The upper bar isn't purely decorative; the triangular structure it makes adds significant rigidity and strength to the frame. Note that on the "girls" mountain bike in the first picture, it still has an "upper" and a "lower" bar, it's just that the upper bar is much lower, and the actual lower bar is almost vestigial, forming a small triangle near the pedal mount.

I actually bike commute on a regular basis, and I wear skirts while I do it. So I much prefer a bike without the high bar, but they're really hard to find these days. Since I usually buy used bikes, I haven't had one in ages.

As a guy, I would have preferred not to have that top bar there. I remember many a time when I would have to make a sudden stop on the brakes, and I would slide off my seat onto that top bar. Ouch!

I always thought the whole thing was weird. It's just easier getting on a bike with a low bar...

I wish we still had the clothes guard. I can't tell you how many pant legs I have caught in the chain mechanism on my bike while pedaling to work. I forget to stuff my pants in my sock. It's a pain to have to change my clothes once I get to work, and it's a pain to get the grease out of my pants.

But I suppose if we brought that back, the guards would only be on women's or girls' or sissy bikes.

That's interesting, I knew that there were "girls" and "boys" bikes but I never knew that the difference was the upper bar. My bike does not have an upper bar, and I find it easier to ride because it makes it easier for me to get on and off the bike without tripping. Actually, I remember when I bought the bike the salesman said to me that I wouldn't have to buy a heavy-duty lock for it because "no one would want to steal a girls' bike."

Re Anon's comment, I recall even as a child my male and female friends both thinking that it was ridiculous that the high bar would be on the "boys bike" since boys' parts were on the outside. Of course, in our patriarchy-influenced mindsets, we saw the solution was to switch the boys and girls bikes rather than eliminate the distinction altogether...not that any of us had the nerve to actually do it. I remember riding boys's bikes when that was all I could access, but I also remember feeling funny about it.

This isn't a US-only phenomenon. I lived in Berlin for a bit in the early '00s and bought a used women's bike there that lacked that top bar. (I'm a man, but it was cheap and I liked the bike, so eh.)

As noted above, a bike with a top bar is structurally sounder, though the degree to which this is important for bikes that only see use on paved surfaces may be debatable. I wonder if part of this is a persistent belief than men need a more "rugged" bike because they're prone to more extreme and rad bike-destroying activities.

After having a few of my friends get thrown from their bikes after having pant legs caught in their bike chains, the return of the clothes-guard might not be a bad thing, especially for people who use their bikes to commute to work.

The gender-differentiation with the high/low bar is dumb, though.

I started reading this blog a while back but never commented, but as an avid cyclist I have to say the top tube bar of a bicycle is not purely decorative as this post suggests. It provides more stiffness to the frame, and thus is more energy efficient under hard pedaling effort. Tour De France racers didn't start racing diamond frame bikes to differentiate them selves as male, it is because it is a faster bike. In children's bikes there will never be such strain on the bike, since their strength is low, as is their weight, so I could see how a top tube is largely irrelevant for kids.

Another frame type aimed mostly for women, called a mixte, has a set of two smaller diameter top tubes that go back to the rear triangle at a lower slope angle than a traditional diamond frame bike. This allows for still easily getting on with a skirt or dress but with much more lateral frame stiffness than a woman's bike without a top tube.

Bikes can be used for many purposes, but for anyone looking to go fast or far, or trek up hills, the energy efficiency provided by having a top tube, makes the top tube far more than an accessory to imply gender.

They actually do still make clothes guards, they're an extra you can order on some styles.

My husband is studying bicycle repair and said the same thing, that bikes with the top bar are sturdier and more stable. I found that horribly disappointing because I love to wear skirts and have a hard time mounting a bike with the bar in the way. But I'm also heavier than average, so I need a bike with a very sturdy frame and a "woman's" bike is simply not going to cut it.

How much to do you want to bet that if word got around that high bars were for 1) men and 2) heavier women that there would be a rush to buy the lowest bar you could find? The attitude would go from "Ew, girl's bike!" to "Cool, skinny bike!" in a heartbeat.

