Teaching Girls How to Ride a Bicycle: Gender and Cycling in Lunsar, Sierra Leone

Abstract

Women and girls in sub Saharan African countries often face constraints and limitations on their mobility. Social stigmas and a lack of access to means of transport constrain their mobility. In this research a headway is made into understanding the mobility of girls and women in Lunsar, as little is known about how in this region gender is perceived, as well as how those understandings of gender relate to the mobility of women. An overview is given of gender in the Lunsar society, and what the societal norms are for boys and girls. Specific attention is paid to the gender norms that relate to mobility. One of the main findings is that girls’ mobility is constrained with a social stigma that girls who ride a bicycle will lose their virginity. The mobility of adult women is also constrained, a woman who rides a bicycle is deemed to be a prostitute. These constraints that women and girls experience are not a uniform part of society, they are most regularly encountered in the neighboring villages, but not everyone holds to these beliefs. In the second part of this research an analysis is made of how different groups within the Lunsar society understand and view bicycles. It shows that there are multiple interpretations possible, who are sometimes with each other in conflict. Bicycles are mainly seen as a tool for children to go to school, as well as a device to race and sport. These dominating views drown out other potential views, such as the idea that a bicycle can be used for the transportation of goods. Finally, the programs of the NGO Village Bicycle Project are reviewed, and show the effect that teaching girls how to ride a bicycle has an effect on the exclusion of girls riding a bicycle. It shows that teaching girls how to ride a bike increases the mobility of girls whose parents were already accepting of their daughter riding a bicycle, but that effect was not found on girls whose parents were not accepting of that.