German Bicycles: Gender Trends


Figure 1.--Here is a boy in 1940 with a typical boy's bike: The different, typical rack, horicontally, where you have to swing a leg (usually the right one with the left one already put onto the left pedal) over and above the seat when you want to start. Women/girls with skirts cannot do this. Another nice feature, the pump at the lower part of the rack. Another interesting possibility for boys seen in the photograph wasto have a friend or little brother sit on the horizontal rack, a little dangerous. Girls couldn't do that on their bikes.

Both boys and girls enjoyed bikes. There were some differences in terms of construction. A German reader explains, "The lowered, curved rack with two reinforcements for stability, the front-wheel-brake with a handle at the right side of the steering gear, the bell mounted above the gear, the luggage carrier behind, the net over the back wheel (so woman´s skirts are not caught in the wheel)." We think that this was common throughout Europe. We know it was in Canada and the United Strates. All for the same reason. This was a typical bike for girls and women. Almost all women and girls at the time wore skirts. So the reinfocing rods in front of the seat had to be lowered. Boys' bikes had reinforcing rods straight across because of course they wore pants. If you look closer at the photograph on the previous page shows a boy probably riding his sister's bike. Here we see a boy with a boy bike giving his little brother a ride on the cross bar (figure 1). Girls had trouble riding boys' bikes because of their skirts. Boys had, however, no troble riding girls' bikes. Many of the impages we have found show boys riding bikes. We suspect this was most common, but we can not yet confirm it.







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Created: 2:51 AM 11/16/2013
Last updated: 2:51 AM 11/16/2013