We watched a movie last night that was all about girl power. The 16-year old girl in that movie shows up riding a bicycle. And when the movie came to an end about two hours later, she rides off in her bicycle.
Girls + bicycles => power is a time-tested formula. In countries where women do not have rights, girls do not even get to bike, leave alone doing anything else that symbolizes independence and power.
A couple of years ago, in the immediate outskirts of Kanchipuram, we saw three girls in school uniforms pedaling away on their brand new bicycles. How did we know they were new? The frames had the thin, filmy, plastic wraps.
My immediate thought was that it was perhaps a government project to give free bicycles in order to make sure that the kids don't drop out of school. The success has been well documented.
I asked them about the bicycles. Yes, they were new. And provided by the government.
The leader of the pack was excited, animated, and eager to share with us how liberating it was for them to now freely go around. Like the detour that they had taken on the way back home from school, which is why our paths crossed. She said that the distance between home and school was about ten kilometers (six miles) and biking was far more liberating than taking the bus.
Girls on bicycles. A simple measure of progress.
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