In this series of interviews freelance writer, Louise Turner has been speaking with leading voices in climate activism, discussing why climate justice is a feminist issue.
WHY’S CLIMATE JUSTICE A FEMINIST ISSUE – INTERVIEW WITH BELINDA EVERETT
BELINDA EVERETT
Belinda is Greater Manchester’s Bicycle Mayor, a Community Interest Company founder of Bee Pedal Ready and one of Cycle UK’s Top 100 Women in Cycling of 2022.
She engages in ride leading, teaching, bike maintenance workshops and speaking across the North West of England, and political representation internationally. This is underpinned by her core values and perspectives on what cycling means, and has meant historically, for women, its present lack of diversity across class, race and gender, and the potential it has to change lives.
Belinda helps women and diverse groups learn to ride, repair and enjoy bicycles – from first-time learners and beginners’ mechanics to city-wide group rides in collaboration with grassroots women’s collectives, and organisations including Rapha, Canal & River Trust, Sport England, TFGM (Transport for Greater Manchester) and many more.
Belinda co-led Manchester’s first International Women’s Day 2023 ride with over 60 cyclists from around the region. Belinda asks the cycling world to engage with diversity now, particularly in mechanics (UK bike mechanics is currently 92% men). Also, she implores us to understand how history, class, gender, and race impact access and our chances to enjoy this freeing, healthy and powerful activity.
Photo credit: @northernroadie | @fiifinchett
Bee, thank you so much for speaking with me today. To start, you’ve previously shared how the bicycle is a political object. Can you say more about that?
Throughout history, women have had to fight to be able to ride the bicycle. For me, especially as a woman of colour, there’s a woman I look to from the 1800s called Kittie Knox. She fought to get on the bike, and this was the time of Victorian dress with petticoats! She fought to get onto the bike, but not only that, they wouldn’t allow her to stay on it! They tried to ban her from races because of the colour of her skin. Then, with the Victorian dress, she re-designed and made it into pantaloons. These pantaloons were then worn by Suffragette Alice Hawkins cycling around Leicester in the suffragist campaign in 1914 causing public outrage as the first woman to wear pantaloons in public.
Photo credit: Bee Pedal Ready
Also with the suffragettes, Emily Pankhurst and many others, when they were going for the right to vote, the bike was a massive part of it. We’re very fortunate in the UK to have the liberty to step outside, get on our bike and ride somewhere. For many around the globe, that still isn’t the case.
In this country, I will also say that many people don’t have access to a bike. That’s something that we should always remember. But to go back to your point, I think the bike for women is a political starting point.
Photo credit: Bee Pedal Ready – Manchester’s first IWD ride 2023
Photo credit: Ryan Goff
Photo credit: Bee Pedal Ready
What happened with the Suffragettes?
I have it in a book I’m reading at the minute called ‘Revolutions’ by Hannah Ross. At the time when Emily Pankhurt and the rest of the women were going for the right to vote, cycling had started to become popular, the Bicycle Boom. When bikes were established, it was for white males, and class was definitely a significant factor . Over time they started to redesign the bike. The dropped-down bar was introduced… They realised that they could make more money out of it, and they started to! So women began to start cycling, but again, it was for a certain class. It wasn’t for all. But, the women in the suffragette movement used the fact that they could go on the bicycle to push their politics.
You’ve also got to remember at the time, even though high class women did go onto these bikes, they were still frowned upon! There were places they built an effigy where they basically stuffed a kind of stuffing (dummy) of a woman in 1897 (sparked by male outrage at Cambridge University granting women full degrees) pulled it up into the air where she was on a bike and started throwing bricks at it. Then dropped it down and completely mauled it
because as far as they were concerned, women should not be riding bikes. So when you think about that, it’s absolutely horrendous. Quite ruthless.
So you’re saying there’s been a lot of pushback historically against women on bicycles?
Massive. Huge resistance.
Keeping with this thread, thinking of gender but also class and race, how do you see these issues playing out in cycling today?
These are the things that I talk about all the time… You’ve got elites and sport and then you’ve got the cycle community element. Leisure, they call it. Two completely different paths when we’re talking about the same bike.
