriving in the past 5 years) tend to earn less on-average, have lower labour- force participation rates, and have lower employment rates than the Canadian-born, even though they are generally better-educated and more than 90 percent can speak at least one of the official languages (Boyd & Vickers, 2007).

Though acclaimed by many as a tolerant and accepting approach to managing cultural difference, the concept of multiculturalism has also been critiqued for resulting in the wrongful denial of racism. For instance, Thobani (2007) argues that in societies who have adopted multicultural policies, race becomes a political identity, while the core of the nation remains white. Ahmed (2000) argues that multiculturalism allows the nation to reinvent itself, to live with difference and claim this difference as proof of the nation’s cultural superiority. While the ‘other’

6 Doucet (2001) traced the origins of this claim to 1989 when then-Toronto mayor Arthur Eggleton stated that the United Nations claimed Toronto was the ‘most racially and culturally diverse city in the world’

42 is welcomed, it is nevertheless fetishized as the origin of difference (Ahmed, 2000). Both authors have argued that multiculturalism has enabled the preservation of white domination within settler societies because it results in a denial of racism. Multiculturalism asks only for tolerance at the individual and interpersonal level, all the while avoiding the recognition of the critical intersections of institutional or state power and interpersonal forms of racism, as well as the importance of these factors in nation formation. In this way, multiculturalism has been critical to the reconstitution of whiteness in its distinct version as a culturally tolerant cosmopolitan whiteness. As Thobani (2007) notes, the result of this denial of racism in everyday life in multicultural societies “is of such intensity that (many) immigrants come to doubt their own experience of this phenomenon” (p. 160).

In this study, all participants were legally living in Canada as immigrants or refugees with, or in the process of acquiring, permanent residency. With the important exceptions of the right to vote and to hold a Canadian passport, Canadian permanent residents have the same rights as

Canadian citizens7. Though citizenship is often understood as “status”, in this thesis I frame it as a process, one which “involves negotiation over access to and the exercise of rights” (Basok, 2004, p. 48). For instance, some migrants may have legal rights, but not be able to claim certain ones due to a lack the knowledge, skills, support, or access to mobility/ transportation (Basok, 2004). Citizenship conceptualized as a process, therefore, implies that migrants must not only hold rights, but also be able to claim them. Migrants’ abilities to access citizenship can therefore often rely on members of the host community making knowledge about rights available to them (e.g. by ensuring they have communication skills, by extending support, etc.) (Basok, 2004). Citizenship viewed as a process is also scalar, for example, some migrant workers may legally have rights at the national level, but be denied those rights because of social exclusion and lack of language skills at the local scale (Basok, 2004). This conceptualization of citizenship as a process is used in Chapter 5: Fear of Cycling: Social, Spatial, and Temporal Dimensions to understand how newcomers’ fear of cycling can be shaped by their ability to fully claim citizenship.

7 One could argue that by holding Permanent Residency status, these participants are amongst privileged migrants to Canada. In fact, only a minority of immigrants recruited for the Canadian labour market are given permanent resident status and the rights that come with it; a much greater proportion are recruited as migrant labourers (Sharma, 2006).

3.2 Research Design

3.2.1 Community Partnership

This research project is the result of a partnership with CultureLink, a not-for-profit community organization that assists in the settlement of immigrants and refugees in Toronto. While this organization offers a wide range of services to newcomers, such as language and literacy skill development, youth programming, and job-search workshops, this project focused on CultureLink’s cycling mentorship program called Bike Host. This program loans a bicycle to newcomer participants with an interest in cycling. These participants are then matched with Toronto-based mentors who indicate that they are comfortable riding in the city. During the summer months, the newcomer participants and their mentors engage in bicycle-based social outings around the city, both as a pair and as part of a larger group (Figure 3.3). If the newcomers attend at least 10 activities through the program, they receive a Certificate of Participation from CultureLink. This program is said to provide newcomers with cycling skills and experience, while also providing opportunities for socializing, practicing language skills, and exploring their new city (for more information see: https://www.cycleto.ca/bike-host).

Figure 3.3. Bike Host Bicycle Rides: Small group (left) and large group (right) rides8

I reached out to CultureLink staff members involved with Bike Host in April 2017 to discuss a research project for the upcoming iteration of the program. Two key staff members, Kristin and

8 All people features in these pictures were participants of the 2017 Bike Host Program, and not necessarily research participants. Though they signed a photo release, I have obscured their faces herein to ensure anonymity.

Rubeen, expressed interest in the project, particularly in understanding the gendered experience of program participation. During two consultation meetings, Kristin, Rubeen, and I established research expectations. Overall, they requested that my research project document impacts of the program in some way. They also expressed the need for help encouraging Bike Host participants to use their bicycles for active transportation. Specifically, they asked if I could help encourage participants to make route-planners that document how to commute to key destinations in their neighbourhood with a bicycle (something they have tried in the past, but have been unsuccessful thus far). I fulfilled these two requests by presenting preliminary research results, including impacts of the program, in fall 2017 to staff members and program collaborators. I also helped all interviewees with route-planning during the mapping activity of the pre-program interview and invited them on the bike-along interviews so that they would have a guide for their first ride.

The partnership with Bike Host was chosen for many reasons. For one, though some Bike Host participants have previous experience cycling, they are all new cyclists in Toronto. The experience of becoming a cyclist in a new place may be particularly insightful as it can shed light on what makes people eager to try cycling, the initial barriers to cycling, and the reasons why some people continue to cycle while others do not. Working with CultureLink and the Bike Host program was also a suitable collaboration given my interest in how the experience of cycling is shaped by intersecting axes of identity. As newcomers, Bike Host participants tend to be diverse with regards to not only gender, and age, but income and ethnicity.

It is important to note that though a large body of work examining transnationalism and identity exists (Jackson et al., 2004), I do not examine this relationship with regard to participants’ home countries. Because the participants of my research originated from and lived in many different geographic contexts, it is outside the scope of this dissertation to properly contextualize each participant’s experiences in relation to the country (or countries) they migrated from. What they did all share was the experience of being a newcomer in Canada. Therefore, when I do discuss migration, citizenship, and identity in this thesis, I focus on how participants engaged with their relationship to Canada.

3.2.2 Methods

To answer my research question, how does the embodied experience of cycling shape, and how is it shaped by, intersecting axes of identity, I invited Bike Host participants to participate in three data-collection activities:

(1) A semi-structured interview as the program started that included a mapping activity

(2) A bike-along interview at any point throughout the program

(3) A semi-structured interview at the end of the Bike Host program that included a mapping activity, and a short survey

These methods were complimented by the personal and reflexive journaling of my experiences as a volunteer and as a researcher. These data-collection activities and methods are outlined in Table 3.1 and described in the sub-sections below. The results presented in this dissertation draw only from the pre and post-program semi-structured interviews. This was done because the semi- structured interviewed provided ample data to answer my research question. As will be discussed in Chapter 7: Conclusion, the other research methods generated data that will be prepared into papers outside the scope of this dissertation.

Table 3.1: Components of the Methods

Pre-program interviews Bike Along Interviews Post-Program Interviews

-Semi-structured interview -Bike ride -Semi-structured interview questions -Debrief bike ride questions -Mapping activity -Photos -Mapping activity -Survey

Journaling

3.2.2.1 Semi-Structured Interview with Mapping Activity

Semi-structured interviews are in-depth interviews that follow a pre-determined order of questions, but with flexibility to probe participants when relevant and to alter the order of questions (Bryman, Bell & Teevan, 2012; Dunn, 2016). The goal of the pre-program semi-structured interview was to understand participants’ experiences with cycling across their life-course and to capture new

46 cyclists’ initial perceptions of cycling in Toronto. I asked participants about their experiences using different transportation modes, and specifically cycling, from childhood to the present day. I asked about their perceptions of cycling in Toronto as well as the reasons for which they joined the Bike Host program and how they hope to use their loaned bicycles over the summer. Finally, we discussed identity and cycling, and more specifically potential identify-based barriers to cycling.

The goal of the post-program interview was to understand participants’ embodied experience of cycling over the course of the program and to re-examine their perceptions of cycling. The interview guide included questions about participants’ experiences in the Bike Host program. During these discussions, I probed participants on the ways in which their bodies influenced or related to these experiences. I also asked how their experiences cycling over the summer compared to their initial perceptions and whether they will continue cycling now that the program is over.

At the end of the semi-structured discussion of the pre-program and post-program interviews, I asked participants whether they were willing to complete a mapping interview about their residential neighbourhood. To complete these interviews, I used private Google Maps, custom maps saved with a private Google account where one can draw points or shapes on a base map. This platform was used based on recommendations by CultureLink staff members who argued that Google Maps are recognizable and user-friendly. Twenty-two participants completed the mapping activity for both interviews; some could not participate due to time constraints. I met five participants in locations without an Internet connection, and therefore completed the mapping activity on a paper map (specifically the Toronto Cycling Network Map) and then transferred data to a private Google Map at a later date. The map served as a tool for the interview, as a material object to guide the discussion.

During the pre-program mapping activity, my goal was to understand how participants felt about their neighbourhood, where they anticipated cycling, where they avoided cycling, and why. For all mapping activities, I did not impose neighbourhood boundaries on the participants. I began each mapping interview by asking participants to identify places they visit frequently in the city. As they identified these places, I added them to their private Google map. This was done, in part, to orient the interviewees. I then asked them to identify places in their neighbourhood that they currently do not like or avoid as well as places they enjoy spending time in, and why. I identified

47 these locations on their map. I then asked participants where they anticipated avoiding while they cycled and where they are looking forward to cycling. During this process, I probed the participants on what it was about these places that made them feel this way.

During the post-program mapping activity, which took place at the end of the semi- structured discussion of the second interview, I asked the participants where they enjoyed cycling and where avoided while biking during the program, and why. Here, I probed participants to share stories of events that took place at locations on the map. I then showed the participants their initial maps and asked them to comment on any differences or similarities between both maps. Taken together, my goal was to understand how participants’ embodied identity influences their experience of place as well as how this changed over the course of the Bike Host program.

Both the pre-program and post-program interviews lasted approximately one hour. The semi-structured interview portion took approximately 45 minutes to an hour while the mapping activity only took 5-15 minutes. All interviews were audio-recorded recorded and I took notes to document what audio recording alone cannot capture (e.g., mood, body language, etc.). Though the maps created during these interviews will not be analyzed in this dissertation, the discussions that took place during the entirety of the interviews were analyzed for this research.

3.2.2.2 Bike-Along Interview

Bike-along interviews are a method of mobile ethnography, a form of ethnographic research involving engaging in patterns of movement with research participants (Sheller & Urry, 2006). Some have argued that additional insight into mobility may be possible if the researcher and researched are mobile during data collection (D’Andrea et al., 2011; Novoa, 2015; Spinney, 2011). Data collected through these mobile interviews was used to compliment the knowledge generated through the semi-structured interviews and the mapping exercises. I found that participants shared occasional, yet profoundly insightful, comments while cycling that were not discussed in the sedentary semi-structured or mapping interviews. These interviews were also conducted to satisfy one of CultureLink’s requests: to help in encouraging participants to use their bicycles for active transportation purposes.

At the end of the pre-program interview and mapping activity, I asked participants whether they were interested in travelling to any of the key travel destinations they identified on their maps

48 by bike. If they were interested, I offered to help them find a bike-appropriate route to one or two of the destinations on their maps. Then, I asked participants whether they would try cycling that route with me, both to support them during their first ride and as part of my research. As an incentive, I informed them that the time spent on these ride-along interviews also counted towards their Certificate of Participation at CultureLink. For those who agreed, I set a date for us to meet up and bike the route together. Recruitment for these interviews was difficult. For one, most participants were not confident enough to try cycling on the streets when we met for the pre- program interview. These participants told me they would contact me once they were ready to try, but most forgot to do so or decided it was easier to complete this ride with their mentor. Most of the remaining participants already perceived themselves to be confident cyclists who did not need help riding on the streets. Though all thirty interviewees were invited to take part in a bike-along interview, only seven bike-along interviews were completed. Two of these seven interviewees were Bike Host participants who did not participate in the pre and post-program interviews, but were recruited through my volunteering.

The bike-along interviews began at the starting point of the route the participant and I created together on Google Maps. I had an audio recorder in my pocket with a microphone attached to my shirt to capture the ride. Before the ride-along interview began, I gave the participants an overview of the route we were about to ride, ensuring that they were comfortable with the roads selected. I also asked participants to reflect on what they liked and what they did not like about the ride as we cycled; these conversations were captured by audio recorder. We then biked to the destination chosen during the mapping activity. As we rode, I recorded my thoughts on the ride into the microphone. When we reached our destination, we debriefed the bike ride into the audio recorder. Though it was my intention to take pictures on the return trip of every ride, most participants were only free to complete these interviews after work and it was too dark to take pictures by the time we were returning. Although these data were not analysed directly as part of the dissertation, my experiences during these interviews has naturally shaped my thinking about my research questions. The themes that emerged from the bike-along interviews themselves will be analyzed and presented in future papers (see Chapter 7: Conclusion).

3.2.2.3 Travel Survey

To ensure that I knew the demographic characteristics and travel behaviours of the sampled participants, I informally included a survey at the end of the post-program interview. This survey included socio-demographic (e.g.: gender, age, employment status, years and months in Canada, etc.), and travel questions (e.g.: driver’s license, access to a vehicle, cycling, transit, and car frequency, etc.). The answers to most of the questions included in the travel survey also came up during the semi-structured or mapping interviews. When this was the case, I filled in the participants’ responses directly into their survey. During the post-program interview, I ensured that all remaining unanswered questions were asked.

3.2.2.4 Journaling

In addition to the formal data-collection activities described above, I also engaged in reflexive journaling throughout the research process. This journal acted both as a fieldwork diary and a research diary in that it contained qualitative data in the form of observations and conversations, as well as reflexive remarks. Not only did I document these observations and reflections during the research activities, I also took notes on my experience as an event volunteer for the organization. In this role, I helped staff during the Bike Host orientation sessions, the bike distribution and return days, as well as social outings throughout the summer. I took detailed field notes on my volunteer experience. I wrote full field notes at the end of each day spent at the organization or with the participants. In these notes, I provided as much detail as possible on the events, people, and conversations that took place. As suggested by Kearns (2016), I also reflected on how people’s behaviours may have been affected by my identity, or an “identity” ascribed to me by my participants.

This event volunteer experience helped me understand how the program works, while also uncovering a wide range of experiences, perceptions, and comments of the individuals participating in the program while they are participating in the program. This volunteering was also an opportunity to work toward gaining the trust of community members, and to encourage them to participate in the formal research methods. Upon the request of CultureLink staff members, I did not quote what any of the participants said during these events in the dissemination of this research.

Finally, I ensured that I had continued and informed consent from participants throughout the entire research project. I introduced myself to all Bike Host participants, even those who did not engage in any of the above methods, as a researcher who is studying the Bike Host program. Furthermore, the pre-program, bike-along, and post-program interviews all began by reading out a consent form for participants to sign.

3.2.2.5 Recruitment

Recruitment took place at two separate events called Orientation Day and Bike Day and at three community centers across the city. During Orientation Day, interested newcomer participants learn about the program through a presentation given by staff members. This was followed by a “speed- dating” activity where the participants met all of the volunteer mentors and were matched into groups for the summer. I attended these events and spoke for a few minutes about my research project during the presentation. I introduced myself as a researcher from UofT and invited everyone to participate in my study. I also distributed flyers about my study. Unfortunately, this event was not a very successful recruitment strategy. I believe the participants were overloaded with information about cycling in Toronto and the program and were too busy to give my study much thought. I only recruited three very keen participants during these events. However, attending these events may have helped with recruitment at the second event, called Bike Day, many participants remembered seeing me at the Orientation Day.

Approximately a week after this second event, once participants were officially registered in the Bike Host program, I attended all three Bike Days to try to recruit participants. Here, participants are loaned bicycles for the summer. It is a busy day for staff who must register everyone, assign bicycles, locks and helmets, adjust the bicycles to fit the participants, and complete a short skills assessment. In my capacity as a volunteer, I helped participants find an appropriate helmet for the summer (Figure 3.4). This gave me the opportunity to talk to participants one-on-one. Once they had selected and fitted their new helmet, I reminded them about the study and handed them a flyer. If they said they were interested, I asked them for them email or phone number to set up an interview.

Figure 3.4. Recruitment

For the second interview at the end of the program, I re-recruited participants by calling them or sending them an e-mail, asking if they were interested in meeting again. I also attended the Bike Return Day events, where participants return their bicycles, and the Closing Celebration, during the first and second week of October, where I asked participants if they would be interested in completing a second interview.

A few steps were taken to encourage recruitment. I provided two TTC tokens per sit-down interview to participants, and promised a $20 gift card, on top of the TTC tokens, to those who participated in both the pre- and post-program interviews. I let the participants choose from a menu of gift card options (specifically, Shoppers Drug Mart, Tim Hortons, Dollorama, or NoFrills). I also offered to complete the interviews at a location convenient to the interviewee (at their home, in a public library, a coffee shop, a restaurant, etc. near their home or work). Coffee shops near the participants’ home or workplace were the most common location. These spaces were seen as convenient for the participants and they had a wi-fi network to make use of Google Maps. I offered to pay for participant’s drinks when we met in coffee shops. Finally, potential interviewees were informed that the time they spent with me counted towards their Certificate of Participation. No gift cards or tokens were offered to bike-along participants because they directly benefited from these interviews by receiving support as they tried cycling for transport. Also, this activity counted towards their Certificate of Participation.

I was initially concerned about recruitment for this study. Between sixty and eighty participants register yearly and I originally anticipated recruited 10-20% of people registered. Furthermore, the CultureLink staff members warned me that recruiting for the pre-program interviews would likely be easier than the post-program interviews because participants tend to be very excited about the program at the beginning, but lose interest over the course of the summer. In reality, recruitment was not an issue: twenty-six of the seventy-four Bike Host participants partook in the first interview, and all twenty-six plus an additional four participants met with me for a second interview. Many participants were eager to take part in my research project, and a handful asked if I could give their tokens and gift cards to other newcomers who were in more dire need. Instead, I gave them the gift cards and told them they could donate it to whomever they wished. I had originally planned to collect data over the course of two summers or two years of the program. However, I was fortunate enough to have collected enough data during Bike Host 2017 that I did not need to complete these research collection activities a second time. Reasons for this interest are discussed in the reflexivity section of this chapter.

3.2.2.5 Analysis

This overall research is exploratory in nature; therefore, data analysis was framed by grounded theory, an inductive approach in which theories are generated from empirical data. A number of techniques were used in order to describe, classify, and connect the qualitative data. Firstly, I wrote memos, short notes to myself that captured insight, reflected on my role as a researcher, or made connections between data, throughout the research process (e.g.: after my volunteer shifts, after interviews, and while transcribing and coding the data) (Cope, 2016). These memos were used to remind myself of ideas to return to, and to connect and process early findings in the research project (Cope, 2016). The interview transcripts and my journal was also coded in order to distil the vast amount of data (the interviews alone amounted to 1495 pages (1.5 spacing) when transcribed) into key themes, to organize the data, and to engage in data exploration, analysis, and theory-building (Cope, 2016). This process was performed using open, axial, and selective coding (Bryman, Bell & Teevan, 2012; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). I systematically read through each interview transcript, all the while engaging in open coding, i.e. initial categorization of data into broad concepts. Many of these original open codes were also inspired from the background literature, my proposal, and my transcription and journaling memos. Both descriptive and analytic codes were used. Descriptive codes reflected simple themes or patterns stated directly by the participants, they can

53 be thought of as category labels (Cope, 2016). Analytic codes reflect themes that emerge from the data. Often the descriptive codes brought about analytic codes when connections between these codes were made. As an example, descriptive codes in this study included “the built environment” and “gender” while analytic codes included “power on the streets” and “gendered embodiment”. I developed a codebook, a list of existing codes, to help me categorize and organize the data (Table 3.2).

As I completed this open-coding process, I performed axial coding by taking notes on broad themes and began making preliminary connections between categories and between the data and theory. Once I finished reviewing all interview transcripts, the key themes of the study had emerged from the data. I then performed selective coding by selecting the core categories, and relating them to other categories, validating relationships, and contributing to categories that needed further development. As recommended by Cope (2005), codes were analyzed in the context of the research questions before drawing conclusions through selective coding. The coding process was also used as a time for critical reflexivity. I included a “reflexivity” code and took notes about evaluating my role in the research process as I coded. Data analysis and coding was performed using NVivo 11.4.3. The codebook resulting from these steps is presented in Table 3.2.

Table 3.2. Research Codebook Themes Sub-themes The body Gendered embodiment Classed embodiment Age and embodiment Material body Emotions Fear Joy Anger Place Exploration Power on the streets Suburban cycling Producing the city Urban or Western cycling Built Environment Cycling practices Trip-characteristics Grocery shopping Parenthood Transport versus recreation

Reasons to bike Barriers to cycling Weather Cycling values and meanings Bike theft Bike mechanics Social influencers Identity Gender Class Age “Canadianness”/ ethnicity Citizenship Settlement Representation Program evaluation/ impact NA Reflexivity NA

In this dissertation, I present the results related to three themes that emerged from the data through the coding practices described above over three chapters. In Chapter 4: “I wouldn’t take the risk of the attention, you know? Just a lone girl biking”: Examining the Gendered and Classed Embodied Experiences of Cycling, I present the results related to the theme “embodiment”, with the sub-themes “gendered embodiment”, “classed embodiment”, “age and embodiment”, and “material body”. In Chapter 5: Fear of Cycling: Social, Spatial, and Temporal Dimensions, I present the results related to the sub-theme “fear”. Finally, In Chapter 6: Vélomobilities of Care in a Low-Cycling City, I discuss the three key themes that emerged from the interviews that related to household-serving trips: “grocery shopping”, “parenthood”, and “trip-characteristics”. During the analysis for this chapter, however, it became clear that some participants were able to complete all household-serving trips by bicycle. Therefore, this inspired a second section which frames these successful experiences with Social Practice Theory. As will be discussed in Chapter 7: Conclusion, some of the codes generate from this research will be used as the empirical basis for future work.

3.2.2.6 Sample

A total of 56 approximately hour-long interviews were completed: 26 participants took part in the interview at the beginning of the program and all 26 participants plus 4 additional participants completed the interview at the end of the program. These four additional participants asked if they could take part in the research project part-way through the program after either hearing about the research project from other research participants (n =2), after talking with me during volunteer

55 events (n =1), or because they needed one more Bike Host activity to be eligible for a free bicycle (n = 1). While it was too late to take part in the first interview by the time these four Bike Host participants reached out to me, I invited them to take part in the post-program interview. During this interview, I added the questions about participants’ experiences cycling over the life-course that were normally in the pre-program interview to the post-program interview schedule. The interviewees were diverse in regard to self-reported age, gender, and country of origin (Table 3.3).

Table 3.3. Research Participant Demographics

Nb. %

Men 13 43% Women 17 57%

Gender Other 0 0% India 6 20% China 5 17% Bangladesh 3 10% Iran 3 10%

El Salvador 2 7%

Egypt 2 7% Nepal 1 3% Jamaica 1 3% Haiti 1 3%

Tanzania 1 3% Country of Origin of Country Syria 1 3% Russia 1 3% Mongolia 1 3% Vietnam 1 3% Nigeria 1 3%

20-29 3 10% 30-39 17 57% 40-49 6 20% 50-59 3 10%

Age Distribution Age > 60 1 3%

Elementary School 0 0% Secondary School 2 7% College 4 13%

University 9 30% Attainment Educational Educational Graduate School 15 50%

Employed Full-Time 8 27%

Student Full-Time 1 3% Part-Time Student 8 27% Part-Time Student, Part-Time 5 17% Working Part-Time Student, at Home 2 7% with Children At Home With Children 1 3% Employment Status Employment Retired 2 7% Without Paid Employment 3 10%

Many participants had lived in other countries before settling in Canada. Many participants had also experienced de-skilling, a process in which their education and/or employment skills obtained in their country of origin are not recognized in Canada. These participants were often highly educated, but working low-skill jobs in Toronto. Twenty-five of the thirty participants I interviewed were in precarious working situations in that they were either unemployed, employed part-time or on a short-term contract, re-training at school, or looking for more suitable employment. The Bike Host participants also described having varying levels of skill and comfort on a bicycle. At the beginning of the program, thirteen indicated they had little experience or had not ridden a bicycle in years, three of whom had never learnt how to ride a bicycle. None of the interviewees used a car as their primary mode of transportation, though six (20%) had access to a household vehicle.

Seven bike-along interviews took place, four with women and three with men. Two bike- along interviewees were not recruited through the semi-structured interviews. Instead, they heard about my willingness to ride with participants through word of mouth and reached out to me directly, asking if I would take them on a bike ride. Because these two participants did not complete the travel survey included in the post-program semi-structured interview, their social characteristics are not included in Table 3.3.

The University of Toronto Research Ethics Board approved the research protocol used for this work. In order to comply with the board’s guidelines, all information that could identify participants (names, home addresses, etc.) was changed in this thesis to ensure participant anonymity. All interviews took place in English, though none of the participants were native English speakers. Therefore, many participant quotes included herein contain grammatical errors owing to the fact that the participants had varying levels of experience communicating in English.

Previous work has found that non-native English, pejoratively called ‘bad’ or ‘broken’ English, can be problematically associated with incomprehensibility, as well as “non-White, foreign Others’ (Lindemann, 2005; Shuck, 2006). That being said, participants’ exact quotes are included in this dissertation in order to fully represent the active, and sometimes powerful, voices of interviewees. However, this is done in the hopes that these exact quotes do not reinforce colonial narratives associated with non-native English (Lindemann, 2005; Shuck, 2006).

3.3 Researcher Reflexivity and Positionality

This research is framed by a feminist epistemological stance in which knowledge is understood as situated, as inseparable from the context in which it was produced (Harraway, 1998). In this qualitative study, knowledge was produced within participant-researcher interactions, interactions that are inherently power-laden. Feminist geographers have long been aware of the intersection of power with academic knowledge (Rose, 1997). For instance, there are power relations between the traditional roles of the researcher and the researched, as they are differentially situated in relation to social structures (Dowling, 2016). The ways in which researchers interpret data are also power- laden because these interpretations can influence how the people studied are perceived and understood, or can inform policies that have direct impacts on people’s daily lives (Dowling, 2016). Societal power-relations exist in the field as well. Many of the interviews in this study were interrupted when loud cars or trucks passed by and one interview was interrupted for several minutes due to street harassment. These experiences served as a reminder that systems of domination, in these examples automobility and misogyny, continue to operate in the field.

In order to situate my research, I actively examined my positionality; my social and ideological location in relation to the research project, and practiced critical reflexivity, the process of constantly acknowledging, questioning, and reflecting on how my research interactions and the information I collected is socially conditioned throughout the research process (Dowling, 2016). I was inspired by Dowling (2016) to reflect on the following matters to help me think critically about issues of ethics and power in my research: the power dynamics of the social situations I was engaging with, the power dynamics between myself and the researched, the degree to which I was an insider or outsider with regards to my research topic, how my interactions with participants were informed or constrained by power and social relations, how I might have been viewed by the informants, and how these relations may have impacted my presentation of results.

Beyond these common practices, I was inspired by Laliberté and Schurr (2016) to situate my emotions and my body into the research process to further my practice of critical reflexivity. Embodied emotions are often silenced in the written products of research (Laliberté & Schurr, 2016). Not only did I want to make these experiences with regard to cycling front and center in this research, I also wanted to situate the emotional and embodied experiences of the researcher, rather than solely focus on that of those researched. Furthermore, mainstream practices of positionality and reflexivity have been critiqued for requiring reference to established legacy social categories feminists are committed to challenging (Nagar & Geiger, 2007). To counter this, Nagar and Geiger (2007) argue that we must go beyond identifying our social position and instead think of positionality and reflexivity as a dynamic process, as an ongoing interrogation of the relationships of power throughout research. Laliberté and Schurr (2016) argue that focusing on emotional entanglements in fieldwork can address Nagar and Geiger’s (2007) call to conceptualize positionality and reflexivity as a process. By critically examining how and why we become emotionally entangled in our work, we can gain insight into the power dynamics in our research. Therefore, my goal in this section is to go beyond the superficial, stating my social position as a white, Canadian-born, English-speaking, upwardly mobile, cis-female feminist cyclist, and instead offer my critical reflections on the power relations that may have permeated this research project by focusing on the moments in which I felt embodied emotional entanglement during my fieldwork.