The upper bar makes the bike more structurally rigid (because triangles are excellent), which means it can be lighter weight for the same rigidity. Bicycle weight is an important consideration for many cyclists. You won't see anyone *racing* on a lady's frame, it's just not practical (then again, racing bikes aren't practical for anything else).

Bikes without such a bar are much easier to ride in a skirt (and in the UK such bikes do usually come with a chain guard, which is also useful for keeping trousers out of the chain and Every Bike Should Have One) and also simply physically easier to mount and dismount which can be useful if you find raising your leg over the bar to be physically challenging. Also very much easier to dismount from hurriedly, if for instance one is falling off one's bike (if for instance a bus has just tried to run one over, no, not bitter, not at all).

A Mixte frame (French for unisex, and in France socially viewed as a unisex bike) has some of the useful rigidity with most of the useful step-through-ability. I want one, but they are not very common (by which I mean 'cheap') :-(

It irritates me enormously that such bikes are sold as "women's" and "men's" (or girl's and boy's) instead of with more descriptive terms to do with the properties of the frame. Any frame-type has its merits and its downsides and you should consider what sort of bike you want by what you want it to do compared to what it is good and bad for, not by some arbitrary "boys do this, girls do that" line.

(Incidentally I *do* ride my ('women's') bike in heavy skirts, and mini skirts, and trousers, and Victorian cycling get-up, and indeed in just about everything that I own. Because it is my primary mode of transport and this ability to ride it in everything I own is an absolute requirement of any bicycle I purchase. It very much bugs me that this is one area in which often feminine is equated with bad, which means that whilst many women ride 'men's' bikes, few men ride 'women's' bikes)

As a historian and utility bicyclist, I have to add my two cents. While I understand what you're saying about gendering bicycle consumption, and you are spot-on in observing the original historical reason for the difference, you're also quite wrong in citing the 1970s advert as evidence that a top tube is unnecessary, or that this provides support for your assumption that both women and men implicitly identify "female" bikes as inferior because of the different configuration. I have plenty of female friends who closely identify with, and are empowered by, the perception that there is a bike designed specifically for them. Or, many of my female friends ride "male" bikes simply because they fit them better. I also have a lot of male friends who ride bikes without the top tube in the "male" configuration because it's easier to mount and dismount, especially with cargo. Indeed, many dedicated cargo bikes are now (and have always been) built without the top tube to facilitate handling the bike while mounting and dismounting with heavy loads. Likewise, folding bikes typically do not have a "male" top tube. So, while many mainstream bike marketers and manufacturers persist in the "male"/"female" nomenclature, the perception amongst most people that some bikes are for men and some are for women is fading. Indeed, quite a number of "hybrid" bikes are specifically marketed without gender distinctions. I think you're crying foul about something that no longer carries the cultural baggage you think it does, and in the process, you're actually reinforcing the stereotypes you decry. I think you really missed the mark with this one.

One more point about the men's frame- it allows the bike to be much more easily carried. I am female and live in an urban area. I keep my bike inside my apartment. It's so much easier to carry my men's style road bike upstairs by putting the top tube on my shoulder, compared to my women's style cruiser (both are relatively heavy bikes).

So I will likely stick to men's frames for that reason (and because I mostly ride road bikes now and you don't see women's frames on road bikes often, especially racing bikes as was stated above). If I want ride with a skirt, I simply put a pair of bike shorts on underneath.

That said, would be nice to lose the whole "women's/men's" frame style designation as it isn't really applicable anymore, and it's not necessary to gender code a bike.

A real distinction between men's and women's bikes would be that men and women (on average) have different leg to torso ratios. Women generally have longer legs than men, so women's bike have a shorter distance between the handlebars and the seat for the same frame size. On high end mountain and road bikes, the top tube on women's bikes is almost at the same angle as men's bikes, so the frames have the same strength. The handlebars are usually smaller and seat is designed for women.

