A project that gives free bicycles to girls and a soap opera that subverts the normal stereotypes are challenging deep-seated patriarchal social norms“I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world,” said American women’s suffragist Frances Willard in the 1800s, epitomising how bicycles were caught up with women’s rights and social reform in the US. Back then the image of a woman on a set of wheels symbolised a swelling tide of transportation independence and freedom from restrictive Victorian fashion for women.speedily forward a century later, and halfway across the world in the Indian state of Bihar,and a similar revolution is afoot. Bicycles gifted by the state government are teaching families that their girls can move around fearlessly, attend school like their brother and act on their ambitions, and untethered to cultural expectations of their role in society. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com