3.3.1 The “Real Canadian” Researcher

In this study, participants were not only learning how to cycle; as newcomers they were also learning about living in a new society. I held a privileged position during my research project as a Canadian working with newcomers. However, the ways in which participants engaged with their own relationship to Canada and their home countries, as well as my citizenship status, and how these processes influenced the research project were complex and varied. A key dynamic I encountered was that there appeared to be some disconnect between how participants viewed Canadian society and their actual experiences as immigrants and refugees in Canada. As discussed in the context section of this chapter, Toronto, and Canada more broadly, is often branded as a diverse, tolerant, and accepting multicultural society. This image of Canada was shared by participants, many talked glowingly about Canadian society and indicated having great pride in living in Canada, a place they perceived as equitable, accepting, and multicultural. Some even

59 wore Canadian paraphernalia, for example, by attaching little Canadian flags to their bicycles or by wearing clothing with maple leaves.

This open admiration for Canadian society made me feel uncomfortable because it contradicted some of the experiences of hardship participants faced as immigrants and refugees. Previous research has found that while Toronto’s residents are ethnically diverse, employment and income inequalities persist between immigrants and Canadian-born residents (Boyd & Vickers, 2007). This was reflected in my sample: 80% of the participants (24 of 30) had completed an undergraduate degree or higher, and yet 83% of the participants (25 of 30) were in precarious working situations (i.e. unemployed, employed part-time or on a short-term contract, re-training at school, or looking for more suitable employment). While some participants shared the hardships they were experiencing with me, and a few did associate these with de-skilling, they did not directly connect these experiences to Canadian immigration policies and still talked glowingly about how inclusive the city and country were to newcomers. For example, a participant who practiced engineering in his home country and is now a part-time security guard in a Toronto condo told me how “it can be hard to make your qualifications match here”. Having given up on finding professional employment in Canada, he shared how tired he was from balancing his daytime studies to become a building operator, his nightshift as a security guard, and raising his new daughter. His housing situation, a basement apartment in a neighbourhood poorly connected to transit, resulted in long commutes that exacerbated his exhaustion. Another participant who praised life in Canada shared with me his loneliness in his new country where he has no relatives and few friends. He explained how hard it was for him to leave his wife and children behind as he settled into his new city. As he waited for his family members to be legally eligible to join him, he struggled to pay the bills with his part-time, low-wage job. I felt empathy for him as he shared his hopes to finish his part-time schooling to re-train as an electrician before his family was eligible to join him. These stories of financial precarity, de-skilling, and loneliness were unfortunately common amongst my research participants. These were the stories that came to my mind when participants praised Canadian society for being inclusive to immigrants.

Furthermore, participants would simultaneously praise Canada for being inclusive and share stories highlighting how they are ‘othered’ in Canada. For example, some participants demonstrated how they wanted to be part of Canadian culture, but were not sure if they were “allowed” to be. I felt this when one participant answered my survey question “Do you identify

60 with a social, cultural, or ethnic group?” by saying “um Tanzanian, but ah …but ah I wanna be Canadian”. In another instance, I felt saddened as a participant responded to this question with: “so… I don’t know legally, officially whether I can know myself as a Canadian, or still I am ah permanent resident…”. These comments made me uncomfortable not only because they demonstrate how many newcomers are ‘othered’ in Canada, they also contradicted participants’ narratives about Canada being inclusive. My goal in this reflexivity section is not to dispute the stories and opinions participants shared; rather, I want to critically engage with their experiences. Overall, I believe participants’ engagement with Canadian citizenship influenced my research in the following four ways, which will be discussed in-depth below: it (1) resulted in a silence around the experience of racialized cycling bodies, (2) shaped the ways in which participants discussed gender and class relations in Canada, (3) facilitated recruitment, and (4) made me confront not only my own privilege as someone who has never had my “Canadianness” questioned, but also confront the presence of spaces of privilege in Toronto.

A major limitation of this research is the omission of an analysis of a racialized cycling body. As stated previously, a goal of this research project was to examine the intersectional cycling body: I was inspired by Crenshaw’s (1989) research on the intersections of sexism and racism and was hoping to build on previous work on race and cycling (e.g.: Hoffmann, 2016; Lugo, 2018). However, an analysis of the racialized cycling body is absent from this dissertation because participants were either reluctant to discuss, or minimized the importance of, race relations in Toronto. For example, when asked whether they identify with a social or cultural group, one participant responded: “I don’t think it matters from that perspective. Because I am X, Y, Z that’s why I’m biking. It’s not - that’s not the case here”.

Others expressed how they wished to be identified as without or beyond culture (e.g.: “I feel like that I should go beyond that identity […] like to be a human being beyond religious background or any other” or “I just see myself as a person. And, I interact with people as individuals”).

The lack of detailed discussions about race during the interviews could be due to multiple factors, including my positionality as a white, English-speaking, Canadian-born researcher, internalized racism, or a lack of racialized experiences related to cycling over the course of the program. However, I worry that by not reporting on race in this dissertation, my writing can obscure the lived experience of being racialized in Canada. I believe this silence on the experience

61 of being racialized in Canada is meaningful and was related to the complex ways in which participants engaged with citizenship. Specifically, Canada’s positive image as a multicultural city, something participants noted, might have resulted in this silence on racism, or discrimination based on immigration status, in Toronto. As discussed previously, some have argued that multiculturalism can enable the preservation of white domination within settler societies by denying the occurrence of racism (Ahmed, 2000; Thobani, 2007). In multicultural societies the ‘other’ can be welcomed, but it is nevertheless fetishized as the origin of difference in the white nation (Ahmed, 2000). As Thobani (2007) notes, this can result in a denial of racism in everyday life in multicultural societies “of such intensity that (many) immigrants come to doubt their own experience of this phenomenon” (p. 160). Because the participants of this study had only recently moved to Canada, they might have only been beginning to learn the intricacies of the complex system of racial relations in the Canadian context. Perhaps longitudinal research, or research examining the experiences of newcomers of colour who have spent many years in Canada, would be able to uncover how race relations affect the embodied experience of cycling in Toronto. Then again, the participants of this study were repeating common stereotypes about Canada and Canadians, and perhaps they were invested in these narratives.

Beyond resulting in a silence on experiences of racialization in Toronto, the data generated on gender and class in this research was influenced by participants’ engagement with Canada and their sense of citizenship. Specifically, many participants easily and confidently identified and explored the social norms dictating who could cycle by gender, class, and age, and the intersections of these axes of identity in their home countries. Most participants, however, did not see the identity processes they so easily described back in their home countries operating in Canada, especially as it related to cycling. All participants indicated that they believed that men and women had similar opportunities to cycle in Toronto and many believed that there were no classed or racialized connotations to cycling in their new city. One participant stated how in the West “male and female and not treated any different” while another affirmed that in Canada “I don’t think [cycling is] related to financial status, it’s more about what you like to do”. This resulted in little direct discussion during the interviews on the gendered or classed experiences of cycling in the Canadian context.

Some participants even praised Canadian society for its apparent equality by comparing it to their home country’s society, which they often portrayed as “backwards” or “less developed”.

For instance, one participant told me: “because of internet […] I got knowledge […] other countries and… I think how much we [her home country] are… backwards”. I worry that sharing these comments uncritically may contribute to harmful depictions of non-western women as victims of their culture, a view that can wrongly affirm western women’s positional superiority (Narayan, 1997; Razack, 1998). Doing so would be particularly problematic given my position as a white woman writing for an academic audience, which in North America tends to be anglo- centric and historically white. These comments may have been shaped by colonial discourses that depict the “Third World Woman” (Narayan, 1997) as “Religious” (read “not progressive”), “Family-oriented” (read “traditional”), “Illiterate” (read “ignorant”), and “Domestic” (read “backwards”) (Narayan, 1997; Mohanty 1984). Participants’ accounts of their experiences in the bicycle mentorship program, however, indirectly demonstrated how gendered and classed social norms around cycling also exist in Toronto. To counter the emphasis on gender relations in “other” countries frequently discussed during the interviews in the writing of this research, I often rely on these experiences rather than the participants’ views when discussing identity relations in Canada in the writing of this research. Interestingly, by the end of the data-collection activities, three women expressed their recent awareness of gendered roles in the Canadian context. For example, one participant stated: “I just hate the way the whole world is going right now that women should cook, I think even in Canada it is like that right?”. These comments made me question whether my interviewees would have shared more stories on their gendered, racialized, and classed experiences in Canada had they had more time in their new city.

These citizenship dynamics may have facilitated recruitment for my study as well. Many participants were eager to befriend people from their new country that they viewed with such high esteem. In fact, while I gave participants incentives, I found that most were more interested in participating for personal reasons, such as connecting with a “real Canadian” and “giving back to Canada”. One respondent explained that he was eager to participate in my study for a number of reasons, including because he wanted to “contribute as much as I can to the society”. Interestingly, he felt the need to clarify the following:

“I don’t necessarily focus on the newcomers, because I felt that as a newcomer I, I went through a lot of trainings and a lot of opportunities workshops. We don’t have those facilities for local students…so I feel kinda, like, bad, that we are blessed with all those

opportunities, but there are a lot of people who, who born here, raised here, finished their graduation and they are by themselves”.

While I appreciated his willingness to contribute to my study, I felt uncomfortable with how he framed helping me as more worthy than helping other newcomers because I witnessed the hardships many newcomers face and was very aware of my privilege as someone born in Canada This comment also added complexity to the researcher/researched relationship. Rather than it being a unidirectional one with me, the researcher, in the position of power, this participant saw me as “in need” of research participants (which I was!) and agreed to participate in an interview, at least in part, to give back to Canadian society. I was able to “give back” to this participant as well, through the gift card and TTC tokens, but more importantly sharing fun social experiences over the course of the summer and by teaching him how to ride a bicycle in traffic.

Many participants also commented on how they joined the program to connect with Canadians. Once, a participant who hosted me in her home for the interview told me how her son was excited to hear a “real Canadian” was coming over, rather than “another Indian or

Bangladeshi”9. Again, I was happy that people were willing to participate in my study, but felt uncomfortable with how excited they were to connect with so-called “real Canadians”. This discomfort stemmed from me wanting these participants to feel like they too could be considered “real Canadians”.

Finally, I had a language privilege as all research activities took place in English, my mother tongue and most participants’ second, third, or even fourth language. I put great care into creating welcoming interview settings and crafting interview questions for people with varying English-language skills (specifically, I followed the recommendations put forth by Koulouriotis (2011) and Dunn (2016) on interviewing people who speak English as a second language). However, I still unintentionally made some interviewees uncomfortable at times. Specifically, I set up most interviews in coffee shops; naively thinking it was a neutral space10. However, as I was organizing the second round of interviews, one interviewee admitted she didn’t want to meet

9 Quote from my research field book, and not directly from the participant

10 I was aware that coffee shops may be a financial barrier to some, so I paid for all participant’s drinks

64 in a coffee shop because she was too shy about her “bad English”: she was embarrassed about being misunderstood in public. I felt incredibly guilty for having been oblivious to this discomfort. From then on, I offered participants the option between two different meeting places: a coffee shop or a more secluded space (such as their homes or public parks). I noticed that many of those who chose the second options were more talkative and relaxed than their first interviews in a coffee shop. Two of these interviewees even shared with me how the coffee shops had made them uncomfortable because they were embarrassed about strangers overhearing them speak in their second language. These experiences made me realized that while I had been attentive to my own privilege as a fluent English-speaker, I had not considered spaces of privilege that can feel exclusionary to those who are not confident English speakers.

3.3.2 The Feminist, Cis-Female Researcher

As a women doing research on gender, I was anticipating that respondents might respond to my questions differently than if I were a male. In hindsight, I believe my gender made many women feel comfortable enough to share stories that are often deemed inappropriate to discuss with men such as having your period while biking, or experiencing street harassment. I am not sure of the extent to which male respondents might have held back when it came to answering questions about gender honestly. I was, however, confronted with a lot of casual sexism while in the field by both men and women. This occurred during the interviews and during social group outings. For example, I was very aware of the gendered roles that existed at social events, such as the women taking care of children, feeding people, or tidying up as the men played badminton or went on bike rides. I found it particularly frustrating when I observed male badminton players getting frustrated when female players were they did not return serves or shots. Furthermore, during the interviews, both male and female participants would make sexist comments such as “maybe also they [women] are lazier or (laughs)” or “maybe because of women are naturally vulnerable, you know?” or “it’s a common psychology that womens are more afraid and men are more dominant and, you know, so they can ride without fear on the road.” These moments caused me discomfort not because I am unconditioned to casual sexism, but because I remained silent during these interactions. I wanted all participants to feel comfortable talking about gender relations during the interviews and did not want them to feel judged for sharing views I might disagree with.

Gender relations impacted interview logistics as well. For example, five interviewees, four women and one man, unexpectedly brought their children along with them to the interviews. Accessing childcare was clearly a gendered barrier to participating in the program and my study, so I was very welcoming to the children in order to be inclusive. The first time it happened, however, I did worry that I might be violating my ethics protocol and considered asking the participant to meet me another time without her young daughter. Luckily I had some pens and paper on me and realized I could complete the interview with the participants as the child drew quietly. I brought colourful pens and paper to all subsequent interviews, just in case a child was unexpectedly present. Furthermore, I met two participants with children outside in a park. In doing so, the parents could complete the interview all the while keeping an eye on their children who played in the playground.

I was surprised at the joy the children’s odd comments made me feel during transcription. Once, I asked a participant where they were from and their daughter excitedly chimed in “I know!!”. We all laughed, making the atmosphere of the interview less formal and more relaxed. The embodied presence of these children reminded me of how important children are to many of the participants’ daily lives, as well as how children impact their transportation options and decisions. In hindsight, the fact that I was initially worried I was violating my ethics by having children in the room makes me question whether formal academic procedures make it difficult for people with children to participate in knowledge creation.

3.3.3 The Material Researcher

Longhurst and Johnston (2014) identify a lack of scholarship in the literature on embodiment that focuses on embodied fieldwork and methodologies. In response to this research gap, I consider the everyday experiences of my own body in the field alongside that of the researched in this section. While this research project focused on embodiment, I did not anticipate the impacts of the research project on my own body. As did Billo and Hiemstra (2013), I specifically overlooked the needs, realities, and limits of my own body when designing my fieldwork. In hindsight, my fieldwork was physically exhausting. Because my recruitment activities occurred over such a short period of time, I also completed many interviews over a short period of time. This was particularly the case for the first round of interviews at the beginning of the program. My goal was to interview participants before they began cycling. However, most recruitment occurred the day participants

66 picked up their bikes. I therefore felt an urgency to complete these interviews quickly, before participants gained too much experience cycling in Toronto. While I recruited two participants for interviews early and at a leisurely pace, I then completed 24 interviews over 26 days. I wrote in my volunteer notes: “Every single person at the [recruitment event] said they were interested in being interviewed. But I am having a bit of trouble reaching them… it is a bit chaotic trying to schedule 23 people at once!”

Not only were these interview phases intense due to the research design; they also took a toll on my body due to the hot Toronto summers. I cycled to almost all interviews because my bicycle is my primary mode of transport and because I wanted to get a sense of what it was like to bike in the interviewees’ neighbourhoods. Most interviewees, however, lived quite far from my home. This meant I spent my already intense interview periods cycling across the city in the Toronto heat carrying a heavy backpack containing necessary interview materials (laptop, recording devices, etc.). Though I would leave my house early to ensure I had time to cool off and stop sweating before the interviews began, many interviewees showed up early, some as much as 30 minutes early, because they were so keen to meet.

I was also very aware of my female body during the research project. I wanted to appear professional, to look like a “researcher”, in order to be taken seriously (even though I know that mainstream assumptions about what is ‘professional’ are problematically raced, classed, and gendered). However, I found it hard to do as a woman on my bicycle under the hot sun. I was very aware of my appearance, and found it very hard to find clothing that kept me cool, but didn’t show too much of my female body. I felt uncomfortable wearing clothes that made me feel unprofessional by showing too much of my legs, chest, or arms, but I also felt uncomfortably hot cycling across town in pants and tops that covered my body. By the end of the second round of interviews, I finally felt like I had found a way to appear professional without being too hot. My heart sank when I received an email from a participant I had just interviewed for the second time that included “Your looking very beautiful always I like white tishet [sic] n jeans”. While the email was thanking me for the interview and the gift card, I felt like a failure after receiving it. I did not feel like a researcher. I hated that this participant saw me as “beautiful”, let alone felt comfortable commenting on my appearance. I also felt responsible for this unwanted attention: he did, after all, make specific reference to my clothing, something I was apprehensive about all summer. In hindsight, I think this email demonstrates how the researcher’s body is part of the research process,

67 even if it is usually omitted from the written products of the research. Furthermore, it adds complexity to the assumed researcher/researched relationship: though I was in a position of power as the interviewer, I was made to feel objectified by an undesired comment from a participant.

Finally, though I wanted participants to share their embodied experiences cycling, I had not anticipated that these experiences would be painful for some participants. For example, two participants shared with me the shame they felt about the appearance of their bodies. Specifically they told me how they felt “fat” over the course of the summer. For one participant, discussing his reasons for biking made him confront his recent weight gain, a weight gain he hoped to shed through the program. Another participant had trouble finding bicycles that fit her height and weight. This trouble fitting into “standard” sized bicycles made her feel abnormal, fat, and different. I hated that I played a part in making these participants feel this way. It also made me realized my privilege in having an “unfat” body. As a researcher I could freely discuss cycling without people assuming I seek out the health benefits. I also assumed anyone could hop onto most bikes with as little as a seat adjustment. I now realize I must consider this bodily privilege in future research endeavours.

Taken together, participant-researcher interactions were infused with societal and interpersonal power relations. In this reflexivity section, I discussed some of the ways in which this research was influenced by my position as a white, Canadian-born, English-speaking, upwardly mobile, cis-female feminist cyclist completing interviews with newcomers in Toronto. As a final concluding point, participants seemed to really enjoy taking part in the Bike Host program and in my research project. Many told me how much they enjoyed our conversations during the interviews and many wrote me emails thanking me for the meeting. For example, one participant told me during our second interview:

“I am so happy to meet with you, really, even when ah you told me that we will have a closing interview, whenever I riding the bike, or I am in the activity I think of, like, what to tell you, what is my experience from here. Sometimes I used to tell [my husband] every meeting I should make some notes!”

I, too, enjoyed hearing their stories and am extremely grateful to them for committing so much time and energy to this project. Without their generosity, I would not have been able to write the

68 following three empirical chapters presenting the results of this research: Chapter 4: “I wouldn’t take the risk of the attention, you know? Just a lone girl biking”: Examining the Gendered and Classed Embodied Experiences of Cycling which examines how gendered and classed embodied processes intersect with age and shape the (non)cycling body, Chapter 5: Fear of Cycling: Social, Spatial, and Temporal Dimensions which explores some of the many different types of fears cyclists can experience, as well as how they can be shaped by social factors, time, and place, and Chapter 6: Vélomobilities of Care in a Low-Cycling City which focuses on how participants completed household-serving trips by bicycle.

Chapter 4: “I wouldn’t take the risk of the attention, you know? Just a lone girl biking”: Examining the Gendered and Classed Embodied Experiences of Cycling

“My only concern is with how some drivers can be reckless about, about you being in the road […] they don’t recall that your body […] is the vehicle that you are driving”

“if you ride a car ah the everything covers you, […] ride the bicycle […] it’s a…body!”

Regardless of travel mode, mobility practices are profoundly embodied experiences (Spinney, 2009; Watts & Urry, 2008). As the above interviewee comments illustrate, cycling is no exception. While cycling, your body powers your mobility thereby becoming “the vehicle that you are driving”. Unlike driving or public transit where “everything covers you”, cycling involves putting your body out into the public realm. Here, simply by “being in the road” with drivers who can be “reckless”, cyclists’, through their bodily practices, negotiate regimes of power by challenging dominant notions of who can access the streets (Johansson & Liou, 2017).

Previous work has examined the embodied experience of mobility, with an emerging sub- set focused on cycling (Johansson & Liou, 2017, Jones, 2005, 2012; Lee, 2016, McKenna & Whatling, 2007; Spinney, 2006, Van Duppen & Spierings, 2013). For instance, Aldred (2010, 2013) and Jones (2005) examine how cyclists’ bodies are constructed as ‘healthy’, ‘green’, and ‘sustainable’, but also as ‘deviant’, ‘reckless’, ‘crazy’, and ‘risky’ in UK cities. Other works examine how embodied cycling shapes understandings of the urban (Jones, 2012; Van Duppen & Spierings, 2013). As an example, Jones (2012) highlights cyclists’ high affective demands while navigating vivid landscapes that stimulates the senses, what he calls ‘sensescapes’, on the streets of Birmingham, UK. Some scholars focus on embodiment and bicycle events: Johansson & Liou (2017) explore how public bike events can embody political deliberation while Lee (2017) highlights the importance of these events in providing an embodied experience of cycling. Others rely on auto-ethnography (Larsen, 2014; Spinney, 2006), such as Spinney (2006) who recounts his own experience cycling Mont Ventoux to demonstrate how movements in and through place help to constitute it as a place.

As the quote in the title of this chapter demonstrates, axes of identity, in this case gender, can affect the decision to become a cycling body. The extant literature on the cycling body,

70 however, focuses on embodied processes as they relate to cycling as a form of mobility, all the while overlooking how these cycling bodies are also gendered, racialized, classed, or queered. This omission in the bicycling literature is a missed opportunity given that feminist theorists have studied processes of embodied identity at length for decades (Butler, 1990; Grosz, 1994; Longhurst, 1997, 2001; Young, 2005). Furthermore, the cycling body in this literature is often discussed in ways that make it immaterial: not only are these bodies not gendered, racialized, classed, or queered, they also often do not sweat or bleed, they are not attractive, or fat, or skinny11. Lastly, by focusing on those who are already cyclists, the literature doesn’t capture how experiences of embodied identity may prevent some bodies from riding in the first place. Johansson & Liou (2017) do begin to consider different bodies by mentioning those who might not have made it to the bicycle event in their study due to age, disability, or costs of driving to the event. However, there is still little published work examining how embodied identity shapes the cycling experience and vice versa – or the decision not to cycle. This chapter fills these gaps in the literature by examining the gendered and classed (non)cycling body. I argue that focusing on the gendered, classed, and material cycling body can provide insight into the power-laden regulatory practices that influence why some people with certain embodied identities cycle less than others.

The chapter begins with a discussion about the embodiment theories relevant to this chapter, followed by a methods section that outlines the methods for data collection and includes key components of my critical reflexivity. The results are organized into two sections. In the first, I argue that cycling can be experienced as ‘intense embodiment’ in that it can make people aware of their own materiality and fluidity. In the second, I demonstrate how the gendered and classed cycling body is regulated through performativity and materiality. The final section concludes by discussing the implications of this study for research and practice and by outlining avenues for future research.

4.1 Theoretical Approach

As discussed in Chapter 1: Introduction, the body has been a subject of much philosophical debate through the ages, though the mind-body dualistic concept coined in the seventeenth century by

11 Notably, Larsen (2014) discusses the (un)fit cycling body

Descartes in particular has had profound implications on present-day conceptualizations of the body and, more generally, on western thought. Descartes viewed the mind as the center of intelligence, consciousness, and therefore selfhood and the body as a separate entity that is but a machine for the mind. Many present-day philosophies are framed by the mind-body split and other dualisms where a dichotomy is perceived between social elements such as nature/culture, man/women, and global/local. Not only are these terms conceptualized as two self-contained opposites, these terms also have hierarchical ordering where one term has an independent existence and a positive status, while the other is defined negatively: as what the other is not (Berg & Longhurst, 2003; Longhurst, 1997; Massey, 1994; Massey, 2007; Mohanty, 1984). These dualisms are also gendered, for example the mind along with ideals of human reason are often associated with masculinity, while the body and its associated emotions and reproductive roles are associated with femininity (Berg & Longhurst, 2003). While both women and men do, of course, have bodies, it has been argued that men’s bodies in western culture are viewed as “a container for the pure consciousness it [holds] inside” (Longhurst, 1997, p. 491). In the words of Grosz (1994) “women are somehow more biological, more corporeal, and more natural than men” (p. 14). Indeed, stereotypes of women being hormonal and emotional prevail to this day (Longhurst, 1997). Other work has shown how this closer association to the body has also been attributed to colonised people and people of lower socioeconomic classes (McClintock, 1995, Alcoff, 2006).

This gendered mind/body dualism has played a role in determining what counts as legitimate knowledge. Rationality assumes that people must separate themselves from their body, emotions, and past experiences in order to hold true knowledge. The fact that “legitimate” rationality comes from the mind and is associated with masculinity has implications on what topics of study are “legitimate” and who is perceived as “legitimate” knowledge holders. In order to confront these problematic assumptions and to deconstruct binaries such as mind/body, sex/gender, nature/culture, feminist thinkers have tackled the body as a subject of academic inquiry. Notably, Judith Butler’s work on embodied performance was influential in deconstructing the sex/gender, nature/culture dualisms. Rather than conceptualizing sex as the biological basis of the socially constructed gender, Butler (1990) rejected the conception that biology underlies the categories of gender or sex, and their associated assumptions of heterosexuality. She argued that “sex” is not a biological fact separate from society because the sexual organs we are born with are used to discipline us into masculine or feminine comportments. Butler theorized gender as

72 performative, as the “repeated stylisation of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory framework that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (1990, p.33). Gender performances are acted out to conform to social scripts prescribing ideals that are impossible to meet, but provide a framework for our behaviours. Butler identifies how gender is performed, regulated, and “done” at the scale of the body. In her words “the regulatory norms of “sex” work in performative fashion to constitute the materiality of bodies and, more specifically, to materialize the body’s sex, to materialize sexual difference in the service of the consolidation of the heterosexual imperative” (Butler, 1993, p. 2). While Butler focuses on gender performativity, aspects of her theories have also been applied to other axes of identity such as race, class, and age (e.g.: Ehlers, 2012).

While Butler’s theory of gender performativity was highly influential in the social sciences, including in geography where it was used to consider relationships between gender, sexuality, space, and place (e.g.: Bell, 1994; Valentine, 1996), her work has been assessed critically over the years. Notably, Nelson (1999) critiqued this work for prioritizing discourse over the materiality of bodies and for overlooking agency in the doing of identity. Longhurst’s work (1997, 2001), in particular, was influential in bringing the materiality of bodies back into the spotlight. She highlighted how social constructionism can wrongly “render the body incorporeal, fleshless, fluid- less, little more than a linguistic territory” (2001, p. 23). Not only did she argue that material bodies with fluid identities played a role in our understanding of place, she also argued that bodily fluids, such as blood, vomit, farts, and urine, were important topics of academic inquiry. These fluids are mediated through cultural representation: bodily fluids challenge conceptions of the body as bounded and secure and are considered ‘messy’. Furthermore, these fluids are associated with other dualisms that help construct people’s relationship to space. For instance, Longhurst argues that women are often understood as having more leaky bodily boundaries than men (for example, due to menstrual blood or breast milk) and it is often thought that leaky bodies are not to be trusted in public spaces. Longhurst posited the study of fluid bodily boundaries as a way to challenge these dualisms and current masculinist modes of knowledge production.

More recently, there has been a growth in published academic work in geography that considers both theories of performativity and is grounded in material bodies and experiences (Longhurst & Johnston, 2014). These recent works cover a range of themes from maternal bodies, to geopolitical bodies, to trans geographies (Longhurst & Johnston 2014). One field where theories

73 of embodied identity are lacking is in the mobilities literature, and specifically on the cycling body. While some have examined these processes for active bodies (e.g.: Evans, 2006; Mills, 2011; Nash, 2012), the embodied processes of identity formation of the (non)cycling body have not as of yet been considered. Framed with Butler’s theory of performativity and Longhurst’s work on fluid bodily boundaries, this chapter responds to this research gap. The stories and lived experiences of newcomers to Toronto, Canada who have recently taken up cycling are used to demonstrate how context-specific embodied identity performances shape who can comfortably cycle. The ways in which these experiences are grounded in the material body, as well as how these processes of performativity and materiality shape each other, are also discussed.