But, this is only an average statement, so some women fit better on "men's" bikes, and some men would fit better on "women's" bikes. I think that it is great that there are bikes build specifically for women, but the part that really bothers me is that bike frames are painted with stereotypically gendered designs and colours, with women's bikes having floral/feminine designs and pastels, and men's bike have bright, more aggressive colours and graphics. Sure, some women love pastels and floral designs, but most that I talk to (I work at a bike store and sell bikes) hate the lack of choice and the assumptions that are made about their preferences.

This is a timely post for me because I just bought a new bicycle, and it's my first "boy's" bike. It's a silly thing to care about, and it was far from my primary concern while shopping, but I have to admit I was a bit tickled. I don't go out of my way to avoid feminine things these days, so I think this was a vestige of my childhood, when I often preferred clothing and shoes that looked more masculine (even if they were found in the girls' section of the store.)

There's a really great episode of the The Moth podcast about the gendering of bikes called Oliver's Pink Bicycle.

Right on - great article!

Here in Holland, there's another consideration, and a reason why women, and nowadays quite a few men, ride "women's" bikes, which is that the Dutch ride a lot with children's bike seats on the back (and sometimes also on the front) of the bike, obviously with children in them. Having a seat on the back means you cannot swing your leg over the back of the bike in the traditional way most men mount a bike, because you would kick the child in the head. Instead you have to lift your leg over the frame in front of the seat. Traditionally, women carried the kids on the back of the bike, back and forth to school and the shops, but nowadays you'll see just as many men with kids in a seat, and more often than not, they're on what you are calling "women's" bikes. It's not easy balancing a bike while you're getting on or off it when you have the weight of a child on the back wheel, and a baby on the handlebar seat, a no-top-bar bike is just safer and easier, and the distinction, at least here, seems to be fading.

In response to this post, my mother (age 66) noted that when she was young, the rumor was that using a boy's bike would imperil your technical virginity from straddling the bar, which I find just mindblowing.

Oh also, since the bar is really particularly inconvenient for the testicularly gifted during short stops, etc. it's a great example of a product where (now that the bar is no longer structurally required) the coding of male persists and is valued despite being attached to something not just functionless but actively detrimental.

For a number of years now, downhill (racing) mountain bikes have had a sloped top tube (do a search in Google Shopping on "downhill mountain bikes" to see images). There are various engineering reasons for this and none relates to the gender of the rider (though when one is specifically looking for an even shorter top tube than those on the general models, you can find women's models in the same $2K+ range). No one confuses this racer with someone who cares about riding the correctly-gendered bike (scroll to the middle of the page to see images).

Yet another reason to ride a recumbent.

The Trek company is the first google search result for "bicycle," and the Trek website has an abundance of bicycles within a series labeled Trek Women (http://www.trekbikes.com/women/).

Based on these models, the definition of the re-invented women's bicycle seems a bit lackluster. I understand that some may find empowerment in a distinction for women, but is it true that all bikes are specifically designed to accommodate the dimensions of whatever might constitute a male body?

I don't think that styles of dress (e.g. skirt) offer any justification to the gendered bicycle distinction. However, this does seem to pose some interesting questions about the role of self-objectification within an equation of personal mobility, bodily strength, and environmental stewardship.

And just for the record, I recently read in a bicycling magazine that light blue is a ubiquitous color trend for bicycles this year (?). Many of the Trek woman's bicycles in fact are light blue in color, however the way the light blue interacts with other colors within the design may produce an idea of femininity.

Ok, maybe TMI, but I have really badly hurt myself on boy's bikes. Even my brother preferred my sparkly girl bikes to his monster-sized beasts because sparklebikes didn't rack him on the dismount. That's why my bikes got torn up first.

ALL youth bikes need a total redesign that would allow for comfort and durability. And can we please not have every girl bike be either PINK, PURPLE, or SEAFOAM? (I applaud anyone who had a girl bike that was another color.)

The thing I miss most about my last bike with a straight top-bar was how much easier it was to sling it over my shoulder and carry it up the stairs. When I lived on the 4th floor of a building with no lift and a lot of theft in the common areas, that was a big deal! Since I didn't have a child-seat or wear skirts, the downsides never emerged.

