Bicycling and the life course: the start-stop-start experiences of women cycling *Jennifer Bonham & Anne Wilson Geographical and Environmental Studies University of Adelaide *Corresponding author: jennifer.bonham@adelaide.edu.au Abstract Growing interest in the bicycle as a sustainable form of transport has helped to foreground questions of gender and mobility. In English speaking countries such as Australia, women’s lower rates of cycling have been well documented. Barriers to cycling identified by both men and women are likely to impact particularly heavily upon women given their on-going, significant domestic and carer responsibilities. However, intra-urban differences in rates of women cycling suggest an inter-play between spatial context and lifecycle stage that influences women’s participation in cycling. This paper reports on a qualitative study into Australian women’s experiences of cycling through the life course and focuses on the circumstances in which they take up or give up cycling and the spatial contexts in which this occurs. Forty nine women participated in the study. The study found that all respondents learned to cycle between the ages of 5 and 12 and most stopped in the early years of secondary school. Almost two thirds of the respondents had returned to cycling several times through the life course. Women took up or gave up cycling through a conjunction of circumstances but women in their early 20s emphasised the importance of social relationships in taking up cycling and women in their late 30s (and older) focused on health and fitness. Becoming mothers or grandmothers was given as a reason for starting, but also for stopping cycling. Moving house, changing jobs or changes in personal relationships also led to changes in cycling. As a small scale study, the findings of the research are limited but it does suggest productive new ways of thinking about and researching everyday mobility. Rather than assuming a linear view of everyday mobility – i.e. that people tend to walk/cycle as children then catch public transport/drive as adults – this study suggests that women are quite open to incorporating bicycling for transport (mixed with other purposes) into their lives at different times according to their circumstances. Keywords Cycling, Lifecourse, Women and Transport, Active Travel, Sustainable Transport 1 Introduction Growing interest in the bicycle as a sustainable form of transport has helped to foreground questions of gender and mobility (Dickson et al 2003; Krizek et al 2005; Emond et al. 2009). At an international scale, countries with an even gender split in cycling also appear to have high overall rates of cycling. The Netherlands, Denmark and Japan have high levels of utility cycling and similar rates of cycling amongst women and men (ECM 2004; Emond et al.