4.2 Methods

As discussed in Chapter 3, my work draws from interviews completed with participants of the 2017 Bike Host program. Every year, Toronto-based immigrants and refugees with an interest in cycling are invited to participate in this cycling mentorship program. They are loaned a bicycle, helmet and lock for the summer and are put into groups with a mentor who is a confident cyclist. Over the course of the summer months, the newcomer participants and their mentors engage in bicycle-based social outings around the city, both as part of their mentor’s group, and by attending events organized for all participants in the program. During the summer 2017 iteration of the program, I invited participants to take part in my research project. Among other research activities, participants were invited to complete two interviews: one at the beginning of the program that focused on the participant’s mobilities life history & perceptions of cycling in Toronto and one at the end of the program meant to capture the new cyclists’ experiences biking over the summer. A total of 56 approximately hour-long interviews were completed: 26 participants participated in the interview at the beginning of the program and all 26 participants plus 4 additional participants completed the interview at the end of the program. The interviewees were diverse in their self- reported age, gender, and home countries (see Table 3.3 in Chapter 3). The larger study was approved by the University of Toronto’s Research Ethics Board. In order to comply with the board’s guidelines, all names have been changed in this thesis to ensure participant anonymity. All interviews took place in English, though none of the participants were native English speakers. Therefore, many participant quotes included herein contain grammatical errors owing to the fact that the participants had varying levels of experience communicating in English. Previous work has found that non-native English, pejoratively called ‘bad’ or ‘broken’ English, can be

74 problematically associated with incomprehensibility, as well as “non-White, foreign Others’ (Lindemann, 2005; Shuck, 2006). That being said, participants’ exact quotes are included in this dissertation in order to fully represent the active, and sometimes powerful, voices of interviewees. However, this is done in the hopes that these exact quotes do not reinforce colonial narratives associated with non-native English (Lindemann, 2005; Shuck, 2006).

Because this research project was framed by a feminist epistemological stance in which knowledge is understood as situated, as inseparable from the context in which it was produced (Haraway, 1991), I actively examined my positionality and practiced critical reflexivity throughout the research process. Beyond stating my social position as a white, Canadian-born, English- speaking, upwardly mobile, cis-female feminist cyclist in this chapter, I offer herein a brief critical reflection on how some aspects of this work may have been shaped by the power relations that permeated this research project.

A major limitation of this research is the omission of an analysis of an embodied racialized cyclist. This type of analysis was not included because participants were either reluctant to discuss, or minimized the importance of, race relations in Toronto. For example, when asked whether they identify with a social or cultural group, one participant responded: “I don’t think it matters from that perspective. Because I am X, Y, Z that’s why I’m biking. It’s not - that’s not the case here”. Others expressed how they wished to be identified as without or beyond culture (e.g.: “I feel like that I should go beyond that identity […] like to be a human being beyond religious background or any other” or “I just see myself as a person. And, I interact with people as individuals”).

This lack of in-depth discussions on race during the interviews could be due to multiple factors, including my positionality as a white, English-speaking, Canadian-born researcher, internalized racism, or a lack of racialized experiences related to cycling over the course of the program. However, I worry that by not reporting on race in this chapter, my writing can obscure the lived experience of being racialized in Canada. I am also aware that Toronto’s positive image as a diverse and multicultural city, something participants noted, may silence the existence of race- relations in Toronto. In fact, multiculturalism has been critiqued for enabling the preservation of white domination within settler societies by denying the occurrence of racism (Ahmed, 2000; Thobani, 2007). Ahmed (2000) argues that multiculturalism allows the nation to reinvent itself, to live with difference and claim this difference as proof of the nation’s cultural superiority. While

75 the ‘other’ is welcomed, it is nevertheless fetishized as the origin of difference in the white nation (Ahmed, 2000). As Thobani (2007) notes, this can result in a denial of racism in everyday life in multicultural societies “of such intensity that (many) immigrants come to doubt their own experience of this phenomenon” (p. 160). Because the participants of this study had only recently moved to Canada, they might have only been beginning to learn the intricacies of the complex system of racial relations in the Canadian context. Perhaps longitudinal research, or research examining the experiences of newcomers of colour who have spent many years in Canada, would be able to uncover how race relations affect the embodied experience of cycling in Toronto.

Another weakness of this research is the limited participants quotes on gendered and classed experiences of cycling in the Canadian context. While many participants easily and confidently identified and explored the social norms dictating who could cycle by gender, class, and age, and the intersections of these axes of identity in their home countries, most participants did not see these identity processes operating in Canada, especially as it related to cycling. Participants indicated that men and women had similar opportunities to cycle in Toronto and many stated that there were no classed or racialized connotations to cycling in their new city. One participant stated how in the West “male and female and not treated any different” while another affirmed that in Canada “I don’t think [cycling is] related to financial status, it’s more about what you like to do”. Some participants even praised Canadian society for its apparent equality by comparing it to their home country’s society, which they often portrayed as “backwards” or “less developed”. For instance, one participant told me: “because of internet […] I got knowledge […] other countries and… I think how much we [her home country] are… backwards”.

I worry that sharing these comments uncritically may contribute to harmful depictions of non-western women as victims of their culture, a view that can wrongly affirm western women’s positional superiority (Narayan, 1997; Razack, 1998). Doing so would be particularly problematic given my position as a white woman writing for an academic audience, which in North America tends to be anglo-centric and historically white. These comments may have been shaped by colonial discourses that depict “the third world woman” as “Religious” (read “not progressive”), “Family-oriented” (read “traditional”), “Illiterate” (read “ignorant”), and “Domestic” (read “backwards”) (Narayan, 1997; Mohanty 1984). Participants’ accounts of their experiences in the bicycle mentorship program indirectly demonstrated how gendered and classed social norms around cycling also exist in Toronto. To counter the emphasis on gender relations in “other”

76 countries frequently discussed during the interviews, I often rely on these experiences rather than the participants’ views when discussing identity relations in Canada in the writing of this research.

Interestingly, by the end of the data-collection activities, three women expressed their recent awareness of gendered roles in the Canadian context. For example, one participant stated: “I just hate the way the whole world is going right now that women should cook, I think even in Canada it is like that right?”. These comments made me question whether my interviewees would have shared more stories on their gendered, racialized, and classed experiences in Canada had they had more time in their new city.

4.3 Cycling as ‘Intense Embodiment’ Allen-Collinson & Owton (2015) use the term ‘intense embodiment’ to describe “periods of heightened awareness of corporeal existence” (p. 247). This concept has many commonalities to Leder’s (1990) work on the ‘dys-appearing body’ which explores how the healthy body is often absent from our conscious awareness. One does not think about mundane bodily processes such as breathing or the heart’s beating until it is brought back to consciousness with the advent of pain, pleasure, or illness. ‘Intense embodiment’ refers to this same process of bodily awareness without the prefix dys- and its associated negative connotations. Instead, ‘intense embodiment’ holds positive connotations of a heightened sense of being alive. For many participants, cycling was an experience of ‘intense embodiment’ in that it made them acutely aware of their materiality and bodily processes. This was particularly the case for participants who were returning to cycling after a long period of absence and for those who suggested they were less confident in their cycling skills. For instance, most participants detailed the soreness they felt after their first long ride. For example, Cindy expressed how she felt after her first ride by stating: “yes! My knee hurts, my back, hand, my [points to her calves]! yes! (laughs) bum hurts!” (Cindy, China). Though she had a lot of prior experience cycling in her home country, her knees, back, hand, calves, and bum were all sore after her first long ride in years. While expressing pain and soreness, all participants did so using positive language and emotions. These long rides were pleasurable, and there was a sense of pride in the way their riding had transformed their body. For some participants this heightened sense of corporeality was at times associated with negative emotions. Others were made aware of their lack of cardio or physical fitness and the

77 effects of this lack of stamina of their bodies. For instance, Dominic stated: “God I need to do a lot more physical activity […]Because you ride for 10 minutes and I’m tired.” (Dominic, Jamaica) Avani, on the other hand, was made acutely aware of her weight: “because I am a new biker and I’m a little bit… you know… weight… overweight so… I can’t ride long” (Avani, India). Unlike the soreness and pain described above where participants took pride in sensations that were seen as a result of hard work, this self-awareness of participants’ lack of physical fitness or fatness was always described with embarrassment and shame. Cycling was also an experience of ‘intense embodiment’ in that it made participants aware of their fluid boundaries, notably through bodily fluids. As Longhurst (2001) argues, these fluids highlight the leakiness of bodies and challenge conceptions of bodies as having secure boundaries. These bodily fluids were usually conceptualized as messy and associated with feelings of disgust and shame. For instance, one participant described how she felt after one of her first long rides: “I feel…I look awful! (laughs) […] that day I feel “ah! I sweated! And everything”” (Paola, El Salvador). Furthermore, the experience of ‘intense embodiment’ described above often diminished over the course of the program, as participants became more experienced cyclists. Their muscles wouldn’t feel sore so easily, and they could ride longer distances without feeling tired. Some participants even described how their bodies had transformed over the course of the summer. These participants commented on their improved stamina, or proclaimed that they felt “healthier”. Others noted specific improvements in their riding: “there’s a huge difference I can feel within myself in terms of strength wise for example. If it was previous time that I’m biking, I would rather stop, get off and walk with the bike [if I’m going uphill]. But today, I think I kept going and I finished […]I’d say it improved a lot.” (Rafi, Bangladesh) Participants always described this change in their bodies as positive, as a transformation they were proud of. The heightened awareness of bodily fluids also diminished over the course of the program. For example, Rana expressed how she became used to perspiration from cycling by stating the following: “I also adjusted just to, just got used to, I mean I can tolerate some sweat now because back then I didn’t really, with the smallest amount of sweat I felt like I wanted to change my clothes. Yeah, but now I think I’m kind of used to it” (Rana, Egypt)

Taken together, cycling can be an experience of ‘intense embodiment’ in that it can make people acutely aware of their materiality and their fluid boundaries. This heightened bodily awareness elicits various emotions: at times it is pleasurable and associated with pride, at other times it invokes disgust and is associated with shame. Furthermore, the experience of intense embodiment is dynamic in that it diminished over time: participants became less acutely aware of their bodies as they became more experienced cyclists. In the following section, I turn to the ways in which this ‘intense embodiment’ shaped, and was shaped by, participants’ gender, class, and age.

4.4 Regulating and Resisting the Gendered, Classed, and Aged Cycling Body

This section focuses on the gendered, classed, and aged (non)cycling body. Three social norms that regulated cycling behaviours were regularly discussed: (1) that cycling can be at odds with femininity, (2) that it is associated with poverty, and (3) that these norms can change throughout one’s life course. As will be made evident through the discussion in this section, these socially constructed norms shape and are shaped by material embodied experiences (e.g.: being conscious of your female body being on view, experiencing bodily fluids, etc.).

4.4.1 Embodying Femininity on Two Wheels

Many participants discussed how cycling was constructed as an inappropriate activity for girls in their home countries. In these contexts, cycling is viewed as an activity at odds with performing femininity because of its associations with the public realm, mobility, and physical activity: binary terms connected to masculinity. The following examples are shared with the understanding that I cannot properly conceptualize them, or put them in a broader sociopolitical context, herein. However, it is worth noting that aspects of these comments are consistent with internalized colonial discourses (Narayan, 1997; Mohanty 1984), and may have been shared with the intention of performing “Canadian-ness” (Ahmed, 2000; Thobani, 2007) by labelling gender norms as “backward” in their home countries. Take, for example, Dominic’s response when asked if both boys and girls cycled in his home country: “no, no boys mainly unless you have some tom [boys] (laughs) […] it wasn’t seen as a, as a activity for girls […] I know girls were normally seen as the homely type, should be in

the yard, cooking, those kinds of things. Boys on the other hand were always sent out to play” (Dominic, Caribbean) While Dominic did not agree with these views, views he identified as outmoded, he demonstrates in this response how femininity is associated with the home (i.e. girls are “the homely type”), restricted mobility (only boys are “sent out”), and domesticity (girls perform domestic labour such as cooking while boys “play”). Masculinity, on the other hand, was performed by being active in the public realm. As another example, Sumaiya explained why she never learnt how to ride a bicycle, though she had always wanted to: “The sports for the females are not that much encouraged […] like the ladies will do more, kind of…. Ah… academic work, not the sportive work, not the sports, not the outdoors” (Sumaiya, Bangladesh). She went on to describe board games, billiards, table tennis, and hop scotch as appropriate activities for girls. Not only are these activities less active, they are also practiced indoors. In her words: “it’s still indoors. Biking is really on the road”. Here, Sumaiya’s gender was performed by keeping her body passive, more sedentary, indoors: she was told that being active in the public realm was inappropriate for women. Many participants were disciplined, both discursively and through actions, when it came to cycling in order to conform to their expected gender performances. In the examples above, those girls who did not conform to these norms were regulated through social pressures, in this case by being call a “tom boy”, or by avoiding the bicycle altogether because of its associations with masculinity. The gendered mind/body dualism also framed participants’ understandings of who should cycle. Many participants, men and women alike, viewed women as more connected to their bodies than men. For example, some participants stated that women are naturally more vulnerable than men, others commented on how women are lazier, and some discussed the negative effects of cycling on women’s reproductive system. For example, Dominic discussed how the “folklore” that women could lose their virginity while cycling existed in his home country, another participant explained how his wife wasn’t comfortable cycling in Toronto because she gave birth over a year ago and “she have a stitch or something” (Arjun, India). No comments were made regarding male anatomy and cycling, even though the negative effects of long-term road cycling on male fertility have been documented (Hajizadeh Maleki & Tartibian, 2015). As discussed in the methods section, some of these descriptions have the potential to reinforce a Western narrative of the oppressed ‘Third World Woman’ if read as an indication of oppressive patriarchies in ‘other’ cultures. To challenge this simplistic interpretation of these

80 narratives and their racist undertones, I turn to alternative examples in which these norms were challenged. Take, for example, the following stories from Iranian participants. While it is illegal for women to cycle in Iran, participants in this study explained how many Iranian women know how to bike and even practice this activity when they can. Specifically, there were certain places where they could cycle without legal repercussions. Examples mentioned included holiday towns where they could blend in with tourists, in the privacy of their backyards, or on the public street, but under the cover of darkness. Not only do these stories highlight how people engage with and resist gendered regulatory frameworks, they also help deconstruct the male/female, public/private binaries. These women challenge femininity’s associations with the home by being mobile in the streets all the while blurring the distinction between public and private space: the private space of the backyard stands in for a public space when people cycle in it, and the public street becomes a somewhat private one under the cover of night. Furthermore, while participants perpetuated the view of Canada as a place with no gender inequality, their experiences tell a different story than the simplistic narrative of Canada as egalitarian. For example, many female participants experienced a gendered ‘intense embodiment’ through cycling in Toronto: they became acutely aware of their female body when they began to ride. For instance, at the beginning of the program, every female participant stated that they refused to cycle while wearing a dress or skirt. The reasons for this discomfort were either safety concerns (i.e. worries that their skirt can get caught in the wheel) or concerns about people seeing too much of their female bodies. For example, Paola explained how she would never cycle in a skirt or dress because: “the people can see everything! (laughs) it’s, it’s …uncomfortable” (Paola, El Salvador). This gendered material experience of ‘intense embodiment’ intersected with discourse on appropriate feminine performativity. Many female participants described how inappropriate it was for women to show too much of their bodies in public, and often associated this social norm with their fear of or experiences of street harassment. Three female interviewees experienced street harassment over the course of the program. One of them, Avani, explained how her experiences being cat-called in Toronto, though unexpected due to the city’s reputation for gender equality, make her feel unsafe, she told me: “I was commented on here in Toronto just like India which is scary, you know? I didn’t expect that”. Most female participants conformed to these norms by covering their bodies, even if doing so was inconvenient. For example, Avani noted: “I will wear full clothes and go, you know? Even though it’s very, very summer like this and I want to be in short, no” (Avani, India). Others explained how they would either change their travel mode (e.g.:

“if you want to wear dresses, you don’t use your bike” (Cindy, China)) or their dress (e.g.: “I always adjust what I am wearing to bike”(Rana, Egypt)) to avoid discomfort. In this way, this experience of ‘intense embodiment’, one that is tied to gender performativity, could limit or alter people’s mobility. Over the course of the summer, as participants gained more experience cycling, some women told me they cycled with dresses with varying levels of success. However, underlying even these experiences of successfully cycling in a dress was the norm that displaying too much of one’s body was inappropriate for women: even those who cycled in skirts only did so if they felt they could do it “appropriately” (i.e. without showing too much of their bodies). Furthermore, the body’s fluid boundaries were at times gendered and associated with the mind/ body, male/ female, high-status/ low-status, public/ private, and mobility/ immobility dualisms. For example, three participants mentioned their concern about cycling while menstruating. They were specifically worried about “leaking” onto their bike seat and the shame that would invoke. One of these three participants, Lily, avoided the bicycle all-together when menstruating even though she otherwise used it on a daily basis. Zang, another of the participants who mentioned this concern, explained how she tried cycling while menstruating and stated, while blushing heavily, that “but for me, it’s ok, I tried it…during my…period” (Zang, China). Their apprehension to cycle while menstruating is consistent with Longhurst’s (2001) writing about bodily fluids, in this case gendered menstrual blood, as “messy” and in need of “control” because they challenge conceptions of the body as a secure, bounded entity. Lily’s decision to avoid cycling while menstruating and Zang’s initial reluctance to do so highlights how the leaky body affects (im)mobility and access to public space.

4.4.2 Embodying Class Cycling is not simply a gendered activity: it is also associated with class performativity and materiality. Embodied class regulations often intersected with embodied gendered regulation. In many participants’ home countries, it was inappropriate for those of higher socioeconomic backgrounds to cycle. Specifically, fifteen participants described how cycling was associated with poverty in their home countries. For instance, one said: “but in our country there is a conception, like, ah poorer people use more bikes and richer people do not use” (Saliha, Bangladesh). While another stated: “they didn’t have enough money for the bus or anything like that, so they would just take a bicycle, it was out of necessity” (Carlos, El Salvador).

These associations varied across place. For example, seven participants discussed how bicycles were popular amongst “poor” people in (usually) wealthier and (usually) urban regions and amongst everyone in (usually) “poor” and (usually) non-urban regions of their home countries. These poor regions were generally agricultural (or non-urban) with poor transit access where “people are ultimately learning bike for the necessity of their life…” (Sumaiya, Bangladesh). Participants not only described these classed norms around cycling, they were also able to identify how certain “non-poor” bodies could comfortably cycle, even if it was a practice at odds with their identity, by performing a certain “type” of cyclist or by cycling in certain places. These strategies show how people actively engage with dominant regulatory frameworks relating to who can cycle. For example, six participants discussed how in recent years two classes of cyclists began appearing in their home countries: the “poor commuter” and the “rich recreational cyclist”: “Rich families use bikes for their hobbies, for their passion and poor people use bikes for their necessity, but medium income people avoid bikes” (Saliha, Bangladesh). These different categories of cyclists performed their identities very differently. Participants described the “rich recreational cyclists” as follows: “you see big groups of people going on a bicycle, but they look very professional, with the spandex and, and expensive bicycles and everything” (Carlos, El Salvador). This performance contrasted starkly to that of “poor cyclists”: “in his working clothes and everything on a cheap bicycle, because you can see the difference, his bicycle is falling apart” (Carlos, El Salvador). These divergent classed performances of cycling were associated with place as well. For instance, you rarely find the “rich recreational” cyclist in the city or sharing roads with cars. Instead, they were “outside the city of course, because inside the city there is no place for that” (Youssef, Egypt). The “poor commuters” on the other hand, were on the city streets. It is important to note that these performances were also gendered: both the “poor commuters” and the “rich recreational cyclists” were male. Though participants discussed these performances of class and masculinity in relation to their home countries, these types of cyclists also exist in other contexts, including Toronto (Bauman et al., 2018; Bernstein, 2016). Many participants stated they felt there were no class connotations to cycling in Canada, however, nine participants discussed how cycling was appealing to them due to its cost- effectiveness. Furthermore, some participants were pressured not to cycle by their peers due to norms about class and transportation in the Toronto context. For example, a couple in the program who enjoyed cycling to church on Sundays had various members of their religious community comment on this mode of mobility’s association with poverty over the course of the summer. Paola

83 explained how: “sometimes the people in the church told us “oh, one day you will have a car, don’t worry, be patient””(Paola, El Salvador). Her husband agreed by stating: “they were praying for us, in their prayers they were doing “hopefully they will be able to buy a car soon”(laughs) […] they would say “they won’t need to ride their cycles anymore” (laughs)” (Carlos, El Salvador). Rather than try to conform to these social pressures, the couple instead dismissed these comments and continued cycling. They would respond by saying: “”no! we really like the bicycle!” (laughs) “Why do I need a car, because if you have everything close, you don’t need a car” (Paola, El Salvador). Paola and Carlos were not the only ones pressured to give up cycling in Toronto due to its associations with poverty. Another participant was pressured by his wife to stop cycling to their religious institution in Toronto because: “sometimes when you are coming by cycle […] people you know, underestimate you […] they think that, you know, we are poor. Paola and Carlos’ story is prioritized not only because it highlights how dominant discourse regulates class performativity, but also because it demonstrates how people are actively involved in negotiating pressures from dominant discourses surrounding performativity. The couple resisted social norms associating cycling with poverty by dismissing these social pressures, by framing cycling as a preference rather than as a necessity, and continuing to cycle. Finally, the material experiences of bodily fluids were at times gendered and classed. For example, sweat was conceptualized as “disgusting” and inappropriate for work, especially in masculinized, high status jobs. The trip to work, and that to a job that requires a suit, in particular, was deemed inappropriate for cycling because of this bodily fluid. Carlos explained how: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing a suit or something like that riding a bicycle, because of the heat and all that […] because if I’m wearing a suit it’s because maybe I’m going to, to an interview, or going to work, and I don’t want to show up all sweating all that” (Carlos, El Salvador). Rafi explained why he refused to cycle to work by stating: “when I am going to work I want to present myself the best I can… because I am dealing with finance also, I don’t want to sweat for sure” (Rafi, Bangladesh). Furthermore, Saliha explained how her husband found it embarrassing when he cycled to work because this mode made him sweat: “my husband tried to go to his work by biking for some days, and when he reached office he was like all wet. So it’s a bit embarrassing” (Saliha, Bangladesh). These fluids were conceptualized as “disgusting”, “embarrassing”, as something that should be avoided and brought under control. Sweat challenged conceptions of the secure body

84 and was conceptualized as low-status. As was the case in the example above, the concern about presenting one’s body as leaky through perspiration inhibited some participants from choosing the bicycle as their mobility mode, especially on the journey to work. In this way, the body’s fluid boundaries are associated with mobility to access a public space. In some cases, concern about the leaky body appeared to diminish with time. Take, for instance, Carlos. Though he said at the beginning of the program that he wouldn’t be “comfortable” cycling to work or in a suit due to perspiration, by the end of the program he realized the following: “I noticed I never got that sweaty […] I knew I was sweating at the moment, but, it, it I really didn’t even feel uncomfortable or anything” (Carlos, El Salvador).

4.4.3 The Intersectional Aging Body Gendered and classed embodied regulations around cycling can also intersect with age or life stage. For example, in many participants’ home countries, it was not appropriate for girls to cycle past puberty nor for boys to do so into adulthood. Take, for instance, the following two female interviewees who explained why they could no longer cycle in their early teenage years: “at the age of 13, um, or 14 um you know, they consider you ah, a little, not young anymore… you should be dressed…ah… you are becoming a woman so it was not ah possible for me to bike. […] even my family, they never allowed me to go out alone” (Rana, Egypt) And: “you are becoming a woman and also the insecurity in our country is too much for the girls I think […] the girls are harassed there is very much eve-teasing, girls, ladies harassment is also a big issue” (Sumaiya, Bangladesh) Both of the women in these examples experienced restricted mobility after puberty, a constraint they disliked and opposed, when they were “becoming a woman”. While Rana was disciplined by her social network, and specifically her family, and Sumaiya was through street harassment, or fear of harassment, both ultimately complied to these social pressures by not cycling in adulthood. Furthermore, both forms of discipline limited which bodies had access to mobility and public space. While these experiences occurred in participants’ home countries, previous work has found that girls cycle less than boys in Canada as well (McDonald, 2012). Furthermore, street harassment in not unique to certain participants’ home countries: as discussed previously, some female participants shared their experiences of street harassment in Toronto.

Cycling’s associations with poverty also intersected with age. For many, cycling was an appropriate activity for children, a milestone on the road to automobility, but an inappropriate activity for adults, one that signified the inability to own a motorcycle or car due to poverty. For example, Avani explained how in her home countries “bicycle is ah…they feel it is only for teenagers or people who can’t afford a car” (Avani, India). As was the case with gender, the mobility practices of participants of higher social status above a certain age were regulated through social norms. Specifically, they were either directly told or made to feel uncomfortable when they cycled. Arjun, a bike host participant from India, explained how he began cycling as a teenager and continued doing so into adulthood. While, according to him, cycling in adulthood was unusual in some places in his home country, he continued doing it because it was convenient, low-cost, and enjoyable. He would cycle to campus where he studied engineering. Here, he said “everybody was jealous of me, because I was, you know, reaching the college very fast”. This all stopped at the age of twenty-five when he gave into social pressures. He explains how people would tease him by saying to him “what is this? Up to 25!” or “You are coming with cycle? Oh my god!” or “you are an adult now, why are you still riding?”. He began by hiding his bicycle because “it is not a symbol of status” before eventually giving it up and buying a motorcycle. This participant’s story is just one example of how discourse can be used to regulate identities, and that people engage with this discourse, at time by continuing to cycle, and at other times by giving it up. Many gender and class regulatory practices intersected with age or life stage in the Canadian context as well. For example, two participants in their forties and fifties said they might have worried about maintaining their appearance while cycling when they were younger, but did not worry as much about their appearance now that they were older. One young female participant discussed how she did not worry about maintaining a feminine appearance at the moment because she was an undergraduate student. However, she anticipated facing challenges incorporating the bicycle into her daily mobility after graduation when she hoped to find good employment that would require a professional appearance.

4.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, I argue that cycling, especially after long periods of absence, can be an experience of ‘intense embodiment’ in that it can bring one’s material bodily processes back into consciousness. Part of this experience is the increased awareness of ones’ insecure bodily boundaries when confronted by bodily fluids such as sweat. This ‘intense embodiment’ resulted

86 in diverse emotions amongst the research participants, for example, some experienced pride at how they were transformed by the bicycle while others felt shame due to their renewed self-awareness of their fatness. Moreover, participant accounts demonstrate how ‘intense embodiment’ can be dynamic: this corporeal awareness diminished over time, as the participants became more experienced cyclists.

Furthermore, the embodied experience of cycling can be gendered, classed, and vary across one’s life-course. Specifically, this chapter highlights how identity performativity and embodied materiality shape each other to regulate the (non)cycling body. It does so by drawing attention to context-specific regulatory frameworks that shape who can or “should” cycle comfortably. Three social norms frequently discussed were (1) that cycling conflicted with feminine performativity, (2) that cycling represented poverty, and (3) that these norms changed throughout the life course. These norms are socially constructed across time and place and act as regulatory frameworks that discipline cycling bodies, sometimes overtly such as when bodies are legally restricted or socially disciplined from practicing vélomobility, and sometimes through more nuanced cases of individuals policing themselves to comply with social norms. Furthermore, bodily fluids, such as sweat and menstrual blood, can be gendered, classed, and implicated in one’s access to mobility and public space.

By conceptualizing the (non)cycling body using theories of performativity and material fluid boundaries, this chapter contributes to the emerging literature on embodied cycling. While existing work in this field focuses on the cycling body, it rarely considers how the (non)cycling body is also gendered, classed, aged, and inherently material. This chapter addresses this research gap by focusing on the ways in which material cycling bodies are regulated based on gender and class, as well as across age. Furthermore, by focusing on the body this research highlights the importance of people’s first experiences cycling, i.e. when feelings of ‘intense embodiment’ may be strong. There can be discomfort in these first experiences, and some of this discomfort is shaped by gendered and classed identities (e.g.: not wanting to show too much of your female body to avoid attention, or not wanting to perform poverty by arriving at work sweaty). This discomfort may be a barrier to cycling, a barrier that may be stronger for people who are historically more regulated, harassed, and made vulnerable in other social domains, such as women and people from lower socioeconomic classes. However, participant accounts demonstrate how this ‘intense embodiment’ diminishes with time: people can resist narratives around cycling once they have

87 experiences that counter these narratives. Therefore, ensuring that people are given the opportunity to try cycling, to gain enough experience to no longer feel the cycling body intensely, may be key to encouraging cycling. Gaining this experience is especially important for those bodies with identities regulated from cycling, such as women and those wishing to avoid being perceived as “poor”. In a similar vein, Larson (2014) comes to the conclusion through auto-ethnographic methods that cycling, even over long distances, can become less bodily demanding over time and through experience. Cycling mentorship programs, such as Bike Host, organized bike rides, or Bike-to-School programs, provide this valuable experience. Therefore, these types of programs should be included alongside other strategies to encourage urban cycling.