Let’s talk about race and culture. What I’ve seen is there’s talent everywhere within many different cultures and not just the white community, which is the strong image that we have when it comes to cycling in this country. From my experience, it’s a complete lack of opportunity and funding for young people to be pushed into cycling on a more competitive scale which makes cycling become exclusive. It becomes for children of parents who can afford to have a carbon fibre bike or to take the kids to certain venues. I realised when I was working at the National Cycling Center and at Platt Fields Park BMX Track in Manchester, there was incredible talent in both places, but the children from Platt Fields Park didn’t have the opportunities to progress like the ones at the National Cycling Center. With the kids from Platt, location is massive. They didn’t feel comfortable that they could go and even be accepted at an elite sporting venue. So then it becomes a location issue, as well as the lack of economics and a lack of opportunity. Are these institutions and organisations doing enough? Hell no.
[credit: Rebecca Lupton]
And it’s a similar situation when it comes to women. Sometimes, culturally, it’s not seen to go out riding . I think that’s changing a little bit now, but in certain cultures, it is still something that the boys are encouraged more to do. I also think there’s this presumption, like I mentioned before, that everybody has a bike! There are many people, let’s just take the city of Manchester, that don’t have a bike. I really noticed that when I was working for a cycle proficiency organisation. I’d work in one school in one area, and I’d literally go less than three miles away, and we were having to provide bikes. There is this presumption that every family has a bike. A lot of people don’t have a bike and if they do, it can sometimes be a case of it not being safe to ride.. If the mother or father can’t afford to keep paying for punctures and the upkeep, they’re not going to continue to ride. So there’s those kinds of things.
I think that’s a really good point, Bee. This series so far has been about climate justice and feminism. You’ve touched on the political element but how would you see cycling fitting into issues around climate?
I think the way that the world is going with climate change, it’s not a luxury. It’s a fact that we need to all be getting more on bikes. It’s a necessity. And, we need to know how to fix them.
Can you see it potentially as an opportunity then?
Yes. Obviously, cycling’s not harming the planet at all! We’re in a massive age of change, and there are opportunities there. We’re very fortunate in this country because there are places you have the opportunity to learn how to fix your bike for free.
Photo credit: Bee Pedal Ready
Have you got any thoughts on what you’re offering to the world by helping more women and people of colour get into cycling?
I think the more women learn to take advantage of that opportunity for themselves, because of their carbon footprint, cost of living or how much money they’re gonna save, it benefits everybody. It benefits yourself, your family, stress levels, and mental health. For me it’s a no-brainer. It’s a must.
Photo credit: Bee Pedal Ready
I think as well when we talk about bikes and climate change, we should also be talking about recycling and refurbishing what’s already there. It doesn’t mean going out and buying yourself a new bike. It means recycling and refurbishing bikes, and that’s fun as well! There are so many second-hand bikes out there!
Photo credit: Ryan Goff
Amazing, absolutely. Before you go, is there anything else that you’d like to share with the readers?
I’d like to say that I feel like I’ve started a journey I really was not expecting to be on. It’s a 360 from anything that I thought, but the more I’m involved, the more political I become about the bike and everything it represents. In the future, the bike could represent a lot more. It could and should be more diverse. There could and should be more women on the road and cycling.
![[credit: Rebecca Lupton]](https://www.wen.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/credit-Rebecca-Lupton-.jpeg)
[credit: Rebecca Lupton]
It would be beautiful to know that in the future there are more women-led bike shops. It would be beautiful if I look out onto the road and see many women riding on their own and in groups. Do you know what I mean? These are the things that I get really quite passionate about. This is why I continue with what I’m doing. I feel like I’m at the very beginning of my journey. The more I know, the more knowledge I want to pass on. And for me, that’s powerful, and to be able to pass this on is important.
Photo credit: Bee Pedal Ready
This is already bigger than me. I’m just one drop in the ocean of this. There’s many women like me that are trying to get more women into fixing bikes and to get more women cycling. I think we’re at the beginning of something. It deserves to be, should be, and needs to be, huge!
Photo credit: Bee Pedal Ready
Thank you so much for speaking with us, Bee!
Photo credit: Bee Pedal Ready
Bicycle Association. 2023. Diversity in Cycling Report. Available at: https://www.bicycleassociation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/BA-Diversity-in-Cycling-Report-Final.pdf
Louise Turner is an MSc Environmental Governance student at The University of Manchester and freelance writer at Wen.
Read the full series of interviews with leading activists and academics.
