In Which Gendered Roles and Rape Culture Help Screw Over the Planet

I wanted to draw your attention to this article in Grist about why fewer women than men, in the US, use biking as a form of transportation. Some of the reasons listed include because employed women perform significantly more housework than their employed male counterparts, leaving less time for a commute that takes longer; women are responsible for more childcare and household errands than their male counterparts, and it's hard to run diverse errands and/or haul children and groceries on a bike; because poverty is feminized, and women are more likely to live in areas where it's not safe to commute; or because women don't think they can bike to work and still look professional when they get there (because it's not like there's a double standard, appearance-wise, or anything...)

Hmm, paging the kyriarchy, would you know anything about this? Most of the points are obvious as elaborated in the article, but I wanted to add that women's bodies are considered objects and even public property in a way that men's bodies never or rarely are; as a result, biking to work (or anywhere else) for a woman can be significantly more stressful than for a man. Not only do they have to deal with all the traffic hazards like men do, but they're more likely to be catcalled, harassed, or assaulted. Women are taught from a young age to be careful when we go out in public, because of all the rapists hiding in the bushes-- the corollary being that, if we are raped or assaulted, it's our own fault for being out in public at all. (The Dominant Kyriarchal Narrative, of course, ignores that most rapes and sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone known to the victim.)

To sum up, a safer world with less policing of gender roles, where women weren't considered objects or targets and men and women split domestic responsibilities more equally, would be a better world entirely in its own right. It would also allow more women to choose to bicycle to work or to run errands, if they wanted, and reduce our collective carbon footprint.