This Sunday, around 1,000 women and their supporters will take to the streets of London on two wheels for the second annual LCC Women’s Freedom Ride.
Organized by the Women’s Network of the London Cycling Campaign (LCC), the ride is first and foremost a protest for safer streets for women. After delivering their petition to the Mayor’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner Will Norman, the riders will begin a tour of central London, starting and ending at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
As well as making a political statement, organizers hope the ride will be a fun, accessible and welcoming event for women who don’t feel comfortable cycling in London. Claire Rogers, LCC’s Central London Coordinator, said: GCN Let me explain further.
Protests demanding women’s safety
“We’re calling on the Mayor of London to make it safe for women to cycle across London,” Rogers explains.
“We want to achieve gender equality by 2030, because at the moment less than a third of cycling trips in London are taken by women.”
The ride will begin by handing over a petition, which already has over 5,000 signatures, to Will Norman, the Mayor of London’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner, to make their concerns known. The petition outlines three main objectives for the LCC Women’s Network, which Rogers summarizes as follows:
“Physical safety is ensured, so we need protection such as bike lanes. And secondly, social safety, which is about security and properly lit routes. And three. The eye is on local cycling networks, because women can really benefit from being able to travel locally by bike.”
The objectives of this campaign were developed around the results of a public survey published in January 2024 by the LCC Women’s Network. The findings underline how dangerous London’s streets are for women cycling. Among the dire headline statistics: 93% of respondents have experienced being threatened with a driver’s car, and 9 in 10 respondents have experienced abuse while cycling in London. There was a fact that it happened. For 63% of respondents, the abuse was repeated monthly.
“This is normalized abuse of women who ride bicycles,” Rogers said. “It feels like some kind of hidden epidemic that’s happening under people’s noses all the time.”
The report found that 9 out of 10 women would start cycling or ride more if they had the infrastructure. Sunday’s ride aims to demonstrate just that. In other words, making roads safer will encourage women to ride bikes.
“The most important thing is to say to the mayor, the police, and the government, ‘Look at how many women want to ride bicycles.'” And how strongly women want freedom. please look. ”
As Rogers explains, the bicycle is certainly an instrument of freedom, perhaps even more so for women than for men.
“Women generally have lower incomes and cycling is cheaper. It’s not ideal for women because they don’t have to use public transport. Not all women have cars, so it’s really freeing. In countries like the Netherlands, 51% [bicycle] Travel is for women. So where that is possible, women really benefit. ”
Have a safe, fun and confident day on your bike
Along with a political message, organizers organized the day to make the protest an opportunity for new cyclists to take up cycling in the capital. As well as featuring music, costumes and a party atmosphere, the ride will be led by experienced female road marshals who will control the road and provide cyclists with a safe and confidence-inspiring protest space.
To help people reach their starting points, LCCs have arranged small feeder groups to safely and confidently guide less confident passengers from London’s far-flung boroughs to the heart of the city.
“I think 16 boroughs have feeder rides planned,” Rogers said. “So women can ride their bikes in Enfield, Redbridge or Hammersmith and Fulham and be escorted safely in groups to the main event.
“We’ve had women come who have hardly ever ridden a bike before, but they feel safe and are having a lot of fun. Hopefully, some of these women will go on to ride independently and We hope that some people will also take advantage of the cycle buddy scheme, which pairs experienced riders with nervous new riders. So this will help people, more women feel confident on the road. I hope it will be like that.”
The ride begins at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on Sunday, March 3 at 12:30 p.m. To participate, register here. If you would like to sign the petition before Sunday, you can do so here.