FEATURE
Social media and content manager for Fully Charged, Issy Hobday
to retain female membership year after year. In her first job in the cycling industry, even though she works in a male-dominated team, she’s seen positive movements in the industry towards women – from the sporting and business sides. “It’s been great to see across the industry things like
Zwift sponsoring the first women’s Tour de France Femmes, and I think things are getting better. At Bristol, we used to have to work a little bit harder to try and attract new women. It used to go in waves. So when there were good numbers in the club, it would always attract more, but then as people left the numbers struggled. “It’s different compared to a club. As a team, we work
very well together and things are always heard and picked up on. It’s very harmonious, I never feel there’s much difference. Sometimes it’s just the little things that are different, so I often walk over to the building next door and have a coffee or a chat with one of my female colleagues. We’ll have ‘girl time’ as we call it, and I think that’s important. It’s important to have those things too.”
From the workshop For some, however, the ability to connect with other women at work is non-existent, if you’re the only one in your workspace. A female bike mechanic in a bike shop in London
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who wished to remain anonymous described how there are no facilities for her, and both customers and fellow staff treat her differently based on her gender. “There’s no separate bathroom, no sanitary bin,” she said.
“There’s none of that. You go into the shop and you have to be like a man and are treated like one of them. You do get a lot of sexism in this area, and I have a lot of people come in the shop and say, ‘Oh, I haven’t seen a bike mechanic woman before’. “And it’s not even just the men. It’s the women. They go,
‘Oh, how do you enjoy it? That’s so good, you’re doing a really good job.’ It has got worse over time, to be honest. It’s hard. I enjoy my job, but it’s not easy and you have to be a strong character as a woman to go into an industry where it is very male-dominated.” Alongside verbal discrimination, this bike mechanic has also experienced harassment, verbally and physically. “I had an incident, where I was in the workshop, and this
guy touched me on my ribs. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t want him to, and I told him, ‘no, don’t do that.’ So I then made a formal complaint to my bosses to say, look, I was touched inappropriately. I raised a grievance towards him and I was told that I had to make adjustments to my shifts. So he had to work on different shifts from the ones I had to work, but I had to make the arrangements.
April 2023 | 15
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