Khothalang Leuta is a heroine on two wheels in the African country from which she hails In Lesotho women do not usually ride bicycles at all a must have accessory in the ladies world It and the subsequently developed step through frame made bicycles even more accessible to women Trailblazing female cyclists conquer the world Toward the end of the 19th century bicycles expe rienced their fi rst true boom even though initial ly cycling still tended to be a pastime enjoyed by members of the middle class A bicycle was some thing you had to be able to aff ord Prices went down and bikes became a means of mass trans portation only around the turn of the century when progressive industrialization enabled mass pro duction In the nineteen twenties droves of fe male workers would pedal to the factories in the morning and from the nineteen fi fties onward if not earlier cycling had become a normal activity for both genders However not all regions in the world were hit by the bike driven wave of emancipation In Iran and Afghanistan women are even completely prohib ited from riding bikes in public In staunchly con servative Saudi Arabia they ve been allowed to use bicycles only since 2013 subject to severe restrictions and only if accompanied by a male That year also saw the release of Wadjda a mov ie made by female Saudi Arabian writer and direc tor Haifaa al Mansour It tells the story of a young girl dreaming of owning a bicycle That s something many girls and women in Afri ca can only dream of as well Numerous initiatives worldwide are aiming to change that For instance since it was formed in 2005 World Bicycle Relief has delivered more than 635 000 bicycles to re mote regions so that women there can get from A to B faster and use the gain in time for better ac cess to education healthcare and income oppor tunities The story of Khothalang Leuta from Lesotho who used to be a shy girl living in poverty is a deep ly moving one On a BMX track in her home town of Roma that was built with donations Khothalang became part of a cultural transformation because women do not usually ride bicycles in Lesotho By now the 18 year old is celebrating international success and has paved the way for other girls to venture out onto the race track I ve become an inspiration to young girls here It s amazing and I just hope that I can do my best I know I can she said just before traveling to Portugal to participate in the 2021 Red Bull UCI Pump Track World Cham pionships Revolutions How Women Changed the World on Two Wheels Author Hannah Ross takes her readers on a journey starting with the beginnings of cycling in the 19th century when women had to overcome incredible resistance to the present age The bicycle as a true feminist freedom machine First pusblished in Great Britain in 2021 by Weidenfeld Nicolson Number of pages 352 ISBN 978 1 4746 1137 4 ISBN eBook 978 1 4746 1139 35 TIME TRAVEL

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