It's no secret that women's professional cycling gets the short end of the stick with regard to pay, distance, and media exposure equity. In this presentation, I compare cycling to other male dominated sports, Title IX, share current trends and statistics, and offer ways to grow the sport of professional women's cycling after arming you with the facts.

1. GROWING WOMEN’S PRO
CYCLING FROMTHE
GROUND UP
Arm yourself with the facts, the myths, and truths so you can
grow the sport!

2. RACHEL SCOTT
@MISSBIKESALOT
• Cat 2 Road, Cat 1 Mountain, Bad
Cyclocross racer, daily bicycle
commuter
• First bike in 2003, started triathlon in
2007 and bike racing in 2008.
• Marketer by day for a software
company. Previously in outdoor
industry.
• Co-founded Naked Women’s Racing,
sat on BoD for BRAC, co-organized
Women’s Summit, and women’s
mentoring programs.

3. NAKED WOMEN’S RACING
A COLORADO WOMEN’S CYCLING PROJECT
• Co-founded team in 2010 with
3 women
• 2011 - 6 women primarily road
• 2012 - 20 women primarily
road/track
• 2013 - 25 women racing, 30 on
new club, still road
• 2014 - 50 racers, 60+ club
members, all disciplines

4. WHY OUR MODEL IS
DIFFERENT
• Focus on getting as many women
as possible into the sport
• Support a charity to unite our
team around
• Budget money for clinics for
beginners to advanced riders
• Focus more on group rides
• Give money back to encourage
race participation

6. WHAT ARE ISSUES PLAGUING
CYCLING
• Disparities in Salaries (Cycling and women in
general)?
• Lack of Media Coverage and Fans?
• Lack of Role Models?
• But there’s hope…and will show you why.

7. DISPARITIES IN CYCLING
SALARIES IN ROAD
• The pro women's peloton is intelligent,
well spoken, interesting, and unbelievably
fit. Unfortunately, they're also almost
completely invisible.
• Quoting fromVelonews, for men the UCI
mandates a minimum salary of $29,000 to
$34,500 for Pro Continental riders and
$33,000 to $41,500 for ProTeam riders,
with an average ProTeam salary of
$331,500.
• There's no such UCI minimum for
women's racing. Many earning $6,000, and,
as an unconfirmed but very believable
estimate, up to a quarter of the peloton
making nothing at all.

8. WHAT ABOUT CYCLOCROSS?
• Top Salary - 106,292 Euro
• Bottom Salary - 28,647
Euro
• Doesn’t include prize
money but still is modest in
comparison to other sports

9. WOMEN’S CYCLOCROSS
SALARIES
• Top Salary -
20, 722 Euro
• Bottom Salary -
5,357 Euro
• ok, how about
track?

10. TRACK RACING?
• Unless you’re at the top,
top, top of the sport, good
luck.
• Sarah Hammer, 9 time
world champion isn’t living a
life of the rich and famous.

11. MOUNTAIN BIKING?
• No minimum wage.
• Difficult to find info.

12. HOW ABOUT IN BUSINESS?
• Startups with at least one
woman on their founding team
are roughly 18 percent less likely
to attract equity investors than
their all-male counterparts,
according to 2013 data from an
ongoing survey by Emory
University. Yet they are almost
20 percent more likely to
have generated revenue.
• For venture-backed startups with
five or more female executives,
the report found 61 percent
were successful and only 39
percent flopped, compared with
a 50 percent failure rate overall.

13. • 7.6% difference between the salaries that women MBAs were getting and those that men
were getting.A lot had been written on the comparable work issue already and much of the
blame for the difference had been placed on organizations—basically institutional sexism.
• One of the questions she asked people is,“When you got your offer, did you attempt to
negotiate?” She found that about 7% of women attempted to negotiate, while 57% of men
did. Of those people who negotiated, they were able to increase their salary by over 7%. So,
you can see that if women and men negotiated in similar proportions, that 7.6% difference
would be cut dramatically.
• One of the things I ask my students is: If you think of a $100,000 salary, and one person
negotiates and gets $107,000, and the other doesn’t—what’s the cost of that? In a simple-
minded way, some people say,“Is $7,000 really worth risking my reputation over?”And I
agree, $7,000 may not be worth your reputation.
• But that’s not the correct analysis, because that $7,000 is compounded. If you and your
counterpart who negotiated are treated identically by the company—you are given the same
raises and promotions—35 years later, you will have to work eight more years to be as
wealthy as your counterpart at retirement. Now, the question is: $7,000 may not be worth
the risk, but how about eight years of your life?

14. 8YEARS OFYOUR LIFE!

15. MEDIA COVERAGE
• 96% of all television sports coverage focuses on men, according to a study
released by the Women's Sports Foundation.
• “We run stories online, and the numbers don’t lie.They don’t get the clicks.
They don’t get the reads,” says Neal Rogers, the editor in chief ofVeloNews,
the leading U.S. cycling magazine.
• There are around 700 members of the Sports Journalists Association – 10% of
those are women and only 5% of those are sports journalists.
• But for sponsorship to truly gel, the media is required. It doesn’t matter how
many races you’re winning, how personable your athletes are or how incredible
their stories are if nobody is writing about them. Cyclists across the board gripe
about a lack of media coverage, but things are even tougher for women.

16. Do you read magazines that don’t have women’s
coverage? What are you reading? What are you
watching? What are you tweeting?