Beyond contributing to the literature on embodied cycling, this chapter also contributes to the literature on identity and cycling. Many researchers have identified a gender-gap in cycling in cities with low cycling participation rates whereby approximately two thirds of cyclists are male and one third are female (Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009). Others have commented on the racial, class, or age profile of those who cycle (Steinbach et al., 2011). This body of research relies heavily on surveys to compare “male” vs. “female” differences in cycling behaviours, correlates, stated concerns, and barriers (Ravensbergen et al., 2019). This literature, however, has made very little specific reference to the body or processes of identity formation; instead relying on a binary conceptualization of gender (Ravensbergen et al., 2019). In doing so, it identifies differences in men and women’s cycling behaviours or attitudes, but it struggles to explain why these observed gendered experiences exist (Ravensbergen et al., 2019). By focusing on the gendered and classed body, this chapter highlights how processes of embodied identity formation influence who can become a cycling body in the first place. For example, some girls may avoid the bike out of fear they will be called a “tom boy”, some adults may worry they will be shamed for not owning a car, or people may want to avoid the embarrassment of arriving at work sweaty. Power relations work through and produce these embodied regulatory practices. This chapter highlights the importance of dismantling patriarchal and classist power structures in order to close the gender-gap, or more broadly any identity-based gap, in cycling.

Furthermore, as discussed Chapter 2: Literature Review, when place is considered in current research on gender and cycling, it tends to focus on infrastructure and/or built form. This research tends to approach the topic using a spatial sciences approach whereby patterns and laws are theorized from data (Cresswell, 2015). For instance, a pattern identified is that certain types of

88 cycling infrastructure increase perceived and objective safety, thereby encouraging women, who report higher concern over safety, to cycle (Akar, Fisher & Namgung, 2013; Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009; Mitra & Nash, 2018; Orstad et al., 2016; Van Cauwenberg et al., 2012). In this chapter, I show the importance of places in shaping who cycles beyond this more common approach focused on built form. Specifically, gender is constructed across place (Massey & McDowell, 1984; Massey, 1994), and in this chapter I highlight how these constructions of identity across place can shape the (non)cycling body. That being said, the gendered and classed practices reported in this chapter are not comprehensive: the ways in which regulatory frameworks such as gender norms and class expectations operate across the globe are far too rich and diverse to be described in one chapter. The focus on a diverse group of newcomers in Toronto in particular meant it was impossible to thoroughly explore norms around cycling in each of the participants’ home countries. Even so, the lived experiences discussed in this chapter still demonstrate some ways in which gender and class are produced though the bicycle and how the bicycle or cycling produces gender and class. Future work can provide more in-depth illustrations of how these processes take place in different contexts. Furthermore, all participants in this study were willing to cycle, therefore, future work exploring how processes of embodied identity influence those who refuse to cycle would be valuable. Future work could also expand upon this study by studying other mobile bodies. For example, walking, taking public transit, or driving may also be experiences of ‘intense embodiment’ after long periods of absence. Finally, this chapter focused primarily on gender, class, and to a lesser extent, age, future work exploring the embodied identity processes of other axes of identity as well as the intersections of these axes of identity would make valuable contributions to the literature.

Vignette 2: Embodied Gender, Embodied Class, Embodied Skill

Avani grew up in India, pursued graduate diplomas in the United States, and recently moved to Canada with her husband. She is young, social, and bursting with energy. During my fieldwork, she lived with her husband in an apartment with a shared kitchen and bathroom. Her husband is re-qualifying as a doctor in Canada as she looks for work in her field, law. Before joining the Bike Host program, Avani had never owned a bicycle. As a child, her father did not allow her and her sisters to ride bicycles because he was worried about them being injured: “He thinks that we will fall and break one bone […] being girls he over pampered us, so he thinks no we should not get hurt”. At fifteen, without her father’s knowledge, she taught herself how to ride a bike by borrowing her friends’ bike after school. Over the course of approximately two years, she would borrow this bike for short (15-30 minutes), but frequent, bouts in which she learnt how to ride. Though she now knew how to ride a bike, and reported enjoying the activity, she rarely had the opportunity to practice this new skill after secondary school. One of the reasons was because the classed connotation to cycling for transport in her home country: “either you are extremely, extremely poor or you are extremely rich where you will buy a bike which is foldable and you keep in a backpack”. As a Law student, she spent most of her time studying on campus. Her parents hired a chauffeur to drive her between school and home: “it’s crazy I lived in the car and the school […] we didn’t have time at all for anything bike was a luxury I think”. Not only was she too busy, it was also considered inappropriate and dangerous to cycle as young girl near her university campus: “a girl can’t bike around in the place I studied […] It’s not safe at all” (emphasis original). During her masters, which she undertook in the United States, Avani was again too busy to cycle. Furthermore, she didn’t feel safe to do so as a woman: “I wouldn’t take the risk of the attention, you know? Just a lone girl biking everyday up and down and sometimes I come back late” When she moved to Canada, Avani joined the Bike Host program. She viewed cycling as a “cool” and “Canadian” way to navigate the city. As did many others, Avani experienced intense embodiment when she began biking again. I was with her on her first ride Toronto. I was volunteering on the day participants picked up their bicycles for the summer. We both left at the same time, and seeing as she had never cycled in Toronto before and we lived near each other, I cycled home with her. She swerved and wobbled a lot on that first ride. At one point, she even fell

90 off her bike when she swerved off of a trail going uphill. She jumped up right away, and every time I looked over my shoulder to check on her, she yelled out “I love it!!”. When I met with her at the end of the program for an interview, she told me how she became extremely conscious of her body, because of both her lack of experience and her lack of fitness: “because I am a new biker and I’m a little bit… you know… weight… overweight so… I can’t ride long” This intense embodiment was gendered as well. She only wore a dress, specifically a frock, once while riding all summer. When she did, she felt very uncomfortable: “because I thought it was already long enough, my frock, but while I was riding it flowing everywhere”. No one said anything, but she felt like she was being stared at because “it’s not appropriate you know?”. She stopped wearing frocks as a result of this discomfort, and on the rare occasions she did she would walk instead of cycle. These experiences of corporeal awareness were unpleasant for Avani, and luckily they diminished over the course of the program. By the time we met for the second interview, she informed me that she used her bicycle as her primary mode of transportation and rode recreationally multiple times per week. She felt the bicycle had transformed her body, provided her with a low-cost transportation solution, and allowed her to explore, and feel more at home in her new city. I share Avani’s story because it demonstrates one of the main arguments put forth in Chapter 4: that embodied performativity and materiality shape each other to regulate the (non)cycling body. Social norms relating to Avani’s class and gender kept her from becoming a cycling body throughout most of her life: first, her father worried his girls would be harmed if they cycled, then her class position keeping her in a chauffeured car and off the bike, finally the worry of gendered street harassment led her to avoid the bicycle. I also share this story because Avani’s lack of experience cycling before joining the Bike Host program, an experience that was influenced by gender and class performativity, shaped her material experience of cycling in Toronto. Not only did she experience ‘intense embodiment’ by becoming intensely aware of her ‘fatness’ and femininity, she also had little embodied cycling skill. This lack of experience made her wobble, swerve, and even fall on that first ride. In the next chapter, I examine how embodied skill, an embodied experience which is also gendered and classed, affects fear of cycling.

Chapter 5: Fear of Cycling: Social, Spatial, and Temporal Dimensions

“I thought, wondered maybe the car will… crush me or something”

“they [men] would call you out … I don’t look at them because I am shit scared.”

Objective and perceived safety, risk, and danger are consistently identified as major barriers to people taking up cycling for transport (Dill, 2009; Dill and Voros, 2007; Sanders, 2015; Sener et al., 2009; Winters et al., 2011). These barriers are recognized in multiple academic disciplines (Jacobson, Racioppi & Rutter, 2009) and in different geographic contexts, but they are especially present within places with low cycling rates. In Canada, for example, findings from the National Active Transportation Survey indicate that weather and safety are the top ranked barriers to cycling (Go For Green, 2004). Within cycling research the concepts of risk, safety, or danger seem to be rarely clearly defined, or used interchangeably, generally measured using quantitative methods, and usually focused on injury or collision. In this chapter I take a different approach: rather than focus on objective or perceived risk, safety, or danger, I examine fear, and its social, spatial, and temporal dimensions in relation to cycling. This chapter is inspired by the fears described by new cyclists, fears about engaging in cycling, and fears that emerge while cycling, enrolled in a cycling mentorship program designed for immigrants and refugees in the City of Toronto, Canada. Herein, I frame fear of cycling with perspectives from emotional geographies. Rather than conceptualize emotions as a mental state that resides “inside” people, geographers are concerned with emotions in terms of their social and spatial mediation and articulation (Davidson, Bondi & Smith, 2005). As such, emotions are conceptualized as relational in this chapter, as an emotion that “flows, fluxes or currents, in-between people and places” (Davidson, Bondi & Smith, 2005, p. 3). Specifically, in this paper fear is broadly defined as the range of emotions and experiences associated with cycling expressed by research participants related to discomfort, unsafety, or anxiety.

By focusing on this broad conceptualization of fear, this chapter adds rich detail on the different ways in which fear of cycling can be experienced across place, time, and by different people. Furthermore, program participant’s accounts of fear, such as Avani’s description of being “shit scared” due to street harassment while cycling, shed light on the many fears associated with cycling, beyond interactions with traffic or potentially unsafe or absent infrastructure (for example when you worry a “car will… crush [you]”). I begin this chapter by reviewing some major trends

92 in cycling research concerned with safety, risk, and danger and then highlight the nascent work on fear and cycling. This is followed by a description of methods used for data collection. The results section briefly explores the different types of participant-described fears. This is followed by an in-depth examination of the social, spatial, and temporal dimensions of two common types of fear expressed by participants: fear of injury and fear for personal safety. The discussion contextualizes the findings using other research, highlights the contributions of this study, and considers how scholars could continue to move transport cycling research forward by engaging further with emotional geographies.

5.1 Safety, Risk & Fear of Cycling

A vast literature is concerned with cycling safety, risk, and danger. Within cycling research, safety, risk and danger appear often, but their definition seems to be taken somewhat for granted. Perhaps because they are related, many papers seem to examine more than one of these terms at a time (e.g. when a study that measures risk of injury comments on safety). At times, some of these terms are even used interchangeably. Not only is there no singular definition of the terms safety, risk, and danger in relation to cycling, beyond the cycling literature these terms are conceptualized, defined, and measured in a multitude of ways across a wide range of disciplines including epidemiology, psychology, sociology, engineering, geography, and medicine. As an example, psychologists have tried to understand why individuals’ perceived safety differs from expert-derived objective risk (Slovic, 2000; 2010), while some work in geography considers safety in terms of comfort and inclusion (e.g. ‘safe spaces’ for LGBTQ+ communities) (e.g.: The Roestone Collective, 2014).

In the cycling literature, safety is usually defined as a desirable outcome, as the lack of physical danger (injuries, collisions) or risk (a probabilistic concept to estimate safety or health). It is not within the scope of this chapter to review all of the different approaches to study risk, safety and danger, nor even those used in the cycling literature. Instead, we review a few major approaches used to study cycling safety, risk, and danger. The approaches outlined include: studies concerned with objective safety, risk, or danger, and those focused on perceived safety, risk, or danger, both at the scale of the individual and the built environment (Table 1). Scholars from diverse disciplines including geography, epidemiology, health sciences, planning, and engineering, have contributed to these studies, most of which use quantitative methods, such as statistical modeling of large data sets or survey analysis. I do not include studies examining the

93 characteristics of the bicycle or vehicle involved in the crash (e.g.: vehicle size, lack of bicycle lights, etc.) or environmental factors (e.g.: weather, lighting conditions, etc.), two less common approaches to studying bicycle-vehicle collisions identified by Prati et al. (2018). Instead, the reviewed approaches can help us understand how safety, danger, and risk are conceptualized and studies within the cycling literature, as well as how they differ from fear, the focus of this chapter.

Table 5.1. Examples of the different approaches to study cycling safety, risk, and danger Objective Perceived -Helmet design, regulation, and use -Self-reported ratings of one’s -Cyclist or driver behaviour safety, risk, and danger -Risk of safety or health metric due -Variations in perceived safety to cycling across demographic groups

Individual -Effects of ‘near-misses’ on cyclists’ perceived safety

-Urban planning -Self-reported ratings of safety, risk, -Infrastructure presence & design or danger of infrastructure of street –Risk of cyclist safety or health design

Built Built metric due to the built environment

factors Environment

5.1.1 Objective Safety, Risk, and Danger: Individual and Built Environment Scales

In cycling research concerned with objective safety, risk, or danger, much of the focus is on bicycle-motor vehicle interactions. In this literature, bicycling safety is generally quantified by measuring either injuries (often classified according to severity), crashes (collisions or falls), or conflicts (i.e. when a road user must change their behaviour, speed or direction, to avoid a collision)12 (Reynolds et al., 2009). Three sources of data are commonly used: police records, hospital admission records, and cyclist surveys (Klassen, El-Basyouny & Islam, 2014). Key topics in cycling safety research include cyclist behaviour (helmet usage, distracted riding, etc.), crash

12 The term “accident” is frequently used in the literature examining traffic-related injures as well, however, some have argued that the term should be not be used as it implies that the incident occurred entirely by chance, and is therefore unpredictable or unpreventable (Reynolds et al., 2009)

94 causation, evaluation of injury-prevention solutions, urban planning, and infrastructure design (Dozza, Schwab & Wegman, 2017).

Much of this literature on cycling safety focuses on the individual-level protection of cyclists (Pucher, Dill, Handy, 2010; Winters et al., 2012). Many of these studies examine the role of cyclist and driver behaviour factors (e.g.: violations, errors, critical manoeuvres, use of visibility aids, substance use, and training) on collisions. In the North-American context in particular, cycling safety research has emphasised helmet design, regulation, and use (Reynolds et al., 2009). A key finding is that helmet-use can reduce the severity of injury (Attewell et al., 2001). However, the evidence on mandatory helmet law’s effects on reducing head injuries is mixed (Fyhri et al., 2012). Many studies have examined whether this is due to risk compensation, the hypothesis that wearing a helmet can encourage cyclists to ride faster or take larger risks because they feel safer (Fyhri et al., 2012). However, a recent systematic literature review on the topic found little to no support for the risk-compensation hypothesis related to helmet-wearing and cycling (Esmaeilikia et al., 2019). Moreover, previous work has found that mandatory helmet use can even discourage cycling (Reynolds et al., 2009). Many studies have also found that injury incidents decrease as cycling behavior increases, a trend called the “safety in numbers hypothesis” (Buehler & Pucher, 2012; Forsyth & Kriezek, 2010; Jacobsen, 2003; Prati et al., 2018; Pucher, Dill & Handy, 2010). Therefore, by discouraging cycling, mandatory helmet laws could even make cycling less safe by reducing the protective effect of safety in numbers.

A sub-set of studies on cycling safety specifically examines probabilistic risk. Risk, using this approach, is the probability of an outcome resulting from an action. Much of this research defines the outcome as a safety or health-related metric (e.g. injury, collision, all-cause mortality, life-years gained, etc.) and action as a measure of cycling exposure (e.g. number of days of cycling, total number of trips, time spent cycling). As an example, a Shanghai based study found that the risk for all-cause mortality was reduced by 35% amongst women who cycled to work. Here the probability of the outcome (dying from all-cause mortality) was reduced by the action of cycling (where cycling is defined by commute mode). One main finding in this body of work is that cyclists experience a higher risk of injury than motorists in countries where cycling for transportation is not the norm (Beck et al., 2007). However, other studies compare the health/ safety risks and benefits of cycling; many reporting that the health benefits of cycling far outweigh the health risks (Anderson et al., 2000; Pucher, Dill & Handy, 2010).

Objective safety can also be examined at the scale of the built environment. Many papers study the objective safety or risk of cycling infrastructure, for instance by studying intersection safety, or by comparing crashes and injuries before and after-infrastructure was built (Thomas & DeRobertis, 2013). Overall, findings indicate that the presence of cycle tracks reduces collisions and injuries (as well as injury severity) and is associated with lower objective risk (Prati et al., 2018; Reynolds et al., 2009; Teschke et al., 2012; Thomas & DeRobertis, 2013). One-way cycle tracks are also deemed objectively safer than two-way cycle tracks, which exhibit a greater number of intersection collisions than one-way tracks (Thomas & De Robertis, 2013). Infrastructure investments have been suggested as a more promising approach to improve cyclist safety than individual-level approaches because they do not require initiative on behalf of individual cyclists, active participation, or repeated reinforcement (Reynolds et al., 2009).

Taken together, this body of work on objective cycling safety, risk, and danger has made important contributions to the literature on road safety, and has been influential in the realm of advocacy and public policy where it has informed policy creation and street design. For example, in Davis, California, the building of cycling infrastructure was shaped by debates on objective cycling safety (Buehler & Handy, 2008). Studies focused on objective safety, risk, or danger, however, do not capture the emotional experience of those involved in bicycle-motor vehicle interactions, nor those involved in sharing road space as a cyclist. Furthermore, objective measures might not correspond to people’s perceptions of cycling safety, risk, and danger. This has led many to study perceived safety, risk, and danger, an approach discussed at length in the following section.

5.1.2 Perceived Safety, Risk, and Danger: Individual and Built Environment Scale

Another common approach taken in the cycling literature is to examine perceived safety, risk, or danger, rather than measuring these themes ‘objectively’ using collision, injury, or conflict data. Perceived safety is a self-reported or subjective safety. It can be measured on the individual-level in surveys, such as when a survey asks respondents closed-questions such as please rate “danger on the roads” (from Van Bekkum et al., 2011), or “how often have you experienced problems with unsafety in traffic?” (from Van Cauwenberg et al., 2012). Here, survey respondents not only self- report their own feelings, they also define safety, risk, or danger. Perceived safety has been found

96 to impact individuals’ decision to cycle, as well as their route choice (Winters et al., 2011; Dill & Voros, 2007; Dill, 2009)

More recently, perceived safety has been studied at the individual-level by examining the impact of ‘near-misses’, i.e. non-injury incidents between cyclists and other road users. Research on near-misses has found that these incidents negatively impact cyclists’ perceptions of safety, danger, and/or risk (Aldred, 2016; Aldred & Crosweller, 2015; Sanders, 2015). Others still study ‘near-misses’ to examine objective safety (e.g.: Nelson et al., 2015). There is also evidence that concern over cycling safety is experienced unevenly across populations. Many studies have found that women identify or rate safety considerations as a barrier to cycling more frequently than men in places with low cycling rates (Buehler & Dill, 2016; Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Heinen et al., 2010; Ravensbergen et al., 2019). There is some evidence that other social groups such as children (Clayton & Musselwhite, 2013; Ghekiere et al., 2014) and ‘ethnic-racial’ minority groups may consider risk a larger barrier to cycling as well (Sallis et al., 2013).

Many studies examine perceived safety with a focus on the built environment as well. For example, Delmelle & Delmelle (2012) found that bicycle infrastructure is associated with lower perceived concern over safety. Others compare perceived safety across different types of streetscapes (Jensen et al., 2007; Parkin et al, 2007; Winters et al., 2012). For instance, Winters et al. (2012) found that major streets with shared lanes and no parked cars have the greatest perceived risk while multiuse paths have the lowest. Perceived safety at the scale of the built environment can be measured using other methods as well, for example, through mental-mapping (e.g.: Manton et al., 2016). Overall, these studies indicate that cyclists perceive greater safety when cycling within infrastructure separated from traffic. However, travel time considerations are also important in determining cyclists’ route choice: even if associated with higher perceived safety, cyclists may not use separated infrastructure if reaching this infrastructure increases their travel time considerably (Manton et al., 2016).

Though perceived and objective safety, risk, and danger are measured differently, some research has found that they are closely related concepts. For example, Winters et al. (2012) compared the objective and perceived risk of different types of cycling infrastructures in Toronto and Vancouver and found that there was little discrepancy between perceived and objective measures (with some exceptions, specifically for cycle tracks (perceived as less safe than objective

97 measures) and multiuse paths (perceived as safer than objective measures)). Furthermore, the presence of bicycle facilities has consistently been associated with higher cycling participation (Buehler & Dill, 2016; Buehler & Pucher, 2012; Dill & Carr, 2007; Parker et al., 2011; Pucher et al., 2010), which could be due to both perceived and objective safety.

Because people self-report their experiences of safety, risk, and danger in these studies on perceived risk, these studies arguably report metrics more closely resembling experiences of fear than studies measuring ‘objective’ safety, risk, or danger. However, quantitative methods are most common, and a limitation of these methods is to reduce the visceral experience of fear into narrow metrics. By examining fear using qualitative methods, this chapter adds rich detail to different experiences of fear and cycling, including the ways in which these fears are produced and change, as well as how they are shaped by social factors, place, and time. Furthermore, some scholars have, in the past, examined how emotional responses influenced driving behaviour. For example, Lawton, Parker, Manstead & Stradling (1997) studied the effects of emotional responses to road violations and found that positive feelings about traffic violations increase the likelihood of engaging in those behaviours. I hypothesise that by studying an emotional response to the cycling experience, in this case, fear, I am touching on a key driving force underlying cycling decisions and practices. By decisions, I am referring to the decision to ride or not, which is bound up in space, time and place. By practices, I am referring to cycling movements, or the way one cycles or styles and types of cycling.

5.1.3 Fear and Cycling

Only a handful of authors directly examine fear, the emotion, while cycling. Some of this work has begun to consider fear beyond that of being injured by a motor vehicle. For instance, Horton (2007) hypothesised that different types of fear of cycling existing beyond that of injury such as the fear of being “on view” (p. 134) while cycling, i.e. fear of moving your body in the public realm, and fear for personal safety. Unlike driving, where one can withdraw from the ‘scary’ public city, Horton (2007) highlighted how cycling involves putting one’s body back into the urban ‘fearscape’. Furthermore, in Mosquera et al.’s (2012) qualitative study on the barriers and facilitators to cycling for transportation in Bogota, Colombia, fear of injury associated with the built environment and infrastructure, fear of bike theft, and fear of personal attacks were discussed. Furthermore, female interviewees and focus group participants stated that they felt more

98 vulnerable to personal attacks, injuries, and theft while cycling than men. In a more recent study drawing on intercept surveys in Black and Hispanic communities in New Jersey, Brown (2016) found that cyclist’s top two stated fears were that of a traffic collision (identified by 27% of respondents) followed by fear of robbery/ assault (17%). Other fears identified included pavement conditions (14%), fear of being stranded with a broken bicycle (10%), fear of being profiled by the police (9%), fear of verbal harassment (5%), cost of bicycle maintenance (5%), and pregnancy/ small children (4%). Brown (2016) argues that transportation planners design roads in a manner that is “traffic safety-rich and personal safety-bankrupt” (p. 23).

Looking across the reviewed studies, much of the current work on cycling safety, risk, and danger does not define or clearly conceptualize what is meant by these terms. The focus tends to be on measuring objective or perceived safety, risk, and danger through the analysis of injury or cyclist-vehicle interactions 13 using quantitative methods, both at the individual scale or at the scale of the built environment. When place is considered in these studies, it is usually in reference to the built form of a city’s street. This chapter contributes to the nascent literature on fear and cycling. By examining the fears described by new cyclists in Toronto, Canada, this chapter provides novel insight into a broader range of experiences, materials, mobilities that produce fear. We also highlight the dynamic nature of multiple types of fear of cycling and demonstrate their spatial, temporal, and social dimensions.

5.2 Methods

This chapter draws on the fears described by the participants of my larger study on gender and cycling. In my larger study, described in detail in Chapter 3, semi-structured interviews were completed with participants of the 2017 Bike Host program, a cycling mentorship program that targets Toronto-based immigrants and refugees. Participants are loaned a bicycle, helmet, and lock and are matched with a mentor who is comfortable riding in the city. Over the course of the summer months, the newcomer participants and their mentors engage in bicycle-based social outings around the city, both as part of their mentor’s group, and by attending events organized for all participants in the program. Among other research activities, these participants were invited to

13 There are some exceptions of course, such Van Cauwenberg et al. (2012) which measured indicators for both traffic safety and personal safety (e.g.: crime, attacks, assault, etc.).

99 take part in two interviews: one at the beginning of the program that focused on the participant’s mobilities life history and perceptions of cycling in Toronto and one at the end of the program meant to capture the new cyclists’ experiences biking over the summer. All interviews were transcribed and data analysis was approached inductively whereby the interview transcripts were coded to distill the vast amount of data into key themes, to organize the data, and to engage in data exploration, analysis, and theory-building (Cope, 2016). Though many topics were discussed during these interviews as part of the larger study, this chapter focuses on participants’ descriptions of fear.

A total of 56 semi-structured interviews were completed: 26 participants participated in the interview at the beginning of the program and the same 26 participants and 4 additional participants completed the interview at the end of the program. The interviewees were diverse in regard to self-reported age, gender, and country of origin (Table 3.3, see Chapter 3: Methodology). The Bike Host participants also had varying skill levels and comfort on a bicycle. At the beginning of the program, thirteen had little experience or had not ridden a bicycle in years, three of which had never learnt how to ride a bicycle. None of the interviewees used a car as their primary mode of transportation, though six (20%) had access to a household personal vehicle. The University of Toronto Research Ethics Board approved the research protocol used for this work. In order to comply with the board’s guidelines, all names have been changed in this chapter to ensure participant anonymity. All interviews took place in English, though none of the participants were native English speakers. Therefore, many participant quotes included herein contain grammatical errors owing to the fact that the participants had varying levels of experience communicating in English. Previous work has found that non-native English, pejoratively called ‘bad’ or ‘broken’ English, can be problematically associated with incomprehensibility, as well as “non-White, foreign Others’ (Lindemann, 2005; Shuck, 2006). That being said, participants’ exact quotes are included in this dissertation in order to fully represent the active, and sometimes powerful, voices of interviewees. However, this is done in the hopes that these exact quotes do not reinforce colonial narratives associated with non-native English (Lindemann, 2005; Shuck, 2006).

5.3 Results

The Bike Host participants discussed many different types of fear including: fear of injury, fear for personal safety, fear of bicycle theft, fear of getting lost, fear of encountering mechanical

100 problems, and fear of getting in trouble with law enforcement. Again, using an emotional geographies standpoint, I considered all emotions or experiences associated with cycling related to discomfort, unsafety, or anxiety as fear in this chapter. As such, not all quotes referenced herein specifically mention the word fear; instead they describe experiences or express emotions related to fear, unsafety, discomfort, or anxiety. This broad definition of fear was used for a number of reasons, including the possibility that male participants may have exhibited more restraint in voicing their fears during the interviews to perform current constructions of masculinity (Mehta & Bondi, 1999).

Participant accounts reveal that fears related to cycling change across time and place; there was also variation in the fears expressed across people, and the same fears were experienced or described differently by different people. For example, some participants expressed how their fear of bicycle theft was spatial and temporal in that it was stronger in perceived “dangerous” neighbourhoods at night, than in “safe” neighbourhoods during the day. Furthermore, several participants described how being an immigrant, a social factor, heightened their fear of law enforcement. For instance, Michael explained the relationship between fear and being a newcomer:

“I’m thinking there will be other newcomers who have this fears, so that you know, I’m new in this place. I’ve spent so much to get here. I’m trying to make a new life here. I don’t – The last thing I want is anything that will make me on the wrong side of the law. So, if it’s a bicycle that’s gonna’ do that, I’d rather not cycle.”

