A Ride Through International Women’s Day

 Today is International Women’s Day.

As I’ve mentioned on other posts, Susan B.Anthony—who didn’t live to exercise a right for which she fought—understood what an effective vehicle, if you will, on the long road to equality:

“I think the bicycle has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride byon a bicycle.”

She is right in more ways than one. Bicycles themselves gave women mobility they didn’t have before.  But, just as important, it loosened women’s dress standards:  Bloomers, shorter and split skirts and the elimination of corsets were among the sartorial shifts bicycles ushered. 

Having greater freedom of movement allowed women to move more freely and perform a greater variety of jobs. I can’t help but to think it was an important step in women seeing our bodies, and ourselves, on their and our own terms rather than in the physical and ideological constraints imposed by men. I can understand, a little, how exhilarating that could feel: I think I felt something like it when I realized I could live as a woman on my terms.

And bicycling has been an important part of that journey.  When all is said and done, though I ride, not only in the spirit of Ms. Anthony, but also of Cyndi Lauper:

 Girls just wanna have fun.  Really, what better reason is there to ride?

Oh—speaking of clothing: Sophie Germain’s parents took hers away.  Why?  Because she was teaching herself mathematics, which was not “proper” for a young lady. When that didn’t work, they returned her vestments and let her go to school.

She would make important contributions to mathematics—including work in something called Elasticity Theory, which has proved invaluable to engineers—including one Gustavo Eiffel.

I learned about her when I found myself on a street named for her (rue Sophie Germain) as I cycled south from—you guessed it—the Eiffel Tower.  And, being the curious person I am, I looked her up.

A Ride For Sally

When we're young, it's difficult and even hurtful to learn that people we admired--whether celebrities or family members, teachers or others in our everyday lives--are, well, people.  We might find out that our favorite actor, writer, athlete, aunt or uncle did immoral or even illegal things.  Sometimes finding out the dark side of someone we took as a model for one aspect or another of our lives is painful even after we thought we'd "seen it all".

One celebrity about whom I never became disillusioned is Sally Ride.  In fact, I found myself admiring her even more as the years went by.  It seems that being the first American  woman in space was just one of many accomplishments in her life.  Few people have ever done more to encourage girls and young women to study math, science and technology--fields from which they were too often discouraged, dissuaded or even bullied out of studying or working.  

I think now of Sophie Germain, whose parents took away her clothes--and heat and light at night--in an attempt to stop her from studying mathematics, which was deemed inappropriate for a "proper" young lady.  I also think, in this vein, about 1977 Nobel Laureate Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, whose parents wanted her to get a college education but protested when she decided to study Physics on the grounds that "no man would want to marry" her.  

If Dr. Ride faced such opposition from her family or anyone else, she never let on.  In fact, she did not let on much about her personal life, including her relatively brief marriage to a man and her later, much longer partnership with a woman.  Most people did not know about those things until they read her obituary three years ago.

Whatever the circumstances of her life, she understood the difficulties young women and girls faced--and still face--in pursuing STEM careers.  So, she did everything she could to help them--and their teachers, who sometimes were not confident of their own abilities to encourage their students in those areas.

Here she is helping a student understand some of the principles of gyroscopic motion with--what else?--a bicycle wheel:




She would have been 64 years old today. If I could be in Northern Virginia two weeks from now and I were still racing, I'd take part in the Ride Sally Ride.