As others have pointed out, each frame design has its own set of advantages, depending on your needs. The gender thing is definitely overemphasized, but I see no reason not to have both styles on the market anyway!

I think there are two things happening here:

Gendered bikes as gender statements and gendered bikes for purposes of fit.

The ad in this post is interesting because the top tube is detachable, and therefore serving no other purpose than to allow Schwinn to manufacture a single style of bike frame but keep boys from crying that they don't want to ride a "girl's" bike. This tube is the equivalent of attaching trailer hitch testicles to a barbie car since they are basically riding a "girl's" bike with a decorative stick.

Several people above have pointed out the advantages of step through frames vs. traditional top tube. The step through frame should be re-purposed as a use feature rather than a gender feature.

I don't mind having (the option of) gendered bike frames since a good portion of men and women are geometrically built and move differently, thus the geometry of the frame needs to match those differences. The differences are a little more subtle than the differences that require gendered seats on bikes, but they are still there and are a natural product market.

Here http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/ is a list of the road bikes made by trek. Click on any of the brand line on the top and you'll have a window where you can hover of the links and see the differences between the unnamed (I believe there was a recent post about how things for men/boys were the default...) and WSD. Also, http://www.trekbikes.com/women/wsd_products/ shows that the genderedness of bike frames doesn't always have to center around skirts... They try to explain it here: http://www.trekbikes.com/women/wsd_products/wsd_difference/ Although that page could probably be added to posts on the presumption that women are always smaller and weaker than men.

(note: don't read my linking to trek's WSD line as an agreement that Trek's interpretation of women's geometry is correct, just an example that a "women's" bikes don't always have to have step through frames, although, apparently they still need to look like they came out of an Easter candy aisle)

Everyone else has covered the topic much more thoroughly than I could, but I'll just add my voice to the chorus as well - as a skirt-wearing, petite woman, I definitely need a "woman's" bike for its shape, lighter dimensions, and and step-through frame. To each his/her own, but I'll take a step-through bike with a ladies' seat any day! :-)

There's a post up on Bike Hugger about "Women as Outcasts In Cycling Industry" - highly related to this post and the comments there are revealing. Which then led to the post "It's Women's Fault"

my best friend is a man and rides my vintage nishiki women's road bike. he actually prefers the diagonal bar over the straight bar. i prefer the straight bar for the clean look it brings to the bike...but if you crash, your 'nads are gettin it.

A friend of mine runs a used bike business, and apparently has huge trouble getting rid of the boys' bikes, because everyone wants the girls' ones.

Anyone who is encountering frequent groin contact with their top tube, has bought a frame that is the wrong size for you. Stand over clearance should be a couple inches at least, and I've never once had an issue with top tube impact in thousands of miles of riding and at least several nasty crashes. Bike fit is very important to get right and often overlooked in buying and setting up a bike.

I recently bought a portable bike rack for the back of my car from Target. I bought the rack and a 'women's' bike, got to the parking lot, installed the rack on my car, only to find that the rack did not accommodate 'women's' bikes...without the center bar, the bike would not fit on the rack. So apparently unmarked bike racks mean male bike racks, and women need special 'women's' racks, which don't exist. The box, I noticed when I got to the return counter, had a picture of a woman mounting a child's bike on the rack. Grrrrrr it just gets lamer and lamer!

I loathe the insistence on gender coding bikes. I'm a short person, and I ride my bike everywhere. If I want a bike that fits my size (I'm just shy of 5'2''), I almost have to buy a women's bike. The problem is that the stupid "step-through" frame makes the bike impossible to hang. I can't store it on the wall in my garage, and I can't hook it to a bar that I installed on the trunk of my Toyota. I have to go out and buy a clip-on bar-thing to correct the poor design of the bike so I can actually, you know, use my bike the way I want to.

It also makes finding light bikes that aren't flimsy for women impossible. The higher bar is better, design-wise, for stability. If you take away too much weight (as you should for road bikes, the kind I like to ride), the dropped bar makes the bike flimsier. I've had bikes, literally, crack in half from the strain and the poor design.