Beyond being social, spatial, and temporal, these fears also interacted. Take, for example, how some participant’s fear of getting lost on a bicycle was greater in Toronto than in their home country because, as newcomers, they are less familiar with Toronto’s streets:

"I feel a little bit scared to go in a new place on my own because I would be like ah confused, where to go… and um the traffic lights, sometimes it’s not very ah comfortable for me to, to know ah which way to, to go, or just to, how to cross the traffic lights because it’s new to me” (Rana)

For one participant, Arjun, this fear was heightened by his precarious employment status, which he attributed to being an immigrant who experienced de-skilling, meaning that he could not afford a costly data plan on his mobile phone that would help him with directions if lost en-route. This

101 fear of getting lost, a fear that was shaped by Arjun’s newcomer status, increased his fear of getting injured while cycling because it made him choose more direct and simple routes to reach his destinations, routes that tended to involve major roads with heavy traffic. For example, he explained how he once tried to take a less direct route on less busy roads, but got lost, something he found distressing, which led him to choose direct routes on future trips:

“I keep on searching, I keep on asking people and I feel helpless…so that way, someone told me, you know, go this side, but I late. Maybe 20 minutes late. So next time I didn’t go inside the small roads, I directly took the main road […] if you take a direct route, […] then you are never lost”.

In this example, fear of getting lost influenced fear of injury. While there are more examples of these fears, along with their spatial, social, and temporal dimensions, the remainder of this results section is devoted to the two fears most commonly discussed during the interviews: fear of injury and fear for personal safety.

5.3.1 Fear of Injury

Fear of getting hurt while cycling was the most commonly discussed fear amongst participants. Every participant mentioned it, though some participants discussed how others might experience this fear, rather than discussing their own experience of it. The vast majority of times it was discussed, it was in relation to being injured by a vehicle. Furthermore, participant accounts reveal the dynamic spatial, social, and temporal dimensions to this fear.

There were clear spatial dimensions to the fear of being injured while cycling. Here, the most common factor associated with fear of injury was the built environment. This result was expected because, as noted in the literature review, safety, risk, and danger are often discussed in relation to the built environment (e.g.: Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Jensen et al., 2007; Manton et al., 2016; Parkin et al, 2007; Prati et al., 2018; Reynolds et al., 2009; Teschke et al., 2012; Thomas & DeRobertis, 2013; Winters et al., 2012). Every participant mentioned issues they had cycling related to the built environment, be it lack of cycling infrastructure, poor connectivity of existent infrastructure, or heavy traffic. Eighteen participants directly stated that places with poor cycling infrastructure made them fearful. For example, Lily shared an experience on a street without a bike path where “the car just near you and…and it’s SO NEAR, it’s SO DANGEROUS” (emphasis

102 original). Avani expressed how she was at times “scared because the car is very close to me” something which didn’t happened often, but “without a bike lane, it happened more frequently”, and Divya realized she had “no need to [be] afraid” because she realized to get to the subway most cyclists “don’t bike in the ah main road, they use the trails”. Though this was a major theme identified in this study, this topic has been covered at great lengths in the academic literature. Therefore, I will move on to other, less commonly discussed, dimensions of the fear of injury.

Beyond the built environment, respondent thinking about the geography of fear scaled from the local to the global, moving from their present situation to their past. In this way, fear of injury is scalable across space and time. For instance, the suitability and safety of the bicycle infrastructure in Toronto was often assessed by participants in relation to what they had experienced in other cities they had lived in. For example, Youssef told me how he found Toronto very safe for cycling, at least compared to his home city where:

“In [my home city], you cannot [bike], you cannot, it’s not safe and ah people will just get mad, get mad at you because it’s really busy and they are late so they don’t need a bike to hold them up”.

Zang, on the other hand, explained how Toronto felt unsafe compared to her experiences living in China. When asked how her first ride in Toronto was, she responded: “Scared! (laughs) Because in my back home it is different, like the bike lane, it is separate from cars, so that’s why it’s very different from here.”

Participants also identified temporal dimensions to the fear of being injured while cycling. Most participants viewed cycling at night as more dangerous than cycling during the day. Night- time was viewed by twelve participants as more dangerous due to the lack of daylight resulting in lower visibility. Of these participants, eight stated that they felt safe cycling at night as long as they felt visible due to street lighting or their own bicycle lights and/or reflective clothing. For instance, Sajit felt safe cycling at night, except this one time he did so without lights: “I was kind of like super paranoid. Like… if something was come with speed, right, and it’s keeping right. So I just… afraid of that”. Five participants stated that they actually felt safer cycling at night than during the day, even though visibility was worse, because there was less traffic. For four of these five participants, this fear was spatial as well as temporal because they live on busy roads with a heavy concentration of traffic during the day. For example, Paola, who lives at the intersection of

103 two major Toronto streets with four lanes of traffic and no bicycle infrastructure told me how cycling at night was actually preferable than during the day because “there is cars, but not too much”.

Looking beyond participants’ past and present relationship with place and cycling, another temporal aspect that emerged was some evidence suggesting that fear diminished for most participants over the course of the program. During fieldwork, it quickly became apparent to all involved that riding a bicycle in traffic requires more skill than knowing how to ride a bike. While all but three interviewees knew how to ride a bicycle before the program started, many were not confident cyclists. My observations over the course of the program and participant interviews illustrated how many participants had trouble riding in a straight line, removing one hand from their handlebar to signal (without swerving), or performing shoulder-checks before turning. During the interviews as the program began, many of the participants who expressed a strong fear about riding a bicycle on the road were those who had trouble mastering these skills. These interviews also revealed that this level of comfort on the bicycle was strongly associated with past experience. Those participants who had cycled a lot in their home countries had no problem completing these skills, and little trouble confidently sharing the roads with traffic. For example, Hassan who commuted 45 minutes to college by bike in a suburban Toronto environment with many multi-lane roads with heavy traffic tells me he was rarely worried for his safety while cycling “because I have experience back home”. Sajit, who commuted almost daily by bike in his home country, also had little trouble overcoming his fear of riding with traffic. When we discuss his comfort on the streets on Toronto, he explains that for him it was easy “‘cause I have ridden bicycle for many years, right? Not much of a change.”

Most participants, however, had little previous experience riding a bicycle. For them, riding confidently on the roads was more of a challenge. For example, Rasha told me how she joined the program for precisely that reason:

“because I don’t really know how to bike. I mean I know how to ride a bike, but not anything further than that really… and I really want to, like, get really confident enough to be able to ride on the street so that’s kinda, like, what I’m afraid of…most”.

Before joining this program, Rasha had but a few weeks experience riding a bicycle, all of which took place in a parking lot in Dubai when she learnt to ride at 14 years old. She explained to me

104 how practice will make her more confident and less fearful: “I feel, like, just the more time I will spend on a bike, the more confident with the bike I’ll be”. Her goal is to practice a lot over the summer so that she can “graduate to the streets” by the end of the program. Rasha was not alone: many participants knew how to ride bicycles, but had so little experience that they had little confidence to ride in the streets, and this lack in confidence resulted in fear. For example, Sami explained how he had experience cycling, but from many years ago: “at first it was very difficult for me because it was a long time I didn’t ride bike and I was a little afraid”. Making a left turn while cycling on the streets without disembarking was the most difficult task for those participants with less experience. Because you bike on the right side of the road in Canada, you need to cross over to the left side, sometime crossing a full lane of traffic, in order to turn left14. Rana, who had not ridden a bicycle since she was twelve years old, recalled her fear the first time she crossed a lane of traffic to turn left: “I was so frightened that I cried! (laughs)”.

While the interviews at the beginning of the program revealed that past experience cycling was positively associated with confidence, which was associated with less fear of cycling on roads, it became clear during the interviews at the end of the program that many participants overcame their fear of being injured and became more confident by participating in the program. In this way, fear was temporal: it changed over time through experience. For example, Rasha did end up “graduating to the streets” as she had hoped by participating in the program. Rana was a confident cyclist by the end of the program: “now, after 2 months, with the program and also because I take my bike everyday to [X…] I’m kind of used to it, I am not really afraid to go on my, by my own anymore”. In fact, fifteen of the thirty participants told me how the program gave them the opportunity to practice cycling and instilled a confidence in their abilities, which attenuated their fears of cycling on the roads15. For example, Sumaiya said: “now after this training I got rid of my fear!” while Michael explained: “the program gave me the confidence to go on the road. I knew how to cycle, but I would never go on the roads”.

14 You can also, of course, turn left with a two-stage turn, i.e. by crossing the intersection and then waiting at the other side of the intersection for the light to turn green in the opposite direction

15 Others may have experienced this, but not told me this is how they felt

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This finding is consistent with the concept of self-efficacy in the physical activity literature, which concerns one’s belief in their abilities to successfully complete a task (Mcauley & Blissmer, 2000). One’s sense of self-efficacy is shaped by past accomplishments, social modeling, persuasion, and physiological arousal; the first factor has been found to be most influential (Mcauley & Blissmer, 2000). Self-efficacy and physical activity have a reciprocal relationship: self-efficacy can be both a determinant and a consequence of physical activity (Mcauley & Blissmer, 2000). Here, those participants who had accumulated more experience cycling throughout their life-course exhibited high self-efficacy, i.e. the belief that they would be able to successfully cycle in Toronto, and expressed less fear. By gaining experience cycling, participant’s self-efficacy increased.

Fear of injury while cycling also has social dimensions. Participants who had less opportunity to cycle over the course of their lives had not developed their cycling skills as much as those who had many years of practice. While this lack of opportunity occurred for both men and women, it was more commonly reported by women in this study: nine of the seventeen women (53%) who participated in this study had no or little past experience cycling before the Bike Host program began compared to four of the thirteen men (31%). Fear of injury can be understood as gendered in spatiotemporal contexts where gender-based discrepancies in access to cycling opportunities exist.

In her essay Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality, Young (2005) discusses how men and women’s bodily comportments, motility, and spatiality can sometimes differ. She argued that these differences are not due to anatomy or physiology instead, “they have their source in the particular situation of women as conditioned by their sexist oppression in contemporary society” (p. 42, emphasis original). In patriarchal societies, some women are not given the opportunity and encouragement to use their full bodily capacities and to develop specific bodily skills, resulting in subtle differences in male and female bodily comportment. Young’s (2005) theory can be used to understand a component of the gendered fear of being injured while cycling: if men are encouraged to cycle more than women in certain patriarchal societies, more men than women are given the opportunity to develop cycling skills which usually result in more confidence and less fear of being injured.

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Take, for example, Aafreen’s experience of fear after an accident during the Bike Host program. Unlike her brothers, Aafreen’s father never taught her how to ride a bicycle. She explained that this was the case because women are strongly discouraged from cycling in Iran, her home country, through social pressures, and even legal restrictions. Instead, she privately taught herself how to ride on her brother’s bike when she was seven. She stopped cycling as she hit puberty because this was a “sensitive time for my age”. Her riding caused much gossip in her neighbourhood. In her words, she gave up cycling because: “I didn’t like to bother my parents”. She started cycling again at the age of twenty, when she would borrow a household bike after midnight and cycle in a big park near her house. Here, she felt safe riding because her brothers and father could watch from their house and at “that time the street is empty”.

When Aafreen moved to Canada she joined the Bike Host program. The day Aafreen picked up her bicycle from Bike Host, she had an accident. As she was cycling home, her bicycle wheel got caught in the streetcar tracks on a street and she fell down. She explains how she was in a rush and that she “didn’t know about the …line tracks for the streetcar”. To her, this accident was very serious: “during that time I ah thought “ok, I am going to die, I am going to die” because it was very ah bad accident, you know?”. Aafreen remained an active participant in the program after this accident but she did not ride alone: “Alone. No. Never. Alone, no, that time I was alone, you know?”

Her husband, Hamid, witnessed this accident as he was following his wife in a car. Unlike Aafreen, Hamid told me he was not scared of cycling, or even streetcar tracks, after witnessing the accident. He explained how he knows to cross these tracks “close to 90 degrees, you know? Not parallel to the track” (Hamid). Unlike his wife, Hamid started biking as a young child. He explained how as a child he was “good in bicycling and know[s] how to ah control the bicycle” because he rode on a regular basis, both recreationally and to travel (notably, his independent trip from home to his grandparents’). His bicycle remained his primary mode of transport throughout childhood and adulthood, though he relied on it less for travel when he began university and had to resort to public transit to complete his long commute. Hamid explained how his continued confidence to ride after witnessing his wife’s accident came from past experience:

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“you know, when I was child I fall from the bicycle a lot, I injure my knees, my elbow, you know, lots, so it’s usual for me […]. So and I can control the bicycle in any situation, you know? It’s not hard for me”

Aafreen and Hamid’s stories demonstrate how fear of being injured while cycling can be produced socially, in this case this fear was shaped by gendered access to cycling opportunities throughout the life course. By the end of the program, Aafreen was more fearful of cycling than Hamid. Aafreen’s fear is, at least in part, social because it is a result of her living in a patriarchal society. Aafreen had so little experience cycling before she joined the program because she was expected to comply to gendered norms of appropriate femininity that she had not had the same opportunities as Hamid to develop bodily cycling skills, to “control the bicycle in any situation”. She “didn’t know about the …line tracks for the streetcar”, as Hamid did. She did not have the embodied skills required to cross streetcar tracks “close to 90 degrees” to avoid a fall. This resulted in an accident that made Aafreen give up cycling, at least alone, out of fear of injury.

Fear of injury while cycling has other social dimensions as well. For example, Cindy’s fear of being injured was shaped by her citizenship. Though citizenship is often understood as ‘status’, I instead frame it as a process, one which “involves negotiation over access to and the exercise of rights” (Basok, 2004, p. 48). For instance, some migrants may have legal rights, but not be able to claim certain ones due to a lack the knowledge, skills, support, or access to mobility/ transportation (Basok, 2004). Cindy explained how her fear of being injured was due to a past accident that took place when she first moved to Canada seven years ago, and her difficulty accessing help in the aftermath of the accident due to her newcomer status: “after that accident I was afraid to ride a bicycle. I never ride a bicycle!”

At the time, she lived in a small Canadian city and was only just learning how to speak in English. Frustrated with the city’s unreliable public transit system, she decided to travel by bicycle. This was, after all, how she travelled for much of her life in her home-country, China. She explained repeatedly how nervous she was when she first started cycling in Canada because “speed different in China”, and “they don’t have bicycle line” in her new city. As she cycled through a construction site with loose sand, she explained, all the while laughing, how: “suddenly! all my body maybe like a fly! throw! and my um...um... my bag ... my bag fly! […] really far”.

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Her cheekbone and chest were bleeding, her neck, hand, foot, and leg hurt, and one of her front teeth came loose, was pushed forward, and now pointed outwards. Due to her lack of knowledge on how to seek medical care, coupled with her new English skills, Cindy didn’t go to the hospital: “I don't know how to protect um myself or to find a doctor. I don't know”. She did receive some medical attention. Shocked by her physical state, a bank teller gave her a bandage. When her chest injury got worse, likely due to an infection, her peers in her English class convinced her to buy a medical cream to put on it. They wrote the name of the cream on the board and told her to go to the pharmacy. Cindy got her daughter, who was more comfortable conversing in English than her, to go to the pharmacy to buy the ointment. This took one month to heal. A few months after the accident people at a community center gave her resources on how to access a dentist. Cindy explains this delay in accessing care by stating: “because I don’t know something, you know? Newcomer”.

Cindy’s story demonstrates another way in which fear of being injured while cycling can be socially produced, even amongst skilled cyclists. Though she held citizenship status as a Canadian permanent resident, which includes free access to the country’s universal health care system, she was not able to access this right as a newcomer with limited English language skills. Therefore, if citizenship is viewed as a process, she did not hold complete citizenship. This lack of citizenship inhibited her from accessing care and made her accident all the more traumatic. This event and its aftermath stopped Cindy from getting back on a bicycle until seven years later, when she joined the Bike Host program.

Taken together, Aafreen and Cindy’s stories show how fear of being injured can be produced socially, whether due to gender relations or citizenship. I also show how this fear has spatial and temporal components; the street and the city shape it, it varies across the day and can attenuate with experience, and it can be understood in relation to other cycling experiences across time and place.

5.3.2 Fear for Personal Safety

The second most commonly discussed fear during the interviews was a fear for personal safety; a fear of being assaulted, mugged, or attacked while out in the street on a bicycle. There was a clear gendered component to this fear. Not only did more women (n= 11 of 17) than men (n = 5 of 13) mention this type of fear, only two of the five men who discussed this fear felt personally

109 vulnerable. The other three discussed how others might feel vulnerable on a bicycle, though they themselves did not. For example, Michael, directly identified the gendered dimension to the fear for personal safety: “I know being male and all that makes a bit of a difference, so I could never see it from the perspective of, perhaps, a young woman cycling. It might be different”. The women in the study who discussed this fear felt personally vulnerable. For instance, Cindy told me how she sometimes “worr[ies] about some bad men hide somewhere” when cycling.

While fear of assault or attack in urban spaces is rarely discussed in the cycling literature, a large body of literature on the urban geographies of fear exists. This work on the gendered urban geographies of fear focuses on how women are more fearful than men in public spaces, an experience said to be related to women's sense of physical vulnerability to crime, particularly to rape and sexual murder (Bondi & Rose, 2003; Dunckel Graglia, 2016; Law, 1999; Loukaitou- Sideris & Fink, 2009; Valentine, 1989). Because cycling necessarily involves using and moving through public space, it is not surprising that many participants mentioned this fear.

Rather than solely focus on the actual source of danger, “dangerous people”, women are said to fear “dangerous places” (Valentine, 1989). Valentine (1989) argued that the tendency for women to be blamed for being attacked, the “why were they there to begin with?” or “they were asking for it” rhetoric, encourages women to transfer threats from the actual source of danger (people, usually men) to the places of danger. Time is also influential in the production of this fear. There are “dangerous places” and “dangerous times” - some places are only dangerous at certain times (Dunckel Graglia, 2016). Participants also expressed these spatial and temporal dimensions of fear while cycling. Many participants stated that they felt safer during the day than at night. For example, Ariana explained: “I think it is the day, the daytime, it is for women to ride bicycles is safe…in the ah night, maybe after 11 o'clock, not safe”. Likewise, when discussing going out at night, Jessica said: “I think ah at night, stay home is better”. Furthermore, some participants expressed how they felt safe in parts of the city, but not others. For example, Hassan said of Toronto: “it’s safe, but it’s not safe”. When asked what he meant by that, he explained how he thought that small roads were not safe at night because his roommate had been mugged while cycling on small roads at night. Hassan tells me “especially night you don’t go small roads, especially. You must go on big road”. There were not only “dangerous places”, but also “safe places”. For instance, Emily explained how she was not scared of biking home at night because every time she did, she “did enough homework. To see how to get there, what’s the neighborhood”.

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This fear also had spatial and temporal dimensions at different scales. For example, four of the eleven women who expressed this fear associated it only with their home countries and expressed how they felt perfectly safe in Canada. In fact, a common theme throughout the interviews was how safe most participants felt in Canada, and specifically in Toronto. Twelve participants mentioned how safe they believed Canada is. For example, Avani stated: “no, I’m not scared…here” and Michael explained: “people tell me that I really have to be careful especially in this [neighbourhood] that we live, but I’m like, ‘Toronto is like the safest city I’ve ever lived in, so, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” (laughs)”. Two participants, one male and one female, even attributed their fear of attack or assault in Toronto to their home countries. For example, Carlos explained how sometimes he felt “a little bit nervous” on the streets of Toronto because “I come from a place where…you, you, you wouldn’t walk by yourself at night and so… I still get that feeling”.

Furthermore, beyond being more fearful at night, participants’ fear also diminished over the course of the program. In fact, seven women and three men shared how they felt safer cycling than walking or taking transit because they could get away faster on two wheels than by foot. For example, Kate told me: “It’s easier for the bad people to attack you when you’re walking I think … because you can run away on your bike faster”. Most came to this realization over the course of the program, as they tried cycling in the city.

The literature on gendered urban geographies of fear has identified how women’s fear of urban public places is inconsistent with the reality of danger. For one, women tend to be fearful of male strangers in public spaces when statistics demonstrate that violence against women is more common within domestic spaces and perpetrated by men known to the assailed (Bondi & Rose, 2003; Dunckel Graglia, 2016; Valentine, 1989). Valentine (1989) argues that women experience this spatial paradox, in part, due to their limited control over whom they interact with in these spaces. Being catcalled, stared at, and groped in public spaces affects your perception of safety in public spaces (Bondi & Rose, 2003). In the interviews, three of the women who shared this fear with me specifically mentioned experiences being cat-called in Toronto as a source of this fear. Avani explained how her experiences being cat-called in Toronto, though unexpected due to the city’s reputation for being “safe”, make her feel unsafe: “I was commented on here in Toronto just like India which is scary, you know? I didn’t expect that”.

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The literature also highlights how those with the highest levels of fear (typically older women) experience a lower risk of danger in public spaces than many others (notably racialized men) (Bondi & Rose, 2003). There is, however, a prevailing narrative that women are not safe alone in public. This narrative existed amongst some interviewees. For instance, Jessica who did not feel safe cycling alone at night contributed to this discourse, she told me “Every day I tell my daughter … “careful! Safety”. It is important to note that outlining this spatial paradox can result in women being doubly victimized: constrained by fear and by the apparent irrationality of this fear (Bondi & Rose, 2003). Furthermore, this fear is a symptom of a larger system of gender inequality. Indeed, Valentine (1989) calls this fear a “spatial expression of patriarchy” (p. 389) and Dunckel Graglia (2016) argues that this constrained mobility due to fear is closely tied to gender norms which dictate women’s role in society as an immobile mother /daughter /caretaker whose duties are limited to the home.

5.4 Discussion

While objective and perceived safety, risk, and/or danger are consistently identified as a barrier to cycling, little research examines fear, the emotion, while cycling. This chapter highlights the dynamic nature of fear, it’s multiplicity, and some of its spatial, temporal, and social dimensions. While the cycling literature has identified and explored one spatial dimension of fear of injury while cycling at length, i.e. the built environment, this chapter highlights how the street is more than built form. For instance, different bodies engaged with the same streets differently: for some the street was constructed as a place they could get in trouble with law enforcement, for others it was a place where they could be assaulted. Furthermore, many geographers have argued that places do not have single, fixed identities, nor are they bounded or separate from other places (Massey,1994). As such, “places need to be understood as sites that are connected to others around the world in constantly evolving networks which are social, cultural, and natural/ environmental” (Cresswell, 2015). In this study, Bike Host participants experienced and engaged with the city street when it came to cycling relationally, as connected to other places around the world, for instance by understanding their fear of injury and for personal safety in Toronto in relation to past experiences in other places in other cities. Therefore, this chapter contributes to the literature by demonstrating that when it comes to cycling, the city street is more than built form.

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This chapter also highlights the role of confidence in one’s cycling abilities in shaping fear of being injured, a result consistent with the physical activity literature on self-efficacy. In the cycling literature there is an assumption often made that anyone can bike. For example, Winters et al. (2011) states: “cycling is a feasible transportation mode: over 60% of Canadian adults have a bicycle, and more than 80% live within a reasonable cycling distance (<8 km) of at least one common destination (Go For Green 2004)” (p. 153-154). While it is true that most Canadian adults can bike16, this chapter highlights the discrepancy between being able to ride a bike, and feeling confident enough to ride in traffic. Many of the research participants shared their fear of being injured while cycling and connected it directly to their lack of confidence. Many of these participants did, however, gain the skills necessary and the associated confidence to ride in the streets by participating in the Bike Host program. This result highlights an important impact of bicycle mentorship programs such as Bike Host: they can diminish the fear of being injured that many new cyclists face by instilling confidence in new cyclists, especially those with limited past experience.

There were also social components to the fear of being injured while cycling. Notably, many women in this study explained how they had limited opportunities cycling throughout their lives, an experience that resulted in lesser development of their cycling skills and lower confidence. While there were some men that had similar experiences, it was more common for women to have experienced discouragement from cycling. This lack of encouragement was often associated with cycling’s inappropriateness for women in certain contexts. In the literature, women have been found to cycle less than men in cities with low cycling rates. One of the main explanatory hypotheses is that women are more concerned about safety and are more risk averse than men (Buehler & Dill, 2016; Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Heinen et al., 2010; Ravensbergen et al., 2019). This chapter highlights one factor that may underpin this gendered concern over safety. I argue that women are not innately more concerned about injury than men, but some women might have less confidence cycling due to lack of experience stemming from their position in a patriarchal society. In doing so, I highlight one way in which gendered power relations may influence fear of cycling.

16 There is, of course, debate around whether cycling promotion is ableist

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Some academic articles do discuss cycling skill to a limited extent, and at least one has connected this skill to gender. For instance, in Handy, Xing and Buehler’s (2010) cross-sectional study of the determinants of bicycle ownership and use in six American cities, they found that those with higher levels of bicycling comfort are more likely to cycle regularly for transportation. In Mosquera et al. (2012)’s study on cycling in Bogota, Columbia, the majority of male participants learnt how to ride a bike in childhood, while many female participants learned later in life, if at all. They found that this lack of practice can create a negative self-perception of women’s abilities. One reason for this gendered discrepancy put forth by the participants of Mosquera et al. (2012)’s study was parental approaches to parenting which warrant greater independent mobility to young boys than girls. All of the participants in this study, both male and female, were born outside of Canada, however, previous work has established that boys cycle more than girls as children in countries with low cycling rates, including Canada (McDonald, 2012). The extent to which this gendered discrepancy in opportunities to cycle exists in the Canadian context, and whether it influences fear of injury while cycling, could inspire future work.

This chapter also contributes to the limited literature that examines fear beyond injury. I identified multiple fears such as fear of bicycle theft, fear of encountering mechanical problems, fear of getting lost, and fear of encountering law enforcement. By virtue of enrolling in the program, all participants expressed an interest in cycling. Therefore, this chapter may have omitted certain types of fear of cycling experienced by people who are not interested in travelling in the city on two wheels. The goal of this chapter is not to provide a thorough account of all the different types of fear of cycling, but rather to explore the spatial, temporal, and social dimensions of some of these fears. One fear that was explored in depth is the fear for personal safety, a fear that emerges as spatial (local to global, across the city), temporal (night or day, diminishes over time/through experience), and social (shaped by gender). While a vast literature on the urban geographies of fear exists, that literature has not examined this fear while cycling. Some research has examined this fear in relation to mobility, and specifically transportation environments. One such study found that women’s fear for their personal safety in “dangerous” transit environments deters public transit ridership (Loukaitou-Sideris & Fink, 2009). Little work, however, has examined this gendered fear while practicing cycling as a form of transport. This study found that this fear for personal safety attenuated as participants began cycling and realized they felt safer on two wheels than on foot or public transit. This indicates that this fear may be an initial barrier to cycling, one

114 that can be overcome through experience. It is important to note that most participants in this study did not have access to a car. Therefore, this fear may be experienced differently for those transferring from car to bike travel rather than from travel by foot or transit to bicycle travel. The ways in which narratives around women’s safety are maintained and taught across generations, such as Jessica’s warning to her daughter about being unsafe alone in public at night, could be the focus of future research. Studies could also examine the ways in which parents teach their children about risk of injury while cycling, and in doing so could build on current work on generational aspects of risk and active travel (Murray, 2009).

Research on the gendered urban geographies of fear has been critiqued for reinforcing the associations made between the categories woman, emotion, and irrational and for perpetuating an anti-urbanism by focusing on the ways in which cities constrain and oppress women (Bondi & Rose, 2003). Over the years, this scholarship has evolved, some of it contesting aspects of its original interpretations. For example, some have examined how cities can liberate women, at times by giving them an opportunity to escape normative expectations of more conservative and/or rural areas. Others show how masculine identities and performances influence emotions and the experience of place (e.g.: performing masculinity means that you cannot show your fear, especially in public). Research has also moved away from women’s experience in cities and towards how gendered identities and spaces are mutually constituted (Bondi & Rose, 2003). Finally, scholars have begun to approach the topic with an intersectional lens, by examining how other aspects of identity, such as age, class, sexuality, etc., impact fear (Bondi & Rose, 2003). Future work could follow the example of this more recent work by examining these facets of urban geographies of fear while cycling.

