The Ladies Bicycle – Godsend or Gimmick?
by Nic in Bicycle Types
So you’re a lady and you want to get a bicycle. You’ll obviously need a ladies bicycle then, won’t you? Well, not necessarily. Or rather, just because a bike in a shop has a label saying it’s a ladies bicycle, that might not really mean it was designed and constructed with a woman’s needs in mind. This is the 21st century and women very often have just as much spending power as the men. That has seeded many marketeer’s minds with the idea that the female’s purse is a rich and untapped resource, to be plundered using slick marketing spiel and a bewildering display of indecipherable jargon. Don’t be fooled. It is pathetically simple to take a men’s bike, shrink it down and paint it in pastel shades and call it the women’s model. Actually, it will be of no benefit to you at all. It was all just a gimmick to sucker you in.
This sort of begs the question, do ladies bicycles really exist, and do they offer anything that will really be of benefit to the female cycle enthusiast? If designed correctly, the answer is yes. But this starts with the design of the bicycle frame geometry itself; you can’t just shrink down the frame of a men’s bike and call it a “specially made” bicycle for ladies! If ever in doubt when you are in a store, go wandering about and see if they have the same model for men – find the men’s small size and see if it is identical to the ladies larger size. If they are the same, then keep wandering about until you find the store exit, and use it.
At this point, you may be wondering (rather than still wandering!) what sort of things do make a difference with women’s bicycles. If a shrunken down men’s bike is a gimmick, what exactly constitutes a godsend in the world of ladies road bicycles, or mountain bicycles if that’s what you are after? You should be looking for a slightly shorter top tube – that’s the bar which you have to step over to get on the bike, running from just under the handlebars to just under the saddle. A shorter top tube will bring the handlebars closer to the saddle and that means you will not have to stretch so far. Often the head tube will also be shorter – the head tube is the part of the frame that is connected to the front forks, and handlebar stem. To further reduce the reach between saddle and handlebars, the stem may be shorter and more upright than a stem on a man’s bike.
Some other nice touches to look out for on the best ladies bicycle models are narrower handlebars and grips, short-reach brake levers (so that smaller hands can actually reach them!), saddles specifically for women, perhaps smaller pedals and a shorter crankarm (the part that the pedal is attached onto), and preferably the frame should be made from strong but lightweight materials.
If you can find a ladies road bicycle that you like the look of, and which has all or most of these features, it is time to ask for a test drive. You will have found as near a perfect ladies bicycle as you are going to find without spending thousands on a bespoke, made-to-measure cycle. And if you have been riding gimmicks in the past, you will feel like you have really found “the one” this time round.