Besides, unless you have impaired mobility or in the habit of riding a bike with a short skirt on (a bad idea), the dropped bar is useless. If anything, I presume that it would be better for men, since hitting your balls on the higher bar has to be pretty damn painful, and I'd assume that they'd rather their feet catch the floor before their balls hit the frame.

Yet again, forced gender differences in products make no damn sense.

My bike has an upper bar but it's purple. Is it a girl or a boy bike? Heh.

"As a kid I was super-proud to ride a boys bike. Why? Because I figured out early on that girl things were devalued and I wanted nothing to do with them."

Wow, really?

I was always extra pleased to get girl things, because girls could play with boy things or girl things and no one would give us a hard time.

I always pitied boys for that disadvantage, and for the fact that I could play baseball AND be a cheerleader, and wear makeup and nobody minded. Of course those things aren't fair to males, but hey, it's all perspective, huh?

I cannot affirm the "really" factor on behalf of the poster, but I will state it from my perspective as a 100% truth for me. In 1970 I became the proud owner of a Schwinn Varsity bike of the "boy-gendered" frame style. Now maybe every 10 year old girl does not get excited or pitch in some of her savings to take that step...but for me it was a huge thing. For those of us growing up in the late 60's and early 70's almost all the "opportunities" offered for women were inferior (or seen that way by men.) Stepping out into men's roles and using "male designated equipment" was a chance to feel you might at least have a chance to compete...

Semi-Interesting historical footnote: the "women's" bike frame was also marketed in the early to mid 20th Century as a "Priest's" bicycle, to accommodate the long cassock worn by Roman Catholic priests. I have a picture of an advertisement somewhere around here.

I'm late to the party, but I will add my two cents from my only bike-shopping experience. A few years ago, I wanted to buy a bike that fit my height (4'11"), and had a skirt bar, since I always wear dresses and commuted 4 miles a day. I found a perfect racing frame with the slanted or skirt bar, and when I showed it to all of my serious biking friends, they were amazed.

This is an old Schwinn racing bike from the 50s or 60s, and it has two extra bars that extend from the vertical bar (which has the seat on top) to the center of the back wheel for added stability. So someone, in the 50s or 60s, made a serious racing bike for women in skirts!

In Paris when they brought in the public bicycle 'Vélib' scheme, they chose to install step-through bikes, presumably because they offered greater access to the general public - women in skirts, people who couldn't lift their leg over the crossbar, etc. Although I've also read that they made them step-through to be less attractive to presumably uber-macho bicycle thieves.

Vélibs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velib

what about the bikes that have a top bar, but that's slanted back instead of straight ? i used to have that as a kid, easier to step over that straight top, but sounder than those with only one bar
Oh yeah, and it was pink. Ok, it was a girl's bike -_-

Interesting, reading the comments that followed this post. Unfortunately, it seems many play, unknowingly, right into the stereotypical concerns that gender specificity in the cycling industry are trying to appease.

As has been discussed, the top "bar", or top tube as is it's technical name, greatly improves the strength of the frame, making for a much safer ride, over any of the other small concerns that it's presence may bring up. By connecting at the highest point possible on the seat tube, it increases stiffness and rigidity, making for a longer lasting and better performing frame.

I find that the concerns over the top tube making it harder to mount the frame are rather unfortunate, because most if not all of these can be overcome by learning how to properly handle a bicycle. I have long legs which makes for a rather high saddle height. To compensate, I simply tilt the bicycle towards the ground until it's easy for me to swing my leg over. This way, I only have to lift my leg maybe a foot to a foot and a half off the ground depending on the bicycle. I would imagine using the roundhouse kick motion of mounting this way would be more comfortable for most then a high bent knee thrust forward to clear the frame as is the implied procedure for step-through and mixte frames.

Step-through frames also are certainly harder to mount many accessories to, such as water bottle cages, pump mounts, lock brackets, etc.

But I digress.