Cycling, of course, elicits more emotions than fear. It is also associated with positive emotions such as excitement, freedom, and joy (Byrne, 2009; McIlvenny, 2012). For instance, one participant felt so elated her first day cycling she said she was “on the sky that day” (Prisha) while another shared: “I feel liberated when I am on the bike, you know?” (Avani). In fact, research on travel behaviour and well-being has found that active modes such as walking and cycling are associated with more positive emotions (Duarte et al., 2010; Mokhtarian & Salomon, 2001; Morris & Guerra, 2015; Olsson et al., 2013; Wild & Woodward, 2019), and contribute to higher levels of travel satisfaction (Duarte et al., 2010; Olsson et al., 2013) than motorized modes. Cycling, in

115 particular, has been found to contribute to a happier mood than other modes as well (Duarte et al., 2010; Morris & Guerra, 2015a; Wild & Woodward, 2019). While fear of cycling was the focus of this chapter, I do not mean to reinforce cycling’s image as “scary” and “dangerous”. In fact, is it our hope future work examines the geographies of joy, and other positive emotions, while cycling, emotions less commonly studied than fear, safety, risk, or danger (Wild & Woodward, 2019)

Furthermore, future work could engage more deeply with the emotional geographies of cycling. Davidson, Bondi & Smith (2005) discuss three sources of inspiration in the field of emotional geographies: locating emotion, relating emotion, and representing emotion. While this chapter highlights multiple types of fears of cycling, as well as some of these fears’ social, temporal, and spatial dimensions, these three components of emotional geographies could help move forward the geographies of emotion while cycling as well. For example, the spatiality of emotions while cycling could be further developed by examining how emotions are experienced and embodied by individuals and attached to particular places and experiences. Future work could also explore how emotions move between bodies and places. Finally, researchers could move this field forward by exploring how representations of cycling and cyclists mobilize, produce, and shape emotions such as joy, fear, and anger.

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Vignette 3: Joy of Cycling

Prisha is a woman in her fifties who joined the Bike Host program having never ridden a bicycle in her life. When we met for the interview at the beginning of the program, she still had not tried cycling, but she was very optimistic. I did not see her during any of my volunteer engagements throughout the summer, and I heard through the grapevine that her Bike Host mentor had only met with her once. By the end of the program, I reached out to her to do a second interview and did not receive a response. I had given up hope and assumed she didn’t learn to bike, gave up on the program, and was no longer interested in meeting with me. One day in mid-September, as I was walking to a volunteer shift to help participants return their bicycle, I heard a shout behind me: “Léa! Léa!”. There she was, cycling in the street, overtaking me, grinning from ear to ear. She pulled over, and promptly asked me to film her cycling with her phone so that she could “prove she could do it” to her friends back in Mumbai.

As it turns out, Prisha loved cycling. When we met for the end-of-program interview I asked her about her first time riding, she told me: “first day, first day […] I…I can’t say…I am…on the sky that day because [before] this is not possible for me, so I can’t believe it”. Yes, she only met with her mentor once, but that was because she learned how to ride that one time and felt confident going on her own. She rode her bike every day that summer. She went to a city park where she made friends with regulars and did laps and she used the bike as her primary mode of transportation. She described to me how bicycles must make women feel like a “queen” because: “physically fitness… freedom, where they want to go, they can go. It’s not, not depending upon anyone. Not depending on public transport. Time saving. Money saving.”

I share Prisha’s story because she was one of many participants (most of which were women) who were truly empowered by their experiences cycling. I share her story as well to counter the focus of the last chapter on one emotion: fear. I hope Prisha’s story acts as a reminder that fear is not the only emotion expressed by new cyclists: joy, empowerment, and sense of freedom were also common.

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Chapter 6: Vélomobilities of Care in a Low-Cycling City

“[the bicycle] helped in a lot of regular activities that we did, like, the household stuff, like buying groceries or things like that. It was very useful”

“I used to see the people doing the kids with the ah carriers [on their bicycles] (laughs) [and I would think to myself] “next time”. [Now, I feel] I can do that. I want to do that! yeah (laughs)”

Due to its many health and environmental benefits, the bicycle has been promoted in recent years as a sustainable, healthy, and cost-effective transportation solution for urban environments. In the cycling literature, however, it is often suggested, at least in low-cycling cities, that the bicycle is not compatible with mobilities of care17, i.e. travel for unpaid work related to household needs such as shopping, running errands, and escorting children (Emond, Handy, Tang, 2009). In fact, the bicycle’s unsuitability for household labour has been proposed as an underlying factor behind the gender-gap in cycling, i.e. the higher proportion of male cyclists observed in many U.S., Canadian, U.K., and Australian cities (Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Dickinson et al., 2013; Emond, Handy, Tang, 2009; Prati, 2018; Wang, Akar & Guldmann, 2015). Put simply, it has been hypothesized that women might cycle less than men in low-cycling places because they tend to be responsible for household-serving labour, and this type of work is said to be more challenging to complete by bicycle than by other modes (Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Dickinson et al., 2013; Emond, Handy, Tang, 2009; Prati, 2018; Wang, Akar & Guldmann, 2015). However, some research suggests an alternative case. Consider, for example, the quotes at the beginning of this chapter, drawn from a recent study in Toronto, Canada, suggesting that the bicycle is not always an inconvenient mode to complete household-serving travel. While some research has found that household-serving travel is challenging to complete by bicycle, at least in low-cycling environments, no research to date has provided a detailed account of people’s experiences completing this type of travel by bicycle. This chapter addresses this knowledge gap by providing a qualitative account of how people use the bicycle to complete mobilities of care in Toronto,

17 Though the term Mobility of Care refers to the travel required to complete labour performed by adults for children and other dependants (including household upkeep) (Sánchez de Madariage, 2009), we broaden the term in this chapter and use it to refer to the travel needed to for all care work, i.e. work to meet others’ and one’s own needs. As such, we use the term interchangeably with household-serving travel herein.

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Canada, a city with low (2.7% of residents commute by bicycle), but spatially-variable and growing, cycling participation rates.

In this chapter, the experiences of new cyclists in Toronto, Canada using the bicycle to complete household-serving travel are explored. This introduction is followed by a review of the foundational literature on gendered household-serving travel, and on completing mobilities of care by bicycle, i.e. vélomobilities of care18. I begin the results section with an overview of participants’ experiences completing household-serving trips by bicycle. In order to demonstrate how practitioners might be able to encourage or facilitate vélomobilities of care, I then frame participants’ ability to complete vélomobilities of care using Social Practice Theory (SPT). Specifically, I draw on Shove et al.’s (2012) three-element application of Social Practice Theory, a model where one must consider the meanings (ideas, images, symbols), competences (skills, procedures), and materials (tangible physical items, technology) that dynamically influence regular and repeated practice. In identifying these meanings, competences, and materials, this framework can help in the crafting of policies that promote cycling for household-serving travel. Social Practice theory has been used to understand cycling behaviour (e.g.: Spotswood et al., 2015), and preliminary research frames women’s mobilities of care by bicycle using this theory (Sersli & Winters, 2019). I use SPT to explore the meanings, materials, and competencies needed to complete vélomobilities of care. I conclude by considering the contributions of this study to the literature and practice and by outlining future research directions. Taken together, by documenting the practices associated with household-serving trips, this chapter adds rich detail and nuance to current understandings about the embeddedness of cycling in everyday life.

6.1 Literature Review

Women today tend to be responsible for more household labour than men in many geographic contexts; even though their participation in paid employment has grown over time (HETUS, 2002; Schwanen et al., 2014). Because many aspects of household labour require travel, this disproportionate distribution of domestic work has been argued to contribute toward gendered differences in travel behaviour. For instance, empirical studies have found that women complete

18 By vélomobilities, I am referring to cycle-based mobilities

119 more non-work travel (Gossen & Purvis, 2005), and run household-serving errands more than men (Murakami & Young 1997; Root 2000; McGuckin & Nakamoto 2005). Other studies have found that in married heterosexual couples, women make twice as many shopping and errand trips than men (Rosenbloom & Burns 1993; Hanson & Pratt 1990). Furthermore, the task of escorting children is not equally distributed amongst parents. Research has found that women undertake the majority of their children’s care and escort trips (Hjorthol, 2008) and that young children are more than five times more likely to travel with their mothers than with their fathers (McDonald, 2006).

Household-serving travel is often characterised by the sequencing of destinations into trip- chains (Sánchez de Madariage, 2013). Women tend to engage in trip-chaining more than men due to the need to balance or manage the complexity interwoven into holding paid employment while also having the larger responsibility for unpaid household labour (Sánchez de Madariage, 2013). This results in the need to combine multiple trips into an efficient “chain” in order to maximize what can be done in given time period (e.g.: picking children up from school and buying groceries on the way home from work). While gendered travel patterns related to household labour have been identified in multiple studies, much of the aforementioned research originates within a Western context. It is important to note that the gendered distribution of care work varies geographically and that men’s care work has increased over time in many countries (Sánchez de Madariaga, 2013). Furthermore, the division of household tasks is usually dynamic: these arrangements often change over the course of a day (e.g.: due to weather), the week (e.g.: due to changing schedules), or over the years (e.g.: as children age) (Schwanen, 2011).

In 2009, Sánchez de Madariaga coined the term Mobility of Care to highlight the cumulative significance of travel associated with care work, i.e. “unpaid labour performed by adults for children and other dependants, including labour related to the upkeep of a household” (Sánchez de Madariage, 2009, p. 33). The concept was introduced to counter the systematic underrepresentation of this type of travel in studies of urban transportation and to provide a framework for recognizing and re-evaluating household-serving travel in transportation planning and studies. Sánchez de Madariage (2013) argued that the reason this type of travel is not properly accounted for in transport research is because travel statistics capture data on individual care journeys (e.g.: escorting, shopping, errands, etc.) thereby masking the overall significance of mobilities of care. Instead, this concept could be inserted into transportation surveys so that household-serving trips are understood and studied as distinct from the well-studied mobilities of

120 paid employment, education-related travel, and the mobility of leisure (with which mobility of care is often confused) (Sánchez de Madariage, 2013). In this chapter, we use the terms household- serving travel and mobilities of care (as well as vélomobilities of care to refer to mobility of care undertaken by bicycle) interchangeably as they all refer to travel needed to complete unpaid household responsibilities, whether they are to meet one’s own needs or the needs of dependents. By focusing exclusively on care trips in this chapter, I counter the underrepresentation of household-serving travel in the literature.

Recently, some scholars have turned their attention to household-serving trips completed by bicycle (Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Dickinson et al., 2013; Eye & Ferrira, 2015; Prati, 2018; Schwanen, 2011). Since many household-serving trips require the transport of goods or passengers, it has been hypothesized that people may find driving more convenient than cycling for these trips (Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009). In fact, the gendered distribution of household labour is often used to explain the gender-gap in cycling (Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Dickinson et al., 2013; Emond, Handy, Tang, 2009; Prati, 2018; Ravensbergen et al., 2019; Wang, Akar & Guldmann, 2015). Interestingly, the gender-gap in cycling appears to mainly exist in low-cycling places, where as many as two thirds of cyclists are male, whereas an equal proportion of men and women cycle for transportation in cities with high cycling rates (Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009). Within the nascent literature on household-serving labour and cycling, studies set in low-cycling environments such as Australian, UK, and American cities have found evidence that the household tasks that produce household-serving travel might be a barrier to cycling (Bonham & Wilson, 2012; Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Dickinson et al., 2013; Prati, 2018). On the other hand, research from places with high cycling rates describes how bicycles are used for household-labour (Eye & Ferrira, 2015; Schwanen, 2011). For example, Eye and Ferreira (2015) compared bicycle trips made by mothers and women without children in Amsterdam. They found that the two groups used bicycles at similar rates, however, mothers’ trips revolved around their children’s daily activities. Furthermore, in places where cycling rates are higher, not only do men and women cycle in more equal proportions, but residents also complete household-serving trips by bicycle (Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009). For example, in certain places within German, Dutch and Danish cities, where cycling rates are high, a similar proportion of men and women cycle for transportation and shopping trips account for 20-25% of overall bike trips (Pucher & Buehler, 2008).

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Taken together, research focusing on mobilities of care is underrepresented in travel behaviour research, and only a handful of papers focus on this type of travel by bicycle, i.e. vélomobilities of care. From this nascent literature, it appears that in places with high cycling participation, more people complete household-serving travel by bicycle, and men and women cycle in equal proportions, whereas in low-cycling places household-serving labour may be difficult to do by bicycle and women cycle less than men. While some empirical evidence exists indicating that household labour may be a barrier to cycling in low-cycling places, no research to date documents cyclists’ experiences using this travel mode to complete care work. This chapter addresses this gap in the literature by providing an in-depth account about the ways in which cyclists used their bicycle to complete mobilities of care in Toronto, Canada, a city with a 2.7% bicycle commute mode share.

6.2 Methods & Study Context

As discussed in Chapter 3, this qualitative research project aimed to explore the gendered experiences of new cyclists in Toronto, the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populated Canadian city. To do so, interviews took place with participants of a cycling mentorship program targeting newcomers (i.e. immigrants and refugees) called Bike Host. In this program, newcomer participants are loaned a bicycle, lock, and helmet for the summer and are put into mentorship groups with a confident cyclists living in Toronto. Over the summer months, the participants cycle on their own, as part of their mentor group, and as part of large Bike Host social rides. If they participate in enough group and social rides, they are eligible to receive a free second-hand bicycle of their own at the end of the summer. Amongst other research activities, participants of the 2017 iteration of the program were invited to take part in two semi-structured interviews: one as the program was beginning that focused on people’s mobility life-history (with a focus on cycling in particular) as well as their perceptions about cycling in Toronto, and one at the end of the program focused on their experiences in the program. This study was exploratory in nature. All interviews were transcribed and data analysis was approached inductively whereby the interview transcripts were coded to distill the vast amount of data into key themes, to organize the data, and to engage in data exploration, analysis, and theory-building (Cope, 2016). Though many topics were discussed during these interviews as part of the overarching study, this chapter focuses on participants’ accounts of completing household-serving bicycle trips. To do so, the results are divided into two sections. The first section reviews the three key themes that emerged from the

122 interviews that related to household-serving trips: grocery shopping, parenthood, and trip- characteristics. During the analysis, it became clear that some participants were able to complete all household-serving trips by bicycle. Therefore, this inspired a second section which frames these successful experiences with social practice theory.

All Bike Host participants were invited to partake in this study, and thirty were successfully recruited: 26 completed interviews at the beginning of the program and 30 did so at the end of the program. The interviewees were diverse in regard to self-reported age, gender, and country of origin (Table 3.3, see Chapter 3: Methodology). Participants also had varying skill levels and comfort on a bicycle. For instance, at the beginning of the program, thirteen had little experience or had not ridden a bicycle in years; three participants had never learned how to ride a bicycle. None of the interviewees used a car as their primary mode of transportation, though six (20%) had access to a household personal vehicle. The University of Toronto Research Ethics Board approved the research protocol used for this work. All names have been anonymized in this chapter. None of the participants were native English speakers, therefore, many participant quotes included herein contain grammatical errors owing to the fact that the participants had varying levels of experience communicating in English. Previous work has found that non-native English, pejoratively called ‘bad’ or ‘broken’ English, can be problematically associated with incomprehensibility, as well as “non-White, foreign Others’ (Lindemann, 2005; Shuck, 2006). That being said, participants’ exact quotes are included in this dissertation in order to fully represent the active, and sometimes powerful, voices of interviewees. However, this is done in the hopes that these exact quotes do not reinforce colonial narratives associated with non-native English (Lindemann, 2005; Shuck, 2006).

This study took place in Toronto, Ontario, the most populated Canadian city (population = 2,731,571) (Statistics Canada, 2019). Located on the shore of Lake Ontario, the City of Toronto has a diverse built environment. Here I refer to downtown Toronto, the most densely populated part of the city, using the municipal boundaries pre-dating the amalgamation of the original six municipalities in 1998 (Figure 1.1, see Chapter 1: Introduction). It is made up of a mix older neighbourhoods and new condominium neighbourhoods. The inner suburbs refer to the former municipalities of Etobicoke, Scarborough, York, East York, and North York, which are characterised by post-war development. The majority of transportation cycling infrastructure, both existing and planned, is concentrated in downtown Toronto, and not in the suburban areas which

123 are characterised by arterial roads and longer distances to destinations (City of Toronto, 2016). Nineteen participants lived in downtown Toronto, whereas eleven lived the suburban regions of Scarborough (n=8) or North York (n=3).

In the City of Toronto, the most common commuting mode is the private vehicle (45.98%), followed by public transit (37.01%), walking (8.61%), being a passenger in a private vehicle (4.57%), and cycling (2.75%) (Spurr & Cole, 2017). The proportion of Torontonians who drive to work has declined by 7% over the last decade while the proportion of those who use public transit has increased by 7.7% (Spurr & Cole, 2017). Cycling is the fastest growing transportation mode in Toronto (City of Toronto, 2019); however, current rates remain low at 2.7% of overall commuters (Spurr, 2019). Though overall rates are low, there is considerable spatial variation in the proportion of Torontonians who cycle to work. Drawing on a 25% sample of the 2016 Canadian Census commute to work data, Figure 1.1 (see Chapter 1: Introduction) demonstrates, cycling is concentrated in the downtown neighbourhoods. In some of these neighbourhoods around 30% of commuters are cyclists (Spurr, 2019).

Cycling rates do not only vary spatially, they also vary demographically. A gender-gap in cycling exists across Toronto with data from the 2016 census indicating that 38.16% of Torontonians who commute to work by bicycle are female (Statistics Canada, 2019). Other research suggests that Toronto’s utilitarian cyclists are also predominantly between the ages of 35 and 44 (Toronto Cycling Think & Do Tank, 2013). As Figure 2 demonstrates, the gender-gap in Toronto also varies geographically. Females make up at least 50% of cyclists in some census tracts and over 40% of cyclists are female in many downtown neighbourhoods.

6.3 Results

Over the course of the program, research participants used their loaned bicycles in a variety of ways. Recreational cycling was common: eight participants cycled recreationally multiple times per week, eleven did so weekly, six every second week, three once a month, and only two never did. Participation in cycling for transportation purposes was also high: twenty-six participants cycled for transportation at least once over the course of the summer, while three participants solely biked for recreation, and one participant did not cycle. The participant who did not cycle had joined the program to learn how to cycle, and did not get enough practice over the summer to learn. Though this participant did not cycle, the other two participants who had never cycled when

124 the program started cycled frequently: one cycled for recreation weekly, and the other used the bicycle as her primary travel mode and rode recreationally multiple times a week.

The most common utilitarian trip completed by bicycle was travel to social outings. Here, twenty-three of the thirty participants (76.67%) cycled to social outings at least once over the course of the summer. Five participants almost always used their bicycles to travel to social outings, while eleven did when it was practical (e.g.: depending on the activity, the distance, the weather, who they were travelling with, etc.), two did so frequently, and four rarely did. Cycling to school was also common: of the eighteen participants who attended school, most of whom took English classes, eleven cycled to school at least once over the summer, nine of which used the bicycle as their primary mode to travel to school. Biking to the grocery store was common as well: seventeen participants did so at least once over the course of the summer. Cycling to work was less common as only six of the thirteen participants who had paid employment cycled to work at some point over the summer. Three of these participants used the bicycle as their primary travel mode to work.

At the beginning of the program, many participants assumed that household-serving travel was challenging to complete by bicycle. Two participants even hypothesized that women might cycle less than men due to childcare and household labour. They believed that these duties resulted in less discretionary time for women to cycle. For example, Sumalya explained: “with all their household work they do not have time, so they need to run and rush for their children’s school and everything”. However, participant accounts indicate that certain household-serving trips were perceived as convenient to complete by bicycle while others were not. Below, the results of this research are organized into two sections. The first reviews participants’ experiences using a bicycle to perform diverse household-serving trips or trip-characteristics, namely traveling with children, grocery shopping, and trip-chaining. Then, I frame vélomobilities of care with social practice theory to demonstrate how certain meanings, materials, and competencies are sometimes needed to complete household-serving trips by bicycle in Toronto.

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6.3.1 Completing Household-Serving Travel by Bicycle 6.3.1.1 Cycling with Children

Seventeen of the thirty participants (57%) had children. However, eight of these seventeen participants were not currently responsible for their child’s care: seven had adult children and one participant lived without his family in Canada as he waited for his wife and children to be granted residency and join him. Therefore, only nine of these seventeen participants had young children (< 12 years old) that they lived with and cared for. Amongst these participants, childcare was a gendered household duty that fell primarily to the mother. For all nine participants living with their young children the mother held more childcare responsibilities, including being primarily responsible for their children’s travel needs. Furthermore, all five female interviewees with young children demonstrated how they spent most of their free time accompanied by their children. As an example, when asked where she spends her time outside of the house, Divya explained: “I am spending all my time with kids, like taking them to the library or some programs and classes”. In other cases, the absence of women with young children in the Bike Host program demonstrated how mobilities of care are gendered. For example, one interviewee told me that their wife did not join the Bike Host program with them because she was too busy caring for their child.

None of the participants completed utilitarian trips with their children by bicycle and only one went leisure cycling with their child. Five participants had children who were learning how to ride a bike; they would walk alongside their children, as they would ride their bicycles. A key reason why participants did not cycle with their children was their concern for their child’s safety while biking. For example, when asked if she would bike with her daughter, Aafreen answered: “I can’t, it’s very dangerous”. Parenthood influenced concern over safety in other ways as well. For instance, Saliha, a mother who lived with her son as she waited for her husband to receive permanent residency and join them in Canada, was not worried about her son being injured, but about what would happen to her son if she were injured while cycling. As discussed in Chapter 5, infrastructure presence played a large role in participant’s perception of safety while cycling. Other than worrying about injury, seven of the nine participants with young children felt that their children were too young to join them on bike rides on their own bicycles.

Though seven of the nine participants with young children commonly used the bicycle as a travel mode, all participants used different travel modes when traveling with their children. Four

126 of the nine participants with young children owned a private vehicle and used the vehicle for family trips. Here, the practices around car use were gendered as well. The three female participants with young children who had access to a car explained how their husband primarily used the car. This is consistent with literature on gendered access to household cars (e.g.: Scheiner & Holz-Rau, 2012). If they travelled with their children without their husbands, they would walk or use public transit. However, when their husband accompanied them and their children, they would use the car. The other five participants who had young children did not have access to a car, and would therefore either walk or take public transit when travelling with their children. For Emmanuel, a participant who was a keen cyclist, the only time he used public transit or a rented car all summer was when he had to travel a long distance or when, in his words, he was “out with my family”.

While parents with young children in this study did not complete utilitarian trips by bike with their children, participant accounts demonstrate how the bicycle can still help households with children meet their daily travel needs. One participant, Emily, explained how the bicycle helped her achieve her complex travel needs when her daughter was young and she lived in a city in China with high cycling participation. Specifically, the bicycle helped her complete the complex trip-chain of dropping her daughter off at school on her way to work. She explained how cycling with her daughter in a children’s bike seat helped her reach work faster: “sometimes in the morning when I drop off my daughter at kindergarten, I bike, so that I can get to work earlier.”

Even in Toronto, a city with lower cycling rates than in Emily’s former city of residence, the bicycle helped some participants with young children achieve their mobility needs in interesting and innovative ways. For example, though Deepak and Divya felt their two children were too young to bicycle independently, they would still save time by cycling to school to pick up their daughter. They would then walk their bike home with their daughter at their side. When their bikes were returned at the end of the program they explained why the bicycle was helpful for escort-trips, even though they didn’t cycle with their children: “[with bikes] we can start just 5 minutes before the school [lets out], now I have to start 20 minutes before! (laughs)”.

Furthermore, Deepak and Divya and one other participant with a young child, Arjun, were also able to save money on public transit because of their bicycles. Specifically, instead of purchasing a costly monthly public transit pass for each parent; the parents would instead share one monthly pass. When travelling as a family, one parent would use the monthly pass to take

127 public transit with the children (who ride for free in Toronto if aged 12 or younger) and the other parent would cycle. They would then meet at the final destination. Interestingly, the parent cycling would usually arrive first. As Arjun explained: “yeah, I was reaching first, because you know, the TTC comes very late, so I was always reaching first”.

On a final note, participants’ accounts also demonstrate that travelling by bicycle accompanied by anyone who does not cycle, regardless of age, is a barrier to cycling. For example, Anna discussed how she wanted to use her bicycle to travel to a nearby beach on the Lake Ontario shore over the summer. While she ended up using her bicycle as her main mode of transportation, she never cycled to the lake. This was because she enjoyed going to the lake with friends, and none of her friends had bicycles. She decided to join them in a car instead of cycling on her own and meeting them at the lake. Similarly, Hamid shared how he wanted to go on family rides with his wife and daughter, however, he was not able to do so even though he installed a child seat on his bicycle and felt confident riding with his daughter. When asked why he never ended up going on family rides, he responded: “because my wife doesn’t like to ride a bicycle”. These examples demonstrate how social contact can override individual preference with regard to mode choice.

6.3.1.2 Grocery Shopping by Bicycle

At the beginning of the program, many participants were apprehensive about grocery shopping by bicycle. By systematically reviewing all comments made about grocery shopping during the interviews, two considerations frequently emerged: the distance of the grocery store and the amount purchased. When it came to distance, one participant worried that grocery stores were too far to reach by bicycle. However, eight participants expressed that they weren’t interested in cycling to the grocery store because it was close enough to reach by foot. Some also noted how the grocery store was easier to access by bike than by transit. For example, Rafi was interested in cycling to buy groceries because he thought it would be faster than taking public transit. He explained the following: “Bus and subway is too much [to get to the grocery store] but bike, I think it was much faster and easier so I would love to do that”.

The second concern appeared to centre on being able to transport groceries by bicycle. For example, Rasha shared her concern about grocery shopping with me at the beginning of the program: “I don’t know about grocery shopping… I think that would be kinda difficult, no? maybe

128 like a few things, but you can’t, like, go grocery shopping on a bike, right? … because it’s hard to carry things”

By the end of the program, seventeen of the thirty interviewees (56.67%) used their bicycle to go grocery shopping over the summer months. The frequency with which these participants shopped by bicycle varied greatly: eight always used their bicycle, five often did, one sometimes did, and three rarely did. A similar proportion of male and female participants shopped for groceries by bicycle over the course of the summer. Some participants in a partnered relationship discussed the inequitable division of shopping labour; however, because participants were not asked to delve into the gendered division of shopping labour in their households, it is not possible to comment further. A few detailed and interesting gendered accounts emerged, however. For example, two female participants each lived in a two parent, one car household and shared how they were primarily responsible for household responsibilities and accomplished most of these trips by foot, bike, or public transit while their husband drove to work. Another male participant shared how he became responsible for most household grocery shopping once he had a child because his wife undertook most childcare responsibilities and found it hard to buy groceries with a toddler and stroller in tow.

Participants described a multitude of grocery shopping practices or strategies. The two most common were shopping in bulk, which tended to occur infrequently and farther from home, (e.g. “monthly shopping” (Dominic), buying “a lot of stuff for two weeks [in neighbourhoods that are] much cheaper” (Carlos)) and frequent shopping for a few items near the home (e.g.: “shopping like once a week for small items” (Sajit), “just to buy some milk and some… fruits and vegetables” (Deepak)). Most participants found grocery shopping in bulk challenging to complete by bicycle. For example, though Carlos was interested in shopping by bicycle, he explained how he and his wife could not complete their bulk trips by bike because: “it was a little bit tricky because we couldn’t bike everything we wanted, we usually get, because we will use out backpacks, and it would be hard to, to ride with a lot of weight on your back”. For some participants, such as Arjun, a car was seen as a more convenient way to buy groceries: “I don’t think I went too many times for the grocery store, maybe because we need to get a car”. On the other hand, most participants found shopping for small items very convenient by bicycle. As Arjun noted: “I am mostly biking it nearby distances, you know, getting milk from the NoFrills [a grocery store]” and Emanuel explained how he used his bicycle to “go buying the milk and diapers for my son”.

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Participants also discussed the ease of using their bikes to go to the convenience/ corner store, drop off library books, or to pick up items at the liquor store. In part, convenience had to do with the bicycle being a faster mode of transport than other options: public transit or walking. For example, Sajit told me: “So when we had to do mini shopping, like buy some egg, some bread, something like that, I always take my bike. ‘Cause that… very fast, right?”

The bicycle could be helpful for these small shopping trips in both dense, cycleable environments and suburban environments. For example, bicycles allowed Deepak and Divya, a married couple who lived in the inner suburbs with their two young children, to get to their local grocery store in “half the time” (Deepak) that it took to do so by public transit (in their case, two buses). By the end of the program, Deepak told me that, “without bikes, it would have been difficult” (Deepak).

