Turning a moment into a movement: Gender equality and the campaign for women at the National Hill Climb

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Laurie Pestana(Image credit: Phil Wilks)

This year’s event promises to be different. Of the names on the start sheet, 140 are female – the highest number of female entrants ever to enter this national championship. At the time of writing, over 4,100 people have signed an open letter to the UK’s time trial organisation (Cycling Time Trials, CTT) asking for a rule change requiring equal prize money to the top three finishers, male and female, in each category. As well as this, women are sharing their own stories of hill climbing on social media and inspiring others with the hashtag #climbhighertogether. Combined, women are taking the issue of gender parity into their own hands and raising their voices to speak out against inequality in cycling, with a hope for lasting change.

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Pestana’s campaign has raised the profile of the national championships, and matched sponsors to women’s entries – funding around 90 female riders to take part. But she says the solution runs much deeper than covering entry costs. The campaign makes a statement that says that women are welcome and encouraged to race, empowering them and showing that they are valued before they’ve even touched the start line.

The numbers speak for themselves. Women’s entries are almost three times higher than last year, with a record 140 female names on the start sheet and it doesn’t go unnoticed that Pestana has managed to achieve this in what for many has been a testing year. That said, it’s not all been easy for her. Whilst she says the positives have been awesome – like fantastic sponsors and seeing more women getting involved – she’s also received backlash with personal and threatening messages.

The history of women competing at the National Hill Climb is much more recent than many may realise: the men’s event stretches back to 1944, but 1998 was the first year that women were allowed to compete. In 2003, five years later, a women’s national champion was recognised, and it took until 2012 for medals to be awarded for second and third place in the women’s competition – a change driven by the hosting clubs.

In 2018, I added the section for women’s results to the Wikipedia page for the National Hill Climb. This background matters, as it shows how women have started from a position of inequality. ’Male’ has been the default for hill climbs, and this helps in part to explain the disparity in male and female entries. However, the full picture is much broader and the barriers and obstacles to women racing are numerous, and complicated.

I estimate that between 10-15 per cent of road cyclists in the UK are women, using an imperfect method judging by Strava segments. Therefore, the pool of cyclists drawn from to enter events is much smaller. There are additional barriers linked to that smaller pool and to the historic exclusion of women: feeling like you might not fit in, feeling like an outsider or not knowing any other women who compete in those events.

Finally, and sadly, there are the minority in the sport who reinforce the idea that women are less valid and less welcome, either through speaking to that opinion or providing events where the prizes focus on ‘overall’ placings – wording that might as well be replaced with ‘men’ in hill climbs, listing women as ‘others’ or providing extensive prizes for men with perhaps one or two for women.

Inequality of prizes is a big problem, and this is not the first time women have raised their voices. In fact, many of the veterans of the hill-climb scene comment on how they are fed up of having to raise the issue. This year, despite many clubs offering equal prizes, there have been events where the prize money available for men was more than double that for women, or where prizes were listed as an overall prize and ‘ladies’ in the ‘other’ category.

For the Holme Moss Hill Climb, Nikkola Matthews contacted the organiser in advance to raise issues with the unequal prize structure and received no response. She tells me that she considered not racing in protest but decided instead to make a t-shirt to race in – reading “Equal prizes please”. On the day, she spoke to the organiser and offered a sponsor she had found to match the women’s prizes to the men’s. The organiser refused, saying that he didn’t feel it was appropriate, and further defended his position in an email to participants. The incident generated widespread discussion and support on social media, and ended with Helen Wyman (of the charity Helen 100) paying the missing prize money directly to the female racers.

There is a critique that women don’t deserve equal prizes because they don’t make up an equal proportion of entries. This fails on many levels. I struggle to think of other sports where prizes are given based on the proportion of entrants of a demographic rather than achievement within a category, and it seems beside the point anyway. We should equally value women’s success and be proactively encouraging participation – looking forwards to making cycling a better place, rather than being hung up on what it has been.

Often, defenders of the status quo are quick to point out that it’s a token anyway, and no one enters time trials for the money. If that’s so, then surely there’s more argument for creating a ‘token prize’ for women. A token prize often means an envelope, a podium photograph and a mention in results coverage – all of which raise exposure of women’s racing. Equally, it’s hard to concede the argument that prizes should be unequal because there are fewer women, given the inequality of the starting point.

Experiencing repetitive inequality of prizes drove Haddi Conant to look at what could be done to create a lasting change. Conant was given a road bike for her 18th birthday and hasn’t looked back. She now races for Lifting Gear Products/Cycles in Motion and will be competing at the Nationals. She raced her first hill-climb season last year and was shocked by some of the prizes – an issue that she took up with organisers.

The same has happened this year, on several occasions, and Conant figured it was time to sort it out properly, taking the decision away from individual organisers and taking action on the sport as a whole. Through discussion with her team, a proposal was developed to change the rules of time trials in the UK to require equal prizes for the top three finishers of each category, of both sexes. An open letter, currently amassing over 4,100 signatures, asks for this change to be considered.

Looking to the future, time triallist Michelle Lee wants to take this a step further. Lee is passionate about making time trialling a more inclusive, welcoming place, and co-authored a 2019 survey looking at equality in time trials. Following this, Lee and her colleagues propose a gender-equality standard and accompanying kite mark that organisers can display on promotional materials for events where the equality standard is met. The team behind it is still developing the finer details and hopes to launch the standard and mark for the 2021 season, which would allow organisers a blueprint for equality at events, and allow entrants to identify events that meet the criteria.

Alice Thomson is a cyclist and feminist from Bristol. She races for Bristol South Cycling Club, loves hills and hates inequality. Alice raced her first hill climb a few months after getting her first road bike and it was her gateway drug to competitive cycling. She has previously held the women’s record for Everesting, completed Paris-Brest-Paris (1,200km) last year, and likes to name all of her bikes. Follow her blog here, or on Instagram here.