Personally, what I find most infuriating about the gender division in cycling is the term "WSD" (women's specific design) and everything that follows that abbreviation. To imply that anything is designed specifically with women in mind is to imply that women are of a certain average. The cycling industry doesn't seem to understand that female riders come in just as many shapes and sizes, and aesthetic preferences as their male counterparts. How do they differentiate the two sides of the dividing line? Top tube lengths, stem and bar sizes, wheel sizes, and most importantly, color palette.

Compare:
http://www.jamisbikes.com/usa/thebikes/road/xenith/10_xenithendura1.html

http://www.jamisbikes.com/usa/thebikes/road/xenith/10_xenithendura1f.html

Note, the "men's" model only goes down to a 48 and as high as a 61, while the "femme" model down to a 44 and only as high as a 54. Color palette changed from a "serious" and "respectable" oxblood red, to a white blue mix. There's even a button on each page to compare the men and women's bikes.

Worse yet, is the realm of WSD cycling accessories.

http://www.serfas.com/product_details.asp?ID=218

Lower stand over height, pink, cursive writing, floral pattern...

It seems as if the cycling industry is shooting themselves in the foot with all this.

Man I smashed my balls on that bar so many times when I was a kid. I wish I had learned on a girl bike, except it would have been pink no doubt, and then I'm sure I'd have gotten kicked in the nuts for that. No one talks about the safety of little boys' balls. That's the real reason the boy/girl bike design is bunk - Nut Safety.

Any woman serious about biking knows to buy a "man's" bike, as the higher bar gives them more structure and stability, allowing them to be altogether lighter and easier to ride. That companies still make the same bike in a "woman's" style is simply because there are enough women who aren't serious about biking and who are magicked into thinking they need a "woman's" bike.

Of course, if one wears a lot of skirts while riding (without bike shorts), they would probably prefer a lower bar. Both sexes included.

This has been said elsewhere, but the removal of the clothes guard is not an improvement in the design (nor do I believe was it ever a designation of a "ladies" bike.) It was a concession to a "sport" look and the fact that most bike shop mechanics hate them. Not being able to ride a hybrid/city bike in regular clothes without rolling up your pants or risking grease on your clothes is not male. It's stupid.

Here (in Sweden) the trend is for guys to buy the "women's bike" since they are considered to be more convenient to ride, get on and off of, and so on.

I have just purchased a new Giant Simple 7 Cruiser bike with no upper bar, and I love it!!! It may look like a girl's bike, but I bought for the comfort and the price,not for the "gender" it may represent. (It's black and grey-not pink-though pink is a color I wear all the time{a BCA thing}.) I have always thought that bikes were of one gender anyway-you know- one size fits all. If the bike fits, ride it!!!

Dear maker of this blog.

Get over yourself

or it could be this:

Low bars are more convenient, but not as strong. men weigh more than women, on average, and also will be much harder on them, on average, than your lady rider, and thus will often be more likely to need this added strength.

ON AVERAGE.

Despite years of equality etc, when I go ride my fast dirt trails, 95% of the other riders are guys. Another 4% are girls who look scared to death (and whose boyfriends forced them to go riding). And the other 1%... they are badasses ;) (riding hi-bar bikes of course.)

Whoo Hooo! Badass women riding "boys bikes" are the 1-percenters of the bicycle world....I love it! Watch out Hells Angels here we come!!

I have a small Antique Hedstrom Bike (13" wheel) It also has a removable gender bar. With the bar one way and with the rear end in lower holes on the seat tube, it's a girls bike with a curved slope to the gender bar. Remove and flip it over with the rear end in upper holes in seat tube, and it's a boys bike, with curved contour of the frame. It can be changed in less than 10 min. and you only needed to buy one bike and make it what you need!

I love my bright purple bike that is considered a Men's bike, but its purple, and I love it. I don't think any man in their right mind would buy it.