6.3.1.3 Trip-chaining by bicycle

Contrary to what is suggested in the literature (Emond, Tang & Handy, 2009) many participants discussed how practical the bicycle was for trip-chaining. However, this was only the case when the trip did not include escorting children or a stop that required carrying bulky or heavy items. Most trip-chain trips involved grocery shopping on the way home from work or school. Sajit explained how he would run errands as he commuted home by bike, according to him, this was practical because: “I mean, it was on the way right?”. Though Emily did not anticipate cycling to the grocery store because of its proximity to her house, she described how she ended up doing so due to convenience, particularly on her way home:

“Yeah, I could walk to the grocery store, but if I… if I was biking back home from the school and I need to buy something I would just go with my bike directly there […] on the way home.”

Michael was adamant about how much easier it was to make multiple trips by bicycle than by other modes. Unlike driving, he explained how he doesn’t “have to start looking for parking space” when cycling. Though he enjoys walking, he finds it slow, and stated: “when you are actually living and trying to accomplish things… walking might not actually get the results that biking does”. He described public transit as “exhausting and cumbersome” because “I have to go to the bus stop. I have to go to the subway station” and “walk from one bus stop to look for where I’m

130 going”. Cycling, on the other hand, was seen as the ideal mode for complex trip. Michael explained with the following:

“I cycle straight to where I’m going, lock my bike in front of the shop, the office, the house, or whatever. I go inside, finish what I’m doing, pick up my bike and go straight to the next place that I want to go”.

Trip-chains that involved carrying heavy loads were challenging to complete by bicycle. For example, though Avani had a grocery store on her way home from work, she encountered difficulties making this trip because of the items she needed to carry. She explained: “my laptop, heels, and sometimes my other stuff it, my only backpack was like 10 pounds, so then if I go to groceries, everything which I just pack it in and everything becomes, like, so heavy”. Many times she ended up putting grocery bags on her handlebars and walking her bicycle home.

6.3.2 Meanings, Competencies, and Materials for Household-Serving Trips

The previous section reviewed the key themes that emerged when participants discussed their experiences completing different types of household-serving trips by bicycle. This section focuses on two household-serving trips that were identified by participants as being particularly challenging to complete by bicycle, namely cycling with children, and buying large amounts of groceries. Here we use social practice theory (SPT), to identify and discuss the meanings (ideas, images, symbols), competencies (skills, procedures), and materials (tangible physical items, technology) needed for participants to complete these bicycle trips. A summary of the meanings, competencies, and materials identified in this research can be found in Table 6.1.

Table 6.1. Examples of meanings, competencies, and materials needed to complete vélomobilities of care

Meanings Competencies Materials  Viewing cycling with  Feeling confident  Infrastructure children as safe enough to cycle with  Bike seats  Seeing the bicycle as children  Bike rack a feasible way to carry  Ability to cycle when  Panniers home groceries weighed down  Basket  Know how to carry  Backpack items by bicycle

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6.3.2.1 Cycling with Children

While none of the parents cycled with their children for utilitarian purposes, their accounts still demonstrate how cycling with children is possible when armed with certain meanings, materials, and competencies. Feeling like it was appropriate to cycle with children was a key norm to overcome. As discussed above, some participants felt it was dangerous to cycle with children. For other participants, such as Michael, Toronto was the first city where they saw parents cycling with their children. Simply seeing this practice changed his views about cycling with children:

“that’s something that really, really impresses me about Toronto. You know, about the bike seats with the baby carriers that they have on the bikes. I think that Toronto is currently the first city where I’ve seen that happen”.

It is important to note that Michael lived in downtown Toronto, where cycling infrastructure is more common and cycling rates are higher than the suburban areas of the city. For some parents, the ability to ride with children related not only to meanings, but also to their competencies. For example, Divya explained how her perceptions of cycling with children changed over the course of the program, as she became a confident cyclist. She told me how she would have never considered riding with her child before, but because she gained experience and became confident over the summer. Her and her husband, Deepak, tell me they are seriously considering investing in a seat for the following summer.

Even amongst those who thought it safe and acceptable and perceived themselves as having the competencies to ride with children, a key barrier was acquiring the materials necessary to carry young children such as bike seats. For others, like Emanuel, the cost of a child seat was a barrier: “one of the constraints that I have is just find a way to carry my son around on my bike, but it’s expensive to buy, like, child seats and stuff”. He explained that it was not the cost of the seat itself that was the barrier, but that it was not “among my priorities” when children already need many expensive accessories for mobility. As Emanuel put it: “you have to buy a car seat, a stroller to move around […] a bike seat, it’s a lot”. Though both he and his wife were participants in the program, they had to take turns going to Bike Host activities so that one parent could stay with their son. Another key material element was cycling infrastructure, which appeared to increase participants’ perception about being able to safely ride with their children.

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Hasan was the only participant to successfully cycle with their child, though only for recreational purposes. Hasan was able to do so because he believed it was an activity acceptable for young children (i.e. meanings), was an experienced cyclist and felt confident riding with his daughter (i.e. competencies), and found a low-cost solution to do so (i.e. materials). Hasan was an experienced cyclist who used a bicycle as his main mode of transportation throughout childhood. When asked whether he felt his daughter would be safe cycling in Toronto, he responded: “yeah, sure. Because I did the same”. Not only did his previous experience cycling give him the competencies and meanings to cycle with his daughter, he also visited a Do-It-Yourself bike shop where he was given a second-hand children’s seat free of cost, and was shown how to install it with the guidance of the shop volunteers. However, this ability to access accessories in a cost- effective way required bicycle competence, specifically Hassan wouldn’t have known about bike seats for children, let alone about DIY bike shops, had it not been for his Bike Host mentor. Accessing this DIY bike shop might have also been a barrier were he not a confident cyclist with some basic mechanical skills.

6.3.2.2 Grocery Shopping by Bicycle

At the beginning of the program, many participants, especially those with little cycling experience, thought shopping, particularly for many items, and cycling were incompatible. As such, they did not have the meanings needed to complete this travel by bicycle. For example, Cindy did not think it was safe to buy groceries by bicycle: “I don’t think to go to shopping it’s a good idea. I worry about because after you carry heavy things… you put on bike, where? I am not… I think it’s more dangerous”. Many participants who were new cyclists when the program began gained experience over the course of the summer that changed their attitudes and behaviours regarding shopping by bike. For example, by the end of the program Cindy used her bike to travel to grocery stores farther from her house, often to discount grocery stores. As such, the meanings associated with cycling changed as her competencies changed. Rasha was also skeptical about grocery shopping at the beginning of the program, she said: “you can’t, like, go grocery shopping on a bike, right? … because it’s hard to carry things […] I haven’t personally notice people, like, grocery shopping on bikes”. By the end of the program, however, she told me excitedly about a news article reporting on a mother of five who used a bicycle as her main mode of travel. This article and her experience occasionally picking up a few grocery items on her way home over the course of the summer, made her re-evaluate her unwillingness to ride. By the end of the program, she stated: “I think I

133 would go grocery shopping now that I think about it, but like this bike that I have doesn’t have like any rack or basket or like anything, so yeah. It’s probably not that easy”.

Those with little experience cycling not only had to overcome meanings around cycling and shopping, but also faced barriers relating to their cycling competencies. For example, Prisha, a participant who learnt how to ride a bicycle through the program, found grocery shopping for heavy items by bicycle impossible because she was unable to start cycling without falling over if she was weighed down. Those who were confident cyclists due to experience knew that there were ways to carry items on a bicycle. For example, before she even picked up her bicycle Emily told me how convenient it was to grocery shop by bike. She explained how the bicycle helped her carry enough groceries to feed her family when she lived in China, her home country. She described how she used to cycle to the grocery store on a weekly basis, and then walk her bicycle home with the grocery bags hanging on the steering wheel. Furthermore, Emmanuel, a participant who used the bicycle as his primary mode of transport throughout his childhood and teenage years in his home country was confident he could carry anything by bike: “believe me, I am, I have always carried stuff on my bike! […]I can carry, like, big stuff, still riding, and I can, I don’t know what I cannot carry… there is always a way around it!”.

Participants also expressed a need for appropriate materials to buy groceries by bicycle. small trips were seen as easy to do with a backpack or bag. However, large trips required additional accessories such as panniers or baskets. One participant mentioned that an electric-powered bike would also make carrying heavy items by bicycle less exhausting. None of the participants invested in accessories to help them carry heavy items, however, by the end of the program, many participants were considering doing so. For example, Avani told me:

“I have to […] invest in one of those things, the baskets … […] or even the… camping bags? They have a huge backpacks, you know? Maybe one of that, because I can put everything in that, and put it on your back, they are meant to be for like carrying stuff, so I can just put it on and ride”.

Other participants were already committed to buying baskets, but waiting to get their own bicycles before they bought them.

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Some participants did not buy accessories, but instead found creative ways to carry items with their bicycles without investing in expensive accessories. For example, Hamid put his lunchbox under the spring in his back rack when he rode to work, Youssef tied grocery bags to his bicycle, and Deepak and Divya attached big blue plastic bags to their back rack in lieu of expensive panniers. Emmanuel was the most inventive of all; he brought a roll of tape with him when he bought large boxes of diapers for his toddler by bike so that he could tape the diapers to his back rack. Some participants did not fashion low-cost ways to carry items, but became aware of low- cost solutions over the course of the program. For example, Hamid noticed that some cyclists attached milk crates, items that can often be found outside of shops for free, to their back racks in place of expensive accessories: “Some people use a box, you know, a square box, so you can put everything, and some people put a basket in front of the bicycle, and I like that! (laughs)”.

Taken together, these examples demonstrate how even difficult household-serving trips, such as escorting children and buying large amounts of groceries, can be accomplished by bicycle as meanings evolve, competences increase, and materials are accessed (Table 6.1). As discussed in the literature review, the practice of household labour is often gendered. Participant accounts also demonstrate how the meanings, competencies, and materials needed to complete these practices can be gendered. For example, competencies can be gendered, as cycling confidence often derives from experience and some female participants received less encouragement to cycle throughout their lives (see Chapter 5: Fear of Cycling: Social, Spatial, and Temporal Dimensions). Access to materials can be gendered as well. As discussed above, some women often did not have access to the family car and would therefore rely on their bicycles more frequently to complete travel, including household-serving labour. Finally, though the participants were not asked to ask about the gendering of meanings, one could envisage that social pressures to perform “good motherhood” by keeping your child safe could discourage women from cycling with their children more than men.

6.4 Discussion

Transport planning research and practice has been accused of overlooking gendered patterns of mobility in urban space (Giuliano, 1979; Law, 1999; Rosenbloom, 1978) and of being deeply masculinist in its organizational structures, employment practices, symbolic narratives and systems of power (Siemiatycki, Enright & Valverde, 2019). If we hope to make cycling a viable

135 transportation option in traditionally car-oriented cities such as Toronto, bicycle planning should attempt to understand and avoid such biases by ensuring that cycling is amenable to many different types of trips, including gendered household-serving travel. Results from this chapter may inspire policies and programs to make vélomobilities of care more convenient in low-cycling cities. For example, the participants in this study did not cycle with their children due to safety concerns, their children being too young to cycle independently, a lack in confidence, and/or the lack of appropriate accessories. Furthermore, grocery shopping in bulk by bike posed challenges when it came to carrying these items home. However, participant accounts demonstrate that it is possible to complete all household-serving trips by bicycle, though these practices require specific meanings, competencies, and skills. Identifying these meanings, competencies, and skills through Social Practice Theory provides specific targets for practitioners to meet when developing interventions to encourage vélomobilities of care. For example, results from this chapter highlight the importance of safety, access to accessories such as bike seats, baskets, and panniers, and programs that provide cyclists with experience to lessen the barriers associated with both cycling with children and large amounts of groceries. The importance of safety and parental perceptions of safety in children’s cycling participation has also been identified in other research (Clayton & Musslewhite, 2013). Amongst other things, infrastructure investments are seen as a necessity to increase safety for children (Jordi-Sanchez, 2018; Lenton & Finlay, 2018).

This chapter also contributes to the academic literature by focusing on mobilities of care: a type of travel that is underrepresented in transportation scholarship (Sánchez de Madariaga, 2013). This chapter adds to the literature on mobilities of care by focusing on this type of travel using the bicycle in a low-cycling city. In doing so, it adds nuance to the belief that household- serving trips are difficult to complete by bicycle. For instance, though none of the participants cycled with their children for transportation purposes, the bicycle still helped some of these families achieve their mobility needs, for example by proving an efficient way to get to where their children needed to be picked up, or by enabling families to share a monthly public transit pass. This result runs counter to the popular belief that cycling is incompatible for families in low- cycling environments. Furthermore, most participants found grocery shopping for a few items convenient to do by bicycle, while others found creative ways to carry large amounts of groceries home. Others still expressed interest in purchasing accessories once they completed the program and received their own bicycle. Furthermore, trip-chaining is not always incompatible with

136 cycling. In fact, unless one of the destinations in the trip-chain involved escorting children or carrying heavy or bulky items, participants found trip-chaining easier to do by bicycle than by other modes.

This chapter also offers a qualitative application of Social Practice Theory. Furthermore, we note that not only is the practice of household-serving labour gendered, but the meanings, competencies, and materials to complete this labour by bicycle can also be gendered. We also find that the three elements of SPT, meanings, competencies, and materials are dynamic. Specifically, participants’ meanings around what trips were possible to do by bicycle varied as they gained experience cycling. This experience resulted in increased competencies as well as an awareness of what materials are needed, as well as where to procure them.

It is important to note that cycling for household-serving travel is a common practice in many places, such as in certain places within German, Dutch, and Danish cities (Pucher & Buehler, 2008). While this study focused on the experience of vélomobilities of care in a low-cycling city, it did not investigate how “low-cycling” and “high-cycling” places are produced. Future research can do so by engaging with contemporary critical human geography, a field concerned with the social processes involved in constructing the meanings and materials of places (Cresswell, 2015; Harvey, 1996). For example, scholars can ask what processes constructed the meanings (e.g.: viewing cycling with children as unsafe, or seeing the bicycle as an unpractical way to carry groceries) and materials (e.g.: lack of baskets, panniers, or appropriate infrastructure) present in low-cycling places that might discourage vélomobilities of care.

Because women tend to hold more household responsibilities than men (Schwanen et al., 2014), policies that would make vélomobilities of care easier and more convenient would likely impact women’s travel more than men’s. Sánchez de Madariaga (2013) argues that “consideration of care work is key to gender equality in transportation” (p. 36). While we agree that transportation systems should consider care work in order to be more equitable, we think it important to note that the gendered division of household labour is the inequality at the heart of this travel behaviour. The experience of one participant, Avani, demonstrates this well. The bicycle made grocery shopping easier for Avani because she could carry more items by bike than by foot or transit. However, because she used her bicycle to shop, her husband no longer joined her on these household-serving trips to help carry the groceries home. She therefore became the sole person

137 responsible for groceries in the household. In her words, when it came to grocery shopping, the bicycle was: “good for him and bad me, the last three months he never came for groceries. I had to spend all the money and… he didn’t spend […] a dollar!” (Avani). This kind of anecdote motivates a greater consideration of how vélomobilities of care shape and are shaped by gendered household relations, an approach that has been adopted in previous research (e.g. Plyushteva & Schwanen, 2018).

It is also important to note that the experiences of participants in this study may not be representative of all Torontonians. For one, the low rates of car access across the sample may have resulted in positive attitudes toward cycling (i.e. the bicycle may seem convenient when you’re only other options are walking and taking public transit in a city built around the private automobile). Furthermore, there is no one homogenous category “woman” (Crenshaw, 1989). Other axes of identity such as race, class, age, ability, and sexuality shape people’s experiences of domestic work as well as their access to different modes of travel. In fact, many important differences across other axes of identity such as age, race, income, place of residence, marital status, and mode choice have been identified in the literature on gender differences in travel- activity patterns (Hanson, 2010). While we did find that cost was both a barrier (e.g. not cycling with your child because bike seats are too expensive) and an enabler (e.g. when the bicycle meant two parent households could share a monthly transit pass) to vélomobilities of care, future research into vélomobilities of care should adopt an intersectional lens to understand how the power-laden distribution of household labour is shaped by multiple, co-constitution axes of identity. That being said, some scholars have suggested that the difficulty of completing household-serving travel by bicycle helps to explain the gender-gap in cycling in low-cycling places (Emond, Handy & Tang, 2009), and yet little research to date has documented the lived experience of people using their bicycles to complete these types of trips. This chapter addressed this research gap and, in doing so, adds nuance and detail to the conversation about gender, labour, cycling, and household- serving trips.

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Vignette 4: Why Focus on bikes?

“[When you are new to a city, programs that help you bike are] the last thing that will be on your mind. It’s not a priority […] Transportation makes-brings ease to all those other things that we are trying to do…But, we never think that a bicycle will be the solution. But, it is. From experience, I can say that.” - Michael

There were times during my fieldwork when I questioned why I had chosen to focus on the bicycle when so many of my participants were facing more urgent challenges. Was it wrong of me to ask people about cycling when many revealed housing, employment, and daily life circumstances that seemed quite precarious? Over time, I came to realize that transportation was a key factor connecting all components of the settlement process. Michael, whose quote opens this page, also came to this conclusion. I came to this realization when I heard Sahila’s story, which I will share with you now. Saliha is a young mother originally from Bangladesh who joined the Bike Host program because she had always wanted to learn how to ride a bike. She never had the opportunity to do so growing up, something she attributed to her class position and her concerns over personal safety. She is energetic, adventurous, and a gifted story teller. When I first met with her, she had moved to Toronto with her son just under a year ago. Her husband, her son’s father, did not join his family in Canada because it would have been financially impossible for both parents to look for work at once. Instead, he lives in Singapore, an expensive and long flight from his family, so that he can financially support his family as Saliha settles in and finds employment.

Saliha and her son’s first apartment, which was chosen in part due to its proximity to a subway stop, was infested with what Saliha thought were “Canadian cockroaches”. After waking up covered in bites, she realized she was dealing with a different beast: bed bugs. She turned to her landlord for help. Her landlord initially refused to do anything about them. After facing pressure from Toronto Public Health after Saliha complained to the City authorities, her landlord moved her into a smaller apartment while he fumigated her old one. When they returned to their old apartment, however, the bed bugs persisted. It was then that she decided she had to move.

She found a new apartment she liked and could afford, in a tower block apartment building in Scarborough at the intersection of two busy, multi-lane roads. Alas, she was refused multiple times when she applied to live here. At first, she was refused on the grounds that she couldn’t afford it as a single and unemployed mother. After providing financial statements, she was refused

139 on the false grounds that it is illegal to live in a one bedroom apartment with her 5-year-old son in Canada, as he is old enough to need his own room. It took emotional, legal, and financial support from her large network of friends and family members to finally acquire this apartment in the tower-block building. Moving her and her young son’s furniture and personal items was another challenge, as was the fine she was given by her old landlord for “fees” associated with moving her into a different, smaller, apartment while hers was being unsuccessfully fumigated for bed bugs.

By the time I meet with her, she is happy in her new home, which is where the interview takes place. It is bright and has a nice view of Lake Ontario. She keeps it very tidy, with homey touches like her son’s artwork or pictures of the family together scattered around the apartment. Worried about getting in trouble for not giving her son his own room, something her landlord warned her about, she sleeps on a mattress in the corner of the living room to give her son the one bedroom in the apartment. She sits on this mattress and I on the couch beside it when we meet. She tells me how she is starting a new job, her first in Canada, at a large Canadian bank in downtown Toronto in a few weeks. She is excited to begin: it is a “good job” with a decent salary. She already talks about “working [her] way up” in the bank.

Now that her housing and employment problems have improved, the main challenges she faces are related to transportation. While her old bed-bug infested apartment was beside a subway station, her new one is a 20-minute bus ride on an unreliable route with infrequent service to the final subway stop on the line. She estimates that her commute to work will take at least an hour and a half each way. While she doesn’t mind leaving very early to drop off her son off at daycare and make it to work by 9am, she is unsure of her commute home. Parents must pick up their children by 6pm at her son’s daycare and she does not know how she will make it in time. Her options are to move again, to find another daycare for her son, or even to pay for her mother to move from Bangladesh to her home.

After my first interview with Saliha, I left wondering why I was taking time out of her busy life to ask her about her experiences cycling. Clearly transportation was a key component to her settlement process, as was the case for Michael, but surely a bicycle couldn’t fix her transportation woes in her suburban environment? When I met with her at the end of the program, she had learnt how to ride a bike. She did not, however, feel confident enough in her abilities to ride in traffic. She told me how disappointed she is that she cannot ride in traffic, because if she could, she could

140 shorten her commute significantly by cycling to/from the subway instead of waiting for an unreliable bus. If this were the case, she wouldn’t have to worry about making it to her son’s daycare in time.

I share this story for a number of reasons. For one, it highlights the importance of transportation, and even cycling, in the settlement process. Her story assuaged my worry that I had chosen the wrong focus for my dissertation because it demonstrates how transportation intrinsically is connected to housing, employment, and care work – and that cycling can play a role in these realms, even in suburban environments. Furthermore, Saliha’s story also ties together many of the key themes in this dissertation: the ways in which gender and class can regulate the cycling body (i.e. she didn’t learn how to ride as a child due to her gender and class position), how lack of experience can inhibit the development of embodied skill and result in fear of cycling in traffic, and the bicycle’s role in completing household-serving travel, such as picking up your child from daycare. Above all, I share her story before concluding this dissertation because it reminds me of the motivations behind this work.

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Chapter 7: Conclusion

Across many cities globally, cycling has been increasingly promoted and supported as a sustainable and healthy option for urban transportation (Handy, Van Wee & Krosen, 2014). In places with low cycling rates, such as the City of Toronto, cycling rates vary considerably by place and across the population (Garrard, Handy & Dill, 2012). My dissertation was concerned with the gender-gap in cycling in Toronto, where those who identify as men represent approximately two thirds of all cyclists (Statistics Canada, 2019). However, instead of comparing male and female cycling behaviours, attitudes, and stated concerns, as does much of the current literature on gender and cycling, I took a different approach, one that aimed to avoid taking gender “for granted” (Scott, 2010, p. 225). To do so, I engaged with theories from feminist geography to examine how the bicycle shapes and is shaped by gender, as well as how these processes intersect with other axes of identity. In this concluding chapter I review my dissertation’s main research contributions and discuss some of the potential policy implications of my research. I also introduce future avenues for research, and ways in which cycling research could expand upon what was presented herein.

7.1 Research Contributions

As discussed in my literature review in Chapter 2 much of the academic research on gender and cycling uses the “how does gender shape mobility” approach put forth by Hanson (2010) in that it relies heavily on quantitative methods, and usually the analysis of large travel surveys, to compare travel behaviour as people labeled as male or female. That work tends to point toward women’s apparent greater concern over safety as well as their tendency to complete more household-serving travel as key reasons for the gender-gap in cycling in low-cycling cities. Less attention has been given to Hanson’s other question: how does mobility shape gender? (Hanson 2010). The current foci of most cycling research lacks an in-depth examination of how gender relations shape cycling. Specifically, the societal processes underlying the two hypothesis behind the gender-gap in cycling are lacking, i.e. why might women report greater concerns over cycling safety than men? And how do gender-relations affect the distribution and completion (including mode choice) of household serving travel? Furthermore, much of the current work focuses solely on gender, thereby ignoring how gender intersects with multiple axes of identity. My dissertation contributes to the academic literature by addressing these research gaps.

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Instead of focusing on gendered differences in cycling behaviour, my dissertation explored the ways in which cycling is embedded in power-laden gender relations, as well as how these relations intersected across other axes of identity. In Chapter 4: “I wouldn’t take the risk of the attention, you know? Just a lone girl biking”: Examining the Gendered and Classed Embodied Experiences of Cycling, I framed and described the embodied experience of cycling using theories of performativity and materiality. I argue that cycling, especially after long periods of absence, can be an experience of “intense embodiment”, a heightened corporeal experience. Participants became consciously aware of their physical bodies as they began cycling, and these experiences were gendered (e.g. “on view”, menstruating) and classed (e.g. sweat). This experience of intense embodiment diminished as the participants became more experienced cyclists, as cycling became a more regular activity. I also demonstrated how gender, class, and age performativity and materiality regulate the cycling body. Two social norms were frequently expressed: that cycling was associated with practices of masculinity and poverty. Power relations work through these embodied processes, at times through social norms (e.g.: girls who bike are “tom boys”, cycling in adulthood means you cannot afford a car), at other times through self-regulation (e.g. I feel uncomfortable and inappropriate having my female body on display, I do not want to arrive at work sweaty), and other times still through institutions (e.g. not being able to cycle legally). By focusing on the gendered, classed, and aged cycling body, Chapter 4 highlights the role of patriarchal and classist power relations in shaping who becomes a cycling body, and how a body becomes a cycling body.

I then explored some of the societal processes underlying the two hypothesis put forward most frequently to explain the gender-gap in cycling in Chapters 5 and 6. In Chapter 5: Fear of Cycling: Social, Spatial, and Temporal dimensions, I examined the ways in which fears of cycling can be experienced across place, time, and social factors. In that chapter, I argued that there are many different types of fear of cycling, beyond that of being injured by a motor vehicle, such as fear of street harassment, fear of bicycle theft, fear of getting lost, and fear of interactions with law enforcement. These fears are also dynamic, in that they change across time (e.g.: across a day, as people become more experienced cyclists), place (e.g.: across different neighbourhoods, in relation to other cities), and social factors (e.g.: gender, citizenship). I then explored how fear of cycling can be shaped by social factors. A key finding here was that fear of injury can be shaped by one’s experience cycling: those who had accumulated more cycling experience throughout their life-

143 course tended to be more confident and less fearful of cycling with traffic. The opportunity to gain experience cycling, in turn, can be shaped by gender relations. Put simply, it was much more frequent for the women in my study to have had less opportunity to cycle than the men, and previous work has found that this inequality is reflected in the North American context as well (McDonald, 2012). This result may provide insight into the gendered processes underlying the gendered “risk-aversion” hypothesis: women are not innately more risk-averse than men, instead some women may experience heightened concern over safety due to having been exposed to different opportunities across the life-course. By discussing the many fears of cycling, as well as their social, temporal, and spatial dimensions, I hope that this chapter will expand the current conversations about cycling safety, risk, and danger beyond that injury and a simple conceptualization of gendered risk aversion.

In Chapter 6: Vélomobilities of Care in a Low-Cycling City I explored how participants used their bicycles to complete household-serving travel, i.e. the travel required to meet household needs such as grocery shopping, errands, and dropping off/ picking up children. This type of travel is gendered (women have been found to engage in it more than men) and because these types of trips tend to involve carrying goods or people, tasks that may be difficult to complete by bicycle, it has been suggested that this type of travel could explain the gender-gap in cycling (Delmelle & Delmelle, 2012; Dickinson et al., 2013; Emond, Handy, Tang, 2009; Prati, 2018; Wang, Akar & Guldmann, 2015). Participant accounts demonstrate that cycling with children and grocery shopping in bulk are difficult to complete by bicycle. However, shopping for small items and trip- chaining, i.e. making one or more stops between an origin and destination, was considered convenient to do by bicycle. Some participants were able to complete all household-trips by bicycle, and their accounts inspired an analysis of how these practices were completed. To do so, I framed their experiences using Social Practice Theory to show how even difficult trips can be completed by bicycle if equipped with certain materials (e.g.: panniers, child-seats, baskets, infrastructure), competencies (e.g.: being able to ride weighed down, feeling confident riding), and values (e.g.: believing cycling with children is safe, knowing how to carry items by bike). In reporting these findings, this chapter contributes rich detail and nuance to the conversation about household-serving trips and cycling in places with low cycling participation rates.

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7.2 Policy Implications

Beyond contributing to the literature on gender and cycling by highlighting how cycling is embedded in the power relations of multiple intersecting axis of identity, my research also has potential policy implications. For those wishing to reduce or eliminate the gender-gap in cycling with some kind of intervention, or to better understand and work with any identity-based pattern of cycling behaviour, my dissertation highlights how we should consider patriarchal, classist, and racist power relations to do so. If there were no difference in the ways in which people identifying with different genders and classes were treated, viewed, or performed, there would be no discrepancy across travel behaviour. In relation to cycling, if riding a bike was not considered a performance of poverty or masculinity, if everyone had equal access to cycling opportunities across the life course, and if household duties were shared equitably across the household members, there likely wouldn’t be identity-based differences in cycling behaviour.

