In the absence of published distances and times ]the only way to indicate Audax prowess is to add AAA points. The more of those get added, the lower the female representation seems to be. So I'd view AAA points as sexist, as they lead to male-dominated events; 'Willy Wavers', which generate endless 'humble bragging' blogs.
Right, let's abolish AAA points events pronto. [and abolish any hilly event with published 'climb' data which would approach or breach former AAA qualifications thereby still leading to "willy waving"] => concentrate all AUK events in East Anglia, Cheshire Plains, &c. Job done, end of 'willy waving'
What is the ideal "female representation" btw?
Well that's an overreaction to a perfectly valid point... I don't believe that ESL is saying abolish the AAA scheme. But I do think they are right that climbing for climbings sake can put some people off. I think there is also a certain amount of willy waving over a quest for AAA points.
As someone who has only ever achieved 1.75 AAA points, and then only by accident, and on a ride that did not advertise itself as having any. I find climbing hard. I'm very much not a climber, I'm fat, I'm not very fit, and I'm on a relatively heavy bike. On a 200 with 2500m of climbing, I finished in 13:26. I wasn't sure I was going to make it, and took a very Amsterdam approach to the red lights on the final couple of km through town to make it to the arrivee in time. I would bring this back to the issue I've ranted about *At LENGTH* wrt to the default gearing of stock bikes just being too high for those who do not have a high power output by default, which effects women more than it does men. Hopefully the new Shimano GRX groupset will help this, tho I fear that it's yet another not quite compatible system, and as such may not have the uptake we'd hope for.
On the above mentioned 200. 38 People were homologated. 37 men. and Me. I can't say if the climbing put the other women off, or if it was the 34°C heat, or the July timing, or that it started in the back end of beyond (Heerlen). But by the same token, I was the only woman on the 300km ride from Groningen on the 17th of August. 13 men, and me. Was this because the weather forecast sucked? was it cos it was long? was it because Groningen is in the back end of beyond?
But if we then look at other events, in this randonneuring year, two events have had 8 women homologate. One was in November last year, from Bergen op Zoom. This was a 200km ride into Zeeland, 95km of stonking tailwind, and 110km of slogging into a 30+kph headwind. But it was really easy to get to from Belgium. Of the 8 women to homologate, one is a member of RNL (Me), 3 are down as Belgian individuals, and the rest are Dutch individuals. The second event with the most women was from Zwolle, in February. This included 1000m of climb in the first 100km, along with 80kph headwinds. Then a cross/tail wind combo on the return leg. Two members of RNL homologated, two are "individual allemand" and the rest are individual Nederland.
So what can we establish from this lot? Well I used to think that correlation implied causation, then I studied stats, and now I don't. Which makes it really hard to draw any strong conclusions from this limited dataset. The 2 hilliest 200's of the Dutch calendar attracted the smallest turnout from women, and also the equal highest. Of these 2, only one gets AAA points by AUK standards.
What I would say is that RNL does publish finishing times. I'm not sure why AUK doesn't.
As a final point of anecdata, I know of at least one woman who this year not only completed an AAA SR series, but did so on fixed, and then went on to complete PBP fixed...
J