I hate to be so obvious, but a lower bar would make me, as a man, more secure since, if i were to be clumsy or unlucky, the lower bar may make a very painful accident avoidable rather than a certainty.   If/when I buy a new bike, i will probably go for a women's bike in a gender neutral color.   It just makes more sense to do so.

if you can really get into this type of downtrodden women and macho men by the color of their bikes and what bars were on them i think you have waaaayyy too much time on your hands. get your butt on a bike and ride. after dark all of them look the same and riding one over the other can really help. i have stingrays,occ choppers,50's schwinn springer,fuji 10 speed,womens schwinn hollywood,over 30 banana seat bikes,boys and girls,and a hedstrom 13" bike with removable bar. after dark the only thing you care about is how smooth it rolls,absorbs bumps,and how free it rolls. of all my bikes my favorite is a womens thunderjet deluxe. when you are riding all you hear is the wind blowing by your ears. no clicking,tire noise,rattles. ahhhh the wind in my face with a little kid grin. but you can't see it. it's dark. you have to judge the bike by the ride of the bike. as a matter of fact i always thought they were backwards. boys don't need a ballcrusher bar and girls don't need a pelvis bone bruise. at the speeds this bikes go unless you are racing them, the rigidity is all you need to safely ride a street bike. if granny had balls, she'd be happy with a girls bike. and if any boys don't like me riding a girls bike they will probably be getting a pink and purple bicycle probe in their nether regions.

I find the "high bar" offers a level of stability. If that is how they were built originally, wouldnt there have been a purpose for it?

I attended a lecture on bicycles a few years ago and was told that while girls bikes used to have the step through bar and boys the cross bar, that was no longer the case. That's borne out by this site. All the bikes are step through, although there are some "boy's" bikes that are blue and a girl's model that is pink.

http://bicyclehabitat.com/product-list/kids-bikes-1023/

For these urban bikes, some of the women's models are step through, but some have fairly high cross bars.
http://bicyclehabitat.com/product-list/urban-city-bikes-1017/

I personally have two younger brothers, and the "men's" bike means they've fallen and nailed their nuts on that high bar, more than once. Poor choice to make something "men's" because every lady I've known is better on a men's bike than actual men who hate that high bar because of the not liking pain.

The upper "bar," known as the top tube, is not purely decorative. The drop bar on so-called "girl's" bikes makes the frame much less stiff. While small children and casual riders aren't going to generate the torque that would cause frame twist, plenty of women riders can. Hence racing bikes have a trapezoidal frame with a top tube, down tube, seat tube and the headset.

But city bikes have no need for a top-tube design and the dropped tube offers greater flexibility.

I am Andrés. Male 26 Mexican. I love cycling and I love my balls. So I got a specialized "roll" low bar (no upper bar) and I love It. People tell me I'm riding a girls bike. And honestly i don't care. It's a person's bike. It's difficult for some people to get it, but they will .....

Only those bereft of traditional moral values and who are possessed of deep personal insecurities-- which they wish to imbue others with-- rail against gender-binary hold-overs and distinctions. Many of these are academics who use the most specious of 'arguments' to make their case-- ever trying to hide their true motivation: which is to make everyone else like them so they can share in their personal pain and suffering.

The differentiation between sexes is a positive element of society and should not ever be done away with because in acknowledging differences society honors both sexes for their distinctiveness. And, within this diversity is a beauty and valuable life-purpose which has been endowed upon human beings by their creator. This is to be celebrated and not buried by self-loathing and sexually frustrated academics whose 'publish or perish' existence is now defined by negative self-reflection and ennui.

The bar is there to give other people a ride. This was always the case when I was young. You can see it today in countries like India, where sometimes whole families ride the bike, the kids on the bar and the wife on the carrier. It's not a big deal and the bar does not offend me in the least.

not true boys tend to ride their bikes off obstacles and do tricks the extra rigidity is essential

"There is no need for a high bar" FALSE and "there is no need to differentiate bikes by gender in this way." TRUE.
The top tube (as it's called in the industry in the last 20 years) allows for significant stability and stiffness of the bike. It's funny that the certainty about the first claim seems to be based only on an example, and that one - a piece of advertising for kids bikes. Well, if you keep in mind that a kind riding those bikes might have 40-60 kg (roughly half the weight of an adult..), yes, the top tube might be superfluous for the strength of the bike.
To sum up: there are various ways of using bikes (sport, mtb, urban, kids etc), and when making the case, one should also take this into consideration.