As we work toward dismantling patriarchal and classist power relations, my research points to a few steps we can take to distribute the benefits of cycling across the entire population. The first is to initiate policies and programs that ensure that everyone has opportunities to access cycling across the life course. My research found that not everyone who can ride a bike perceives that they have enough skill to confidently ride in traffic. This lack of embodied skill and confidence can be a barrier to cycling in that it can result in heightened fear of cycling. Cycling programs such as bike-to-school courses or Bike Host can help individuals gain the experience and embodied skill needed to overcome this barrier. However, seeing as they work at the individual level, their capacity to induce change at the population level might be limited. Population-wide programs, for example the incorporation of cycling into a school’s physical activity curriculum, could ensure that more people can access cycling at a young age. Furthermore, my research found that some girls do not have the same opportunities as boys to cycle and that some are pressured to give up cycling as they age to avoid associations with poverty. Individual-level programs can target demographics known to have less experience, and population-based approaches have the benefit of affecting more of the population, regardless of identity (with the important exception of (dis)ability).

Secondly, my research explored fear of cycling, a key barrier to cycling uptake. One possible method to reduce fear of cycling is through the design of roads with cyclists’ well-being

145 in mind. This ‘cyclist’, however, should not be a monolithic cyclist with one static fear: instead the ‘cyclist’ should be understood to have many different types of fear that are shaped by time, place, and social factors. Countless studies have found that cycling infrastructure increases objective and perceived cycling safety or reduces risk and danger (Prati et al., 2018; Reynolds et al., 2009; Teschke et al., 2012; Thomas & DeRobertis, 2013), in this research fear of injury was often associated with the built environment, most frequently in relation to infrastructure presence or design, but also due to traffic speed or road conditions. Though my research supports the large body of work advocating for cycling infrastructure, it also demonstrates that this infrastructure must consider a wider range of fears beyond that of injury, as well as a broader range of spatiotemporal contexts. For instance, roads built with fear of harassment in mind could be built with an emphasis on lighting, especially after dark, and the safety and security of parked bicycles should be considered when planning these roads.

Finally, the cycling city should be built with many different cycling trips in mind. In my dissertation I explored how people use bicycles for household-serving travel in Toronto. In doing so, I identified certain materials, competencies, and values needed to do so. Ensuring that cyclists have the competencies to complete household-serving travel by bicycle is related to the first point discussed in this section: the importance of cycling experience in producing embodied skill and confidence. In my research participant’s values changed as they gained experience cycling as well. With regard to materials, city planners can take steps toward ensuring people have the materials needed to complete this type of travel by bike. For one, cycling infrastructure that connects grocery stores, community centers, libraries, daycares, and schools to the cycling network could encourage this type of travel. Furthermore, my research highlights the importance of being able to access bike accessories such as panniers, baskets, and child-seats.

Taken together, beyond highlighting the importance of dismantling patriarchal and classist power relations, my research contributes to two different policy arena. Firstly, we should advocate for, design, and build a bike network with safe and connected infrastructure across the city. Specifically, my research demonstrates the importance of designing this infrastructure with many different cycling trips and fears of cycling in mind. Secondly, my research highlights the importance of creating and expanding upon current cycling mentorship programs (e.g.: Bike Host, bike-to-school). These programs could target population groups known to have less experience cycling (e.g.: girls), or could be adopted on a population-scale (e.g. integrating cycling into the

146 school curriculum). One aspect of these programs could be to encourage cycling for diverse trips, for example by holding workshops on how to carry items by bike, or by distributing or selling low- cost accessories such as panniers, or bike seats.

7.3 Future Research

In this section, I discuss possible future research inspired by my dissertation. I begin by reviewing some ways in which cycling scholars can expand upon the findings presented in my dissertation. Then, I discuss other potential papers that could emerge from my research that were outside of the scope of my dissertation.

7.3.1 Expanding on my dissertation

The research presented in my dissertation could inspire many avenues for future analysis. For example, while Chapter 4 discusses the gender and classed embodied experience of cycling across age, it omits an analysis of how other axes of identity shape and are shaped by the experience of cycling. As discussed in the chapter, though many of the participants were people of colour, little discussion of race or ethnicity took place during the interviews, an axis of identity key to the conception of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) that scholars have suggested tends to be omitted in intersectional feminist work (Mollett & Faria, 2013). The potential reasons for this are discussed in Chapter 3. Beyond an analysis of the racialized cycling body, future research could examine even more intersecting axes of identity. I think research looking into embodied cycling and (dis)ability or fatness would be particularly interesting. For one, much has been written about embodiment and (dis)ability and fatness (e.g.: Lloyd, 2017; Titchkosky, 2007). Secondly, interesting debate exists online on whether cycling promotion is ableist (for example see: Galatan, 2019 Jason X, 2011). One important contribution of my thesis is that while most can ride a bike, not everyone has the embodied skill to ride a bike in traffic (see Chapter 5: Fear of Cycling). However, others are not physically able to ride a bike at all, and others still can ride bikes or trikes if they have certain enabling modifications. Research that examines the embodied processes of these axes of identity could provide novel insight into cycling bodies and inclusion.

Secondly, my dissertation engages with fear and cycling using perspectives from emotional geography. While I demonstrate how fear is social, temporal, and spatial, there is still much potential to further engage with the emotional geographies of cycling. For instance, Davidson,

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Bondi & Smith (2005) discuss three sources of inspiration in the field of emotional geographies that could help move forward the emotional geographies of cycling: locating emotion, relating emotion, and representing emotion. For example, the spatiality of emotions while cycling could be further developed by examining how emotions are experienced and embodied by individuals and attached to particular places and experiences. Future work could also explore how emotions move between bodies and places. Finally, researchers could move this field forward by exploring how representations of cycling and cyclists mobilize, produce, and shape emotions.

Finally, while my research highlights the ways in which people use bicycles to complete household-serving travel, the ways in which this travel is shaped by gendered household-relations could be unpacked further. While other research has argued that this type of travel is gendered, and many participants demonstrated how it was in their households as well, I did not delve into the processes that shape the distribution of household-labour during the interviews. Some insight was provided that demonstrates how the root cause of gender household-serving travel was gendered-distribution of household labour itself, however, more could be ascertained had I specifically probed on this issue. One area that may be particularly insightful is the ways in which parenthood, a highly gendered life-stage, affects the distribution of household-labour, cycling, or even active travel behaviour more generally. Future work on this topic has the potential to shed light on challenges and barriers to create true and inclusive cycling cities.

7.3.2 Additional papers

Many themes identified throughout my research process were outside the scope of my dissertation. In this section, I provide a brief description of these topics which I anticipate preparing into future research papers.

Cycling and the production of space

For many participants, cycling shaped the ways in which they understood, interpreted, and engaged with the city. Drawing on the semi-structured interviews, the primary data used for my dissertation, as well as the bike-along interviews, which were not used in my thesis, a future paper will explore how cycling shapes the production of space. Preliminary analysis of the data shows how cycling enabled many to explore more of the city than they had previously been able to. For instance, one participant stated “with bike you can see the city!”, while another said “I know the city better than

148 before”. Beyond allowing participants to explore more of the city, cycling allowed them to understand and engage with the city differently than when using other modes. For instance, one participant noted “most of the time we travel by subway, or you know, by streetcar or the bus. But you know it doesn’t go each and every place, but the bike can go anywhere”. Participants specifically mentioned becoming more aware of smaller residential roads (as opposed to the main streets buses and streetcars usually move along), and the streets “in between” subway stops. One participant laughed at how her daughter who had been living in Toronto for years wasn’t as aware of where streets were as her, a recent arrival, because she went into the subway and came out the other end, all the while unaware of what took place in between.

Cycling could also ‘shrink’ the city, and make it feel easier to access. For instance, a participant explained:

“just going to the subway – disappear underground and emerge somewhere. So, it wasn’t until I began to bike, that I realized that some of those places I was going to, that I felt were really far apart, were very, very close together.”

The bike-along interviews provided additional insight on this engagement with the city as well. For example, one participant shouted out to me as we rode through Trinity Bellwoods Park: she was shocked at how quickly we had arrived there from Bathurst Station and compared it the commute between these two locations by transit which was remembered as a headache that took much longer. Another bike-along participant shouted out in surprised as we passed the CNE grounds at Exhibition place on our way to the waterfront. They had no idea the fairgrounds were so close to their home. Future work could explore the myriad ways in which different modes of mobility, in this case cycling, shape the production of space.

Cycling citizenship

A body of scholarship explores how mobility actively constitutes citizenship (Spinney, Aldred & Brown, 2015). While much of that work focuses on migration, diaspora, and transnationalism, some of it has begun to explore how citizenship is negotiated and articulated through everyday mobility practices (Aldred, 2010, Packer, 2008; Urry, 2000). Emerging research on citizenship and cycling has focused on historical articulations of gender and citizenship (Jungnickel, 2015; Norcliffe, 2015a, Norcliffe, 2015b), citizenship amongst immigrants who cycle (Bernstein, 2016;

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Law & Karnilowicz, 2015; Reid-Musson, 2018), and how cycling is associated with performing “good” citizenship in low-cycling places (Aldred, 2010; Green, Steinbach & Datta, 2012).

As Saliha and Michael’s stories in the vignette before this chapter demonstrate (see p. 137- 139), travel is key to the settlement process. Participant interviews demonstrate how the bicycle can be implicated not only in settlement, but also in citizenship and belonging. I will explore these dynamics in a future paper. This future research will build on recent work on migrants and vélomobility, such as Reid-Musson’s (2018) work exploring bicycle mobility amongst migrant farmworkers in southwestern Ontario. She demonstrates how these migrants can be “doubly stigmatized”, both as cyclists and migrants on roads dominated by cars where drivers are predominantly white. Bernstein (2016), on the other hand, examines the experiences of undocumented migrants who are bike-dependent in the United States. Though the bicycle is their best available mobility option, Bernstein (2016) shows how cycling can play an oppressive role in their daily lives due to the social, legal, and physical risks they face by cycling. Finally, Law & Karnilowicz (2015) explores immigrants’ perceptions of cycling in Melbourne, Australia. Though many of these immigrants came from countries with high cycling participation, they were less likely to cycle in Melbourne due to ideas around cyclists’ identity and citizenship, as well as social- economic marginalisation and isolated residential locations. Cycling was associated with different meanings in Melbourne and their home countries.

In my research, participant comments demonstrated how they were engaging with cycling and Canadian citizenship in complex and meaningful ways. For instance, it became apparent while analyzing the transcripts that two opposing views exist around “Canadian-ness” and cycling. The first, mostly expressed by participants living in the urban core, was that cycling is a Canadian form of mobility, for instance one participant stated: “well initially I never wanted to do it […] I thought this is only for Canadians, right?”. Others, especially those living in the more car-oriented suburbs, viewed driving a car as a goal to reach in their Canadian settlement process. For them, driving was ‘Canadian’ whereas cycling and transit were cost-effective ways to travel as they settled.

Another finding was participants perceived certain cycling practices as ‘Canadian’. For instance, one participant told me they saw daily low-speed cycling while carrying items as a Canadian practice, something he quickly imitated:

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“What I love about Torontonian cyclists is that, you know, it’s a lifestyle. So, you see people with being the bags-the shopping bags and the baskets on the bicycle. And, I really love that, so, when I started cycling, I got a milk crate tied to the back of my bicycle, too!”

Finally, the bicycle could be both a tool for belonging and one for ‘othering’. For instance, some participants joined the program to make friends, to connect with Canada and Canadians, and to feel at home in their new city, and many succeeded in these goals throughout the summer. For instance, one participant explained:

“in subway you go underground, you don’t get to see all of those things, you know? and you don’t see the people, you don’t see the local, like, Canadian life or just there are things sometimes or… kind of different, different kinds of restaurants in the city and oh my god I can’t tell you, now I fell in love with the city”

For others, cycling made them worry about breaking rules, getting lost, getting in trouble with law enforcement, or needing to interact with the public in English, a language they were not comfortable with yet. The role of the bicycle in shaping settlement, citizenship, and belonging will be explored further in a future paper.

Cycling in the suburbs

As discussed earlier in my dissertation, most urban cycling occurs in the downtown core of Toronto, the denser part of the city where most of the infrastructural investments have been made. This is a common outcome, shared with most cities, especially those with low cycling participation rates. As such, it is unsurprising that much of the current cycling literature, especially that taking place in low-cycling places, focuses on this experience in downtown environments (with some exceptions such as Ledsham, Farber & Wessel, 2017; Ledsham & Verlinden, 2019). A sub-set of the research participants lived in and had most of their cycling experiences in the suburbs, neighbourhoods that are traditionally more car-oriented in Toronto. Their stories offer unique insight into cycling in these environments, places that are under-studied in the cycling literature; that will be the topic of a future paper.

For one, many found bicycles convenient for short trips in these neighbourhoods, however, they needed to take more long-distance trips than participants who lived downtown. Furthermore,

151 though many were interested in integrating cycling with public transit to complete these long trips, they faced many issues that prevented them from doing so such as rush hour restrictions with regards to taking bicycles on the subway or fears of bikes being stolen when left for long hours at stations. Suburban cyclists’ use of the sidewalk was another interesting theme that emerged from the interviews. Some participants found cycling in the suburbs comfortable and convenient precisely because they cycled on the sidewalks (which, they told me, almost never had any pedestrian traffic). Others avoided the sidewalk because they were worried about getting in trouble with the law (it is illegal to cycle on the sidewalks in Toronto as an adult, something all participants are made aware of at the beginning of the program), and as a result felt they had to put themselves in harm’s way at times to comply with traffic laws.

Another interesting finding emerged while conducting the mapping-interviews at the beginning of the program, a portion of the semi-structured interviews that was not presented in my dissertation. Many participants (almost half) identified the downtown core as an area they would avoid while cycling. Key reasons for view was that this part of the city was too busy and congested. Instead, they stated they wanted to cycle in the appealing suburbs, which were viewed as calm and peaceful. This perception changed by the end of the program, at which point that had tried biking downtown and realized that cycling on infrastructure was more comfortable than anticipated. These experiences and perceptions of suburban cycling will inspire a future paper that will contribute to the small, but growing, interest in suburban cycling (Ledsham & Verlinden, 2019).

Taken together, my dissertation acts as a feminist contribution to cycling research. Guided by theories of embodiment, it examined the social underpinnings of the gendered trends we observe in cycling, as well as how these processes intersected with other axes of identity. Furthermore, it sheds light on the role of patriarchal and classist power relations in shaping cycling perceptions and practices. There is still much work to be done to create a true and equitable cycling city, some potential avenues for future research and policy and outlined in this concluding chapter. It is my hope that my dissertation plays a small role in reaching that goal.

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Appendix A: Summary of Articles Examining Gender and Cycling

Citation Study Topic, Key Findings about Gender Location Methodology 1 Akar et Ohio Gendered -Cycling barriers similar for men and women al. State differences in -Women more concerned about carrying things and (2013) Universit cycling to changing clothes, lack of bicycle lanes, trails and paths, and y, USA campus* vehicular traffic -Women more likely to identify as beginner cyclists -Proximity to infrastructure associated with bicycle choice for women, and not for men Aldred Internatio Infrastructure -Gender differences clear in low-cycling countries et al. nal preference by -Stronger preference for greater separation from traffic (2017) gender and amongst women age**** -Weaker evidence found for older people -No group preferred integration with traffic Aldred England Cycling rates -Where cycling rates have increased, no statistically

et al. and and cyclist significant improvement in the representation of women, (2016) Wales diversity* and a decrease in the number of older cyclists exists Beecham London, Gendered -Men's trips attributes characterised commuting, while & Wood UK usage of the women’s trips characterised leisure cycling (2014a) London Cycle Hire Scheme* Bonham Adelaide, Women’s -Identified patterns across space and time where women & Australia experiences take-up or give-up cycling throughout the life course Wilson with cycling - Demonstrated how practices of mobility and physical cycling as afocuscyclingprimary as (2012) across the life- activity are also practices of femininity course** Dickinso Hertfords Gendered -Women more likely to live close to work, and to state that n et al. hi-re, UK cycling they lived close enough to bike, than men (2003) commuter -Women indicate needing a car to complete household patterns* duties more than men -Women state they commute by car due to personal safety more than men Emond Six small Bicycle use -Comfort using cycling facilities and perceived safety are Articlesgender and with et al. cities in correlates* determinants for women (2009) the -Biking in childhood is associated with biking in adulthood, Western but only for men USA -Stating that bicycling is an important factor in residential location choice increases the odds of cycling for men - Enjoying cycling is important for both men and women Eye & Amsterda Bicycle travel -No evidence that mothers cycle less than women without Ferreira m, behaviour of children (2015) Netherlan mothers and -Mothers and women without children exhibited different ds women travel characteristics without -Positive emotions describing travel by bike outweigh children* negative ones Ferguson Washingt Female bike -Female bike messengers faced barriers in the workplace (2017) on, DC, messengers’ and experienced additional challenges finding a bathroom

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and corporeal -Female messengers came up with strategies to face these Chicago, experience** challenges (e.g.: holding it in, learning a geography of IL, USA where good restrooms are located) Frater & Christ- Adolescent -Social norms related to cycling discouraged participants Kingham church, girls’ decision from cycling (2018) New to cycle to -Cycling practices were associated with masculinity Zealand school** -Participant’s dislike of cycling was associated with desire to perform femininity -Participants cited cycling confidence and concern over personal safety as an obstacle to cycling Garrard Melbourn Bicycle -Female cyclists showed a preference for off-road paths et al. e, infrastructure rather than roads with no bicycle facilities (after adjustment (2008) Australia use by for distance of the bicycle facility from the central business gender* district) Heesch Queensla Cycling -Males and Females preferred cycling infrastructure et al. nd, motivators, -Females more frequently cycle off-road, males more (2012) Australia patterns, and frequently cycle on-road constraints by gender and trip* Mitra & Toronto, Built envr. and -Bike infrastructure associated with higher likelihood of Nash Canada attitudinal cycling for women (2018) correlates of -Presence of roads with fast traffic negatively associated cycling by with women's odds of cycling gender and -No gender-based differences in coefficients relating to trip* travel attitudes and preferences Prati European Gender -Composite Gender Equality Index associated with (2018) Union equality and women's participation in transport cycling and with gender countries women’s differences in participation in transport cycling transport -Health and work domains of the index not related to cycling* women's participation in transport cycling, while the time, power, and violence domains are -Time domain had the strongest effect, indicating that gendered division of household labour may inhibit women's participation in transport cycling Singleto Oregon, Trip and -Female cyclists more likely to have higher income, be n & USA activity employed, have a driver’s license, and have access to a Goddard characteristics vehicle (2016) by gender and -This trend did not hold true for men: men with less travel mode* resources are more likely to cycle Steinbac London, How cycling is -Due to their small numbers, cyclists in London are more h et al. UK influenced by visible than other commuters. (2011) gender, ethnic, -Due to this visibility, a “cyclist-identity” exists; this and class identity is more easily performed by professional, white, identities** men, than other identities (e.g.: people of colour, women, etc.) Twaddle Universit Cycling -Women indicate having a greater concern over safety than et al. y of obstacles and men (2010) Calgary, preferred -Both men and women report a desire for more bicycle Canada policies by lanes gender*

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-Men and women experience similar bicycle collision rates per measure of exposure Van Universit Barriers to -Women identify a greater number of barriers to cycling Bekkum y commuting by than men et al. Campus, bicycle* -Both men and women report safety concerns, but women (2011) UK perceive greater barriers regarding darkness, natural terrain, and danger on the roads -Women find the expense of buying a bike more of a barrier than men Wittman Toronto, High school -More boys than girls have access to a bicycle. The reverse n et al. Canada students’ is true of transit passes (2015) cycling by -Girls reference fear, danger, or safety as barriers more than gender*** boys -Girls are two times as likely to not know how to ride a bike than boys -Male accident rates on bicycles greatly exceed those for females Zhao et Nanjing, Bike-share -Women more likely to make multiple daily bike-sharing al. China usage by trip-chains than men, especially on weekdays. (2015) gender and day of the week* Alveano- Morelia, Bike -Women perceived a higher crash possibility on roads with Aguerre Mexico infrastructure* no bicycle infrastructure than men bere et ** al. (2017) Beechma London, Group cycling -Women cycle more in groups than men n & UK characteristics -Women are over-represented in late-night group rides and Wood of the London under-represented in late-night solo rides (2014b) Cycle Hire -Women try the bike scheme as part of a group ride more

Scheme* than men

Bell et Australia Cycling and -Cycling prevalence across Australia declined slightly for al. walking by men (1.45% to 1.39%) and marginally increased for women (2006) gender and (0.37% to 0.40%) between 1996 and 2001 age* -Discuss gendered risk-aversion hypothesis Bhat et Puget Bicycling -Women and 18-34 year old people “warm up” to cycling as al. Sound, frequency* infrastructural investments are made (2017) USA Brey et Seville, Private bicycle -High bike-share usage amongst young males with high

SecondaryArticles Focus al. Spain vs. bike-share levels of education travelling to work or school (2017) use* -Personal bike use predominantly by females who regularly make trips for non-commute travel, leisure, or sport purposes -Lack of bike culture and household labour discussed in relation to gender-gap Carver et Sydney, Teen -Neighborhood safety indicators are more important al. Australia neighborhood determinants of walking and cycling for girls than boys (2005) perceptions and AT by gender*

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Cavil North Resident views -Fear of bicycles being stolen is strongest barrier to cycling &Watkin Liverpool of a multiuse for young boys s (2007) , UK path** -Many young girls state they don’t bike due to cycling’s image Damant- Montréal, Factors -Women less likely to cycle to work than men, but more Sirois & Canada influencing likely to cycle for other utilitarian trips El cycling -When concern for safety was controlled for, women still Geneidy frequency* cycled less than men, except those in the “dedicated” cyclist (2015) category Delmelle Universit Spatial, - Topography and cycling safety greater barriers to non- & y of temporal, and motorized travel for women than men Delmelle Idaho, gendered -Students with children more likely to drive to campus than (2012) USA differences in students without children student mode choice* Fishman Internatio Bike-share -A gender-gap in bike-share use is frequently found, though (2016) nal literature it is often smaller than that for personal bicycle use review**** -Discuss concern over safety hypothesis Fyhri & Norway E-bike use* -Amongst those loaned an e-bike, females made a greater Fearnley number of trips than males, but no difference in distance (2015) biked was detected

Goodma London, London Bike- -Women use the London Bicycle Share System less than n & UK Share users men, though women’s share of trips may be increasing Cheshire profile in 2013 -Some evidence that women commute less with this system (2014) vs. 2010 than men (system launch)* Habib et Toronto, Cycling - Older males most comfortable biking in Toronto, younger al. Canada policies and females least comfortable (2014) programs* Hsu & Californi Parental -Mothers more likely to have concerns over traffic which Saphores a, USA attitudes and influence their children’s likelihood of AST (2014) children’s -No difference in parental AST attitudes by gender, more AST* concern for younger children Ji et al. Nanjing, Bike-share for -Female commuters more likely to use personal bicycle to (2017) China rail transit reach station than bike-share access* -Discuss gendered household responsibilities and concern over safety Karkie Suzhou, Bike-share -Bike-share users predominantly male, high-income, and & Tao China access in low- college-educated (though other studies found women more (2016) income likely to bike in Suzhou than men) neighbourhood -Women stated they did not feel safe riding a bicycle in *** survey and interviews Kienteka Curitiba, Characteristics -Men cycle more frequently than women et al. Brazil of transport -Discuss women’s greater perceived barriers to physical (2014) and leisure activity and lesser confidence navigating and maintaining cycling* bicycles Manton Galway, Cycling risk -Female participants perceived more roads as very et al. Ireland perceptions dangerous and fewer roads as safe than male participants (2016)

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and the physical envr.* Mosquer Bogota, Barriers and -Women outline the aesthetic benefits of cycling (weight a et al. Columbia facilitators of loss, muscle strengthening) more than men who associate (2012) transportation cycling more often with physical ability and freedom cycling** -Women perceive greater risks as cyclists than men (including vulnerability to personal attacks, injuries, and theft) Nehme Austin, Applied -Women were found to have lower compatibility with et al. USA Diffusion of transport cycling than men (2016)a Innovation theory to transport cycling* Nehme USA Transport -Men cycle more than women et al. cycling -Men and those aged 25-64 more likely to report a work- (2016)b correlates by related trip trip purpose* Nelson Ireland Envr. -Male respondents more likely to report the presence of & perceptions bike lanes and satisfaction with cycling in their Woods and neighborhood than female respondents (2010) adolescent’s active commuting* Nevelste Belgium Parental safety -Boys bike independently more than girls en et al. perceptions -Parents allow boys to bike independently more than girls (2012) and children’s travel* Noyes et Brooklyn Bike lane use -Cyclists primarily male and non-White al. , USA in low-income -Perceived safety of the bicycle lanes put forward to explain (2014) neighborhoods gender-gap * Orstad et Massach Factors -Positive relationship between selecting safety as an al. use-tts, influencing the important trail feature and duration of use was found, and (2016) USA use of five was stronger for females than males trails* -Discuss literature on concern for crime, gender, and physical activity Osborne Brisbane, Constructions -The cycling citizen is constructed in policy documents as a & Grant Australia of the ‘Cycling combination of actions, personal attributes, and attitudes Smith Citizen’** -MAMIL (middle-aged men in Lycra) are over-represented (2017) in these documents, which could make cycling less accessible to those less likely to identify with MAMIL Parker et New Effects of bike -Bike lane installation resulted in increased cyclist counts; al. Orleans, lane especially amongst females (2011) LA., installation* -Discuss women’s preference for bicycle infrastructure USA separated from traffic Sahlqvist Queensla Patterns and -Men more likely than women to cycle for transportation & nd, correlates of purposes Heesch Australia utility cycling* (2012)

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Sardiano Athens, Determinants -Women more likely to cycle because it is an eco-friendly u & Greece of bicycle use* transportation mode than men Nioza (2015) Sigurdar Denmark Adolescents’ -Female respondents perceive environmental issues as more dottir et commuting serious than male respondents al. intentions (car -Male respondents reported greater interest in cars, (2013) or bike) in perceived obtaining a drivers’ license as easier, and driving adulthood* as less dangerous and stressful than female respondents Stronegg Graz, Envr. -High satisfaction with local infrastructure positively related er et al. Austria perceptions, to cycling for transport among men, but not for women. (2010) physical -The opposite is found for walking for transport activity & health* Tayhan UK Impacts of the -Boys more likely to report an accident than girls et al. National Cycle -Discuss gendered concern over safety and hypothesize that (2016) Proficiency boys may be attracted to cycling not just as a travel mode, Scheme* but as a form of physical activity in its own right Teschke Canada Bicycle-related -Females have lower bicycle-related hospitalization rates et al. hospitalization than males (2017) and helmet -Discuss gendered concern over safety hypothesis laws* Trapp et Australia Cycling to -For girls, parental perceptions of envr. associated with al. school* cycling to school (2011) -For boys, distance, traffic exposure, and pedestrian connectivity correlated with cycling behaviours Troped Arlington Physical envr. -Women and older respondents less likely to use bikeway et al. , MA., variables and -Women and older respondents indicate safety concerns as a (2001) USA bikeway use* barrier to bikeway use

Van Belgium Physical envr. -Feelings of “unsafety” in relation to crime negatively Cauwen and older associated with cycling (recreation) and walking (recreation berg et adults’ and transportation) al. walking and -For women, feelings of unsafety also negatively associated (2012) cycling* with cycling (transport) Van Belgium Physical envr. -Positive association between “cycle path evenness” and Holle et ratings and “safety crossing the street” and invitingness to cycle found, al. transport but only for women (2014) cycling* Wang et Ohio Effects of -Female respondents less likely to bike to/from campus than al. State neighbors’ male ones (2015) Universit mode choice -Discuss gendered concern over safety and household y, USA on decision to responsibilities hypotheses cycle* Wati & Queensla Cycling to -Develop a profile of adolescents more likely to cycle to Tranter nd, school* school: one element of profile is male gender (2015) Australia -Discuss implications of boys having more experience cycling Zanotto Vancouv Helmet use on -Female cyclists wore helmets more than male cyclists & er, personal and -Discuss gendered concern over safety hypothesis Canada

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Winters public (2017) bicycles* Zhao et Beijing, Air pollution - Female cyclists more likely to switch to public transit or al. China and cycling car use on days with high levels of air pollution than male (2018) behaviour* cyclists

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