17. ROLE MODELS?
• Before you started cycling,
could you name a female
professional rider?
• Any other cyclist other than
Lance Armstrong? I couldn’t.
• Familiarize yourself with
these women:

18. Alison Dunlap,Amy Dombroski, Maureen Manley, Katie Compton,
Kristin Armstrong, Evelyn Stevens, Georgia Gould, MarianneVos, Connie
Carpenter,Alison Dunlap,Amber Neben, LauraVan Gilder, Marla Streb,
Sue Haywood,Alison Powers, Coryn Rivera, Mara Abbott, Rushlee
Buchanan, Rachel Heal,Anna Grace Christiansen, Carmen Small, Evelyn
Stevens,Tayler Wile,Annie Ewart, Brianna Walle, Courteney Lowe,
AnikaTodd, Jasmin Glasser, Jo Kiesanowski , Kendall Ryan, Page
Robertson, Sara Headley,AlisonTetrick,Amber Gaffney, Nicola Cranmer,
Mari Holden, Fiona Strout, Gillian Carleton, Kate Chilcott, Korina Huizar,
Liza Rachetto, Elle Anderson,Allison Beveridge,Annie Foreman-Mackey,
Ariane Bonhomme, Catherine Desserault, Kinley Gibson, Stephanie
Roorda, Olivia Dillon, Amber Neben, Amy Cutler, Anna Sanders, Erica
Zaveta, Christina Gokey, Robin Farina, Heather Fischer, Sonya Looney,
Pua Mata, Catharine Pendrel, Jeannie Longo, and the list goes on….

19. OR BECOME A ROLE MODEL
YOURSELF!

20. WHYTHERE’S HOPE
• What other sports have
experienced this inequality
and how did they fix it?
• Let’s look atTitle IX

21. OTHER SPORTS?
• Marathons - Kathrine
Switzer in 1967
• Tennis - Billy Jean King in
the 70s
• Marie Marvingt? (Marveh)

22. FIRST WOMAN
TO COMPLETE
TOUR DE
FRANCE IN 1908

23. WHAT’STITLE IX?
Title IX requires that schools (1) provide male and
female students with equal opportunities to play
sports, (2) give male and female athletes their fair
shares of athletic scholarship dollars, and (3) provide
equal benefits and services (such as facilities, coaching,
and publicity) to male and female athletes overall.

24. RESULTS 40+YEARS LATER?
• Participation in elementary and secondary schools has skyrocketed sinceTitle IX. In
1972, only 295,000 girls competed in high school sports, wheras 3.67 million boys did.
By 2010-2011 the number of girls playing had risen to 3.2 million and the number of
boys to 4.5 million.
• But schools still provide 1.3 million fewer chances for girls to play sports in high school
and girls of color or different ethnicities have it even worse.
• In 1972, when fewer than 32,000 women played sports, women received only 2% of
school’s athletics budgets and there were no athletic scholarships.Today, 193, 232
women compete, over 6x the pre-Title IX rate.
• But playing field still not level. More than half of students at NCAA schools are women,
they receive only 44% of athletic participation opportunities.

25. MYTH BUSTERS
• “Lack of depth in women's cycling – where 150 men lined up for
the Olympic road race in 2012, there were only 66 women on the
start line.”
• “Even if we offer equal pay, women still don’t show up.”
• “Women aren’t capable of doing the same distances”
• “Bicycle riding isn’t popular among women” - Bicycle riding ranked
#9 out of 47 popular sports for total female participation in 2011,
surpassing yoga, tennis, and softball

26. TRUTHS
• Women bicyclists were more likely than men to have a: Facebook
account (85% vs 64%),Twitter account (34% vs 24%), personal
website (38% vs 20%)!
• In 2013, 13% of USA Cycling members were women and in
Colorado, over the last two years, we’ve been able to grow to
17%. 5% difference than any other state.
• From 2003 to 2012, the number of women and girls participating
in bicycling rose 20%, while dropping .5% among men and boys.

27. HOW CAN
YOU
INFLUENCE
CHANGE?

28. • Get a woman on a bicycle and show them the ropes! Join a team! Ride to
work! Ride for fun!
• If you don’t have a female role model in the sport, get one or become one.
• Talk to someone who has more experience than you do.
• Be nice and celebrate each other’s strengths!You all were noobs at some
point! It’s a scary sport so be supportive.
• Negotiate if not for yourself, your children, your family or your cat!
• Know your worth. Men can look at a sheet of paper with 2 things they can
do and 10 things they can’t and still know they can rock out.Women look
and see 10 things they can do and 2 they can’t and don’t even try.
• Fake it till you make it.

29. -Susan B.Anthony on the “freedom machine”
“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has
done more to emancipate women than anything else
in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and
self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a
woman ride by on a wheel… the picture of free,
untrammeled womanhood."
-unknown
“If you want something that you’ve never had before,
you’re going to have to do something that you’ve
never done before in order to get it.”

30. MORE READING
• http://femgeniusesdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/knockout.pdf
• http://www.cxmagazine.com/takes-mens-womens-payouts-cross-questions-answers
• http://cdn-media.leanin.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Negotiationfinal3.15.pdf
• http://leanin.org/education/negotiation/
• http://viget.com/advance/conference-recap-startup-phenomenon-women
• http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/16/female-entrepreneurs-fight-their-piece-
pie-250065.html
• http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/xx-factor/Why-We-Ignore-Womens-
Sports-20120717.html