Just when you thought supercilious regressive leftists could not come up with anything more petty and superficial...bikes. Wow.

With this article you are just showing yourself to be a unknowledgeable feminist and misandrist.

Lilias Davidson, a prominent voice of women's cycling in the 1890s, wrote that (from memory) 'it is the skirt that rules the destiny of woman on the bicycle'. Indeed it was the controlling factor in the development of the 'dropped' frame. Von Drais, the inventor of the bicycle in 1817, had developed a machine with the wheels hung below a horizontal beam, the rider straddling the beam and kicking the machine along in a running action. Drais, being male, probably never even considered the possibility of female riders, he had ideas that his machine would be useful for military dispatches and the like. Denis Johnson was the first maker to provide a dropped frame, specifically for ladies to ride in full skirts, in 1819. Therefore, a bit like Adam and Eve, the 'ladies' bicycle developed out of and therefore was secondary to its 'gentlemen's' equivalent. Its entire purpose was to let a full skirt hang freely, allowing the rider to run while not revealing her legs. While Johnson's machine was short lived and bicycling went in a different (male) direction for most of the 19th century, accommodation for a full skirt remained a key issue to bicycle designers of the late 1880s who saw the potential of a female market for the new 'safety' bicycles of the time . They effectively re-invoked Johnson's way of thinking in the context of the 'diamond frame' popularised by Starley's mark III 'Rover' of 1886, which set the pattern for the 'top tube' and the modern bicycle. Starley was trying to establish his machine against the high 'ordinary' bicycle, for which there was no female market and therefore he designed his 'safety ' bicycle without considering one. This is not to say he was ignorant of it, he had considered and made female bicycles (ridden side saddle) in the 1870s, but had written them off as impractical. He developed instead tricycles built to bicycle specs with the female market in mind, they were a great success. By 'dropping' the top tube of the diamond frame, or merely by hugely increasing the size of the 'down tube', the frame could be 'opened' to allow skirts to hang freely. The structural rigidity of the frame was compromised but on the other hand the machine was very easy to mount and a lot more forgiving in use; unless being ridden 'hard', they were and are much more comfortable. Clearly, they are not suitable for competitive sport. There is a lot of debate as to who first applied this thinking to a diamond frame, it is often attributed to Dan Ivel. From the engineering point of view, the dropped frame presents a challenge that the diamond does not, as a result open frame machines are a whole lot more varied and interesting than their closed counterparts. In their glory days of the 1890s and 1900s they were also more expensive and generally better finished than closed.

In gender politics, therefore, it was not so much that bicycles were gendered, but rather that bicycling was gendered for much of the 19th century. Between 1820 and about 1888 there was very little female bicycling outside of circuses and the 'phenomenon' of 'women awheel' did not reach public attention until the mid 1890s, when it soon became tied up with a lot of other issues such as dress reform and universal suffrage. The legacy of this is what seems to have inspired this discussion. It is interesting that over a century has passed and the open frame machine is still gendered female. This might have advantages to makers in marketing terms and therefore maintains ' girl pink' and boy blue' stereotypes. In deeper gender studies terms, even though dress reform and suffrage are now no longer issues (in Europe and the US at least), gendering of bicycling and the machines themselves remains lurking beneath practicality and comfort (female) v performance and competition (male) that underpins much of the discussion here.

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Why must we make an issue over such a frivolous thing? What is wrong with having traditions like this? It seems we are the only culture with a subset of people who wish to do away with all sense of tradition and culture, by endlessly pontificating over every small thing we come across and are offended by. It is intellectually stifling, and toxic. The world of hyper-sensitive supposed inclusivity and neutrality seems more of an oppressive one than the former. What a time to be alive.

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We lived in Tanzania for 14 years. The “women’s” style bike was almost the only one found. I wonder if it’s due to the many Muslim men who wore long robes over their clothes.

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