KIN 249: Lecture 7.3

Lecture Notes

For now—and for the rest of this lecture—I would like to focus on a more historical side to this question of women in sport. So let's take a closer look at Garvey's essay about "Reframing the Bicycle." This essay gives you a good perspective on gender, sporting activities, and modern society. Garvey does a terrific job of setting the scene: she places the bicycle and bicycle riding in several larger contexts of modern society, including medical theories, social conventions, and technological development. As we talk through several of Garvey's main points, I want to be sure you have a chance to see some images and advertisements that are similar to the ones she discusses. Here, you see the high wheel bicycle that was almost exclusively used by men. It was considered dangerous and difficult. Women rarely rode these high wheelers. The safety bicycle represented one way to tap into an untapped market: female riders. In the image on the right you can see a safety bicycle. These are pretty much the same bikes we have today. In the 1890s they were a revolution for bike manufacturers, and for female riders.