Gender Impact

The Warburton Mountain Bike Destination is due to prepare a Gender Impact Assessment on the Warburton Mountain Bike Destination. However, it is unlikely to be honest.

Mountain Biking is a 90% male dominated sport and no amount of encouraging women to participate makes up for it. Ask yourself, why are we continually pressuring women to join male sports instead of investing in female dominated sports?

Instead of encouraging women to join male sports why don’t we:

Ask her what she wants

Here are the statistics:

Think about it. 28% of females are 2 month olds? three year olds? 5 year olds? Under nine. If you take that component out as manipulating the statistics then the Aucycling data is closer to 87% male.

The lower statistics are the memberships in clubs, the higher statistics are in trail use data and submissions even though the mountain bikers got their girlfriends and wives to put in submissions, even though some of those were non mountain bikers. What does that tell you? You can be a member of a club and not mountain bike or not mountain bike very often or be signed up by your father or partner, however, to put in a submission or to upload your ride data to Trailforks you need to be a lot keener rider.

Most of the mountain biking advertising is now covered in female riders. Female riders are increasingly being put forward to be spokespersons. All this to cover for the fact that this has been male driven from the start. But the sport is still 90% male and the prime movers and shakers in this project that are mountain bikers? Even higher.

And what did the project say when applying for funding?

Building Better Regions Fund
Infrastructure Projects Stream
Application from the Shire of Yarra Ranges:
$3,000,000

“The investment in the high quality WMBD trail network will support the broader objectives of increasing female physical activity levels, increasing the perception of safety and creating a greater connection with the local community. These elements will enhance the wellbeing of women and their families and support the community wide direction in creating a more gender equitable society. It is anticipated that over time this will be a contributor in reducing the incidence of family violence.”

This is the council’s projects own words. It is either lies or extremely naive. Perhaps somewhat desperate. The mountain bike destination will decrease female activity levels for all except the small portion of females who ride mountain bikes while decreasing other female recreational activities.

And the recreations that are being seriously impacted by this project and are actively fighting against it: