It has been another great year working with the Cycling Victoria Women and Girls' Commission. Here is the annual report that outlines the highlights. Thanks to everyone for their contributions and passion for women's cycling. It has been a blast.
Monique Hanley, Chair
It gives me great pleasure to summarise another exciting year for the Women and Girl’s Commission. In 2013 we welcomed six new members to the Commission, bringing new enthusiasm, ideas and passion for women’s cycling. This combined well with our returning members, sharing their experience and helping us to complete some outstanding projects from 2012. Here are some of the highlights from 2013.
A highlight from the start of the year was the inaugural
International Women’s Day breakfast in March. Cycling Victoria introduced a
series of awards to help recognise the achievements of those who work hard to
promote women in cycling. Congratulations to the award winners:
Women’s Development Initiative of the Year: Rob Carsen, Cykel Events, for the Women’s Grand Prix
Women of Change: Liz Hall (Hawthorn CC), Tina McCarthy (Wheel Women) and Kaylene Chaprionere (Warragul CC / Chilli Cycles)
Iris Dixon Women of the Year: Gaelene Snelling (St Kilda CC)
We hope this becomes an iconic event on our calendar.
Women’s Development Initiative of the Year: Rob Carsen, Cykel Events, for the Women’s Grand Prix
Women of Change: Liz Hall (Hawthorn CC), Tina McCarthy (Wheel Women) and Kaylene Chaprionere (Warragul CC / Chilli Cycles)
Iris Dixon Women of the Year: Gaelene Snelling (St Kilda CC)
We hope this becomes an iconic event on our calendar.
The Toolkit for Clubs: Attracting and Retaining Women
and Girls was released in July, providing guidance for clubs on how to
become more ‘friendly’. Key tips include an updating websites to ensure they
provide recent news, contact details of club members and images of women; a
base welcome document to adapt and send to new members; and a guide for welcome
officers when calling new members to welcome them to the club. The guide has
received excellent feedback and is now placed on the new Cycling Victoria
website for easy access for clubs (Get Involved/Women and Girls/Tools and
resources for Clubs). Our thanks to Sue Madden, Gaelene Snelling, Lisa Byrne,
Liz Hall and Ann-Michel Greenwood for their contributions.
Cycling Victoria received significant funding over three
years from VicHealth focussed on increasing the role and presence of women in
cycling. This year we were able to highlight some of the success stories from
this program through a series of brilliantly captured videos from Jake Lucas
Media. Featured case studies include the Dirty Deeds Cyclocross skills clinics
for women and the Hawthorn Cycling Club women’s development program, resulting
in a number of teams competing at the Club Teams Time Trial in July. You can
view these videos on the women’s section of the CV website.
Our Commission hosted two workshops to help increase
awareness of the importance of sharing stories about women’s cycling. The
first, held in May, focussed on Social Media awareness. We thank Eliza Ryan for
her significant contribution to this event and to guest speakers Belinda Hayes,
Andrew Blake and Von Micich. The second workshop was held in August and
focussed on how to pitch stories to the media and how to write media releases.
Our guest presenters included Matt Keenan, Hamish Fitzsimmons, Carolyn Turner,
Kay Ansell and Caelli Greenbank. The workshop was extremely insightful for all
who participated and we thank everyone for their contributions.
The Breeze Rides
program trains women to become ride leaders in their local communities and was
funded in 2012 by Sport and Recreation Victoria. In 2013 the program continued
to expand, with over 50 women completing the course training components and a
current waiting list for more training courses. The program has also provided a
number of unplanned benefits, such as the partnership arrangement between
Cycling Victoria and The Squeaky Wheel to support their Pushy Women Excursion
series aimed at women who are not regular riders. Our challenge moving forward
is to secure ongoing funding to ensure we can continue this well into 2014 and
beyond.
The Women’s Racing
Structure Guide was another major achievement for 2013, brought about in
partnership with the Women and Girl’s Commission, the CV board and CV race
management team. This sets policy in place to ensure all State level events now
provide equal prize money for women and men, and provides further guidance to
encourage clubs and promoters to do the same. We believe this is a world first,
and the move has attracted interest from the UCI, the USA and Canada. We thank
Kipp Kaufmann for his drive to see this project to completion.
To finish off our busy year, we worked with the CV
Development Team to offer the Master Class series for women seeking to improve
their bike skills. The road sessions were led by Bec Domange, and the track
sessions were led by Vanessa Bof. Once again these sessions were extremely
popular.
In terms of our membership numbers, our female membership
continues to increase its share of overall membership. In the past 12 months,
30% of all new members to CV have been female. The female share of overall
membership is now over 16%, a rise of 2% over the past 18 months. The changes
to our racing structure have also seen a dramatic increase in female race
participation from club level through to VRS and NRS level. Providing a range
of grades has been the key to encourage all women to try racing. It is the
winning formula, and we must continue to work on ways to maintain this interest
and joy in racing!
While we have made gains in many areas, we still need to
work harder to ensure this growth is sustainable and is across all aspects of
cycling in Victoria. Women remain under represented as leaders, particularly at
Commission level. We are yet to make real gains in increasing the number of
female Commissaires or higher credentialed Coaches. After some discouraging
growth stats, we will also need to revisit how we market the sport to masters
women, and continue our investment and resources on encouraging and retaining
our junior women.
I would like to thank all members of the 2013 Commission for
their wonderful contributions and commitment: Gaelene Snelling, Lisa Byrne, Liz
Hall, Sue Madden, Andrew Blake, Andrew Fitzgerald, Sam Gow, Michelle Jackson,
Ann-Michel Greenwood, Genevieve Sutherland, Karen Snibson, Tina McCarthy and
Bec Domange. The Commission would not be where it is without the support and
dedication from the CV Development Manager, Mark Drehlich. And as always, our
gratitude to all those actively supporting women, specifically to President
Glen Pearsall and CEO Kipp Kaufmann.
This will be my final report as Chair of the Women and
Girl’s Commission. I have had a terrific three years working with some amazing
people and seeing significant change occur for women’s cycling in Victoria. I
hope I can encourage more people to step forward and be the change they wish to
see.
Monique Hanley
Chair, Cycling Victoria Women and Girl’s Commission
Chair, Cycling Victoria Women and Girl’s Commission
