As far as bike clubs go, we have an exceptionally high proportion of female members. We currently have 24% female to 76% male members.
However - we want more!
So I'm asking all you ladies on the site to spread the word and bring your friends over. Surely you all know other female bikers, use websites for girls only etc.... invite them here and tell them what a laugh they're missing. We've had 24% female members for the past year, the figure hasn't changed at all. Let's see if the ladies can do a better job than I can of changing the stats.
I've not done any scientific study, but at a quick glance I get the impression that among the active forum posters and chatters the balance is a lot more even, with the ladies possibly even in the majority. Maybe its time the downtrodden men made their voice heard among the clamour of biker babes?
i tend to agree that apart from the same few the guys tend to keep a low profile, not show their photo or even fill in their profiles, thats one of the negative aspects of this site in my view, also i can understand why a lot of them dont post in the forums, it can be very intimidating at first with the few that do post obviously all knowing each other and sharing lots of `in` jokes even after having had lots of welcome messages and support it still can be very difficult, i would love to see more guys on the site (ooo err, nearly said more male members then!) lots of members havent accessed the site for many months i often wonder how many active members there are as opposed to how many members at least one guy has 3 profiles!
I have to agree with Wills really. Yes there may well be a three to one ratio of men to women members on the site, but the ratio of men to women posters must be fairly even!
Ok, it can't hurt to have more women on the site, even from the point of view of a fella who has no reason to look for a "partner" right now.
After all, I do personally believe that there are far too few girlies on bikes in this country and this site seems to do wonders for that.
This is one reason why I for one have no issue at all with ladies joining the site purely for the purpose of obtaining pillion rides. If one out of every three or four of these particular ladies takes an interest in learning to ride, then this has got to be a good thing.
I do feel though that us fellas must do our best to avoid presuming that any lady wanting a pillion ride may be "up" for something else in return.
Perhaps this could encourage more ladies onto the site.
Maybe the ladies should chat among themselves and encourage the lurkers (an actual Internet techy term) to get involved in the forums. no post too daft.
Matt is there a query you could run that would send a pm to those who haven't posted in the forums fora while with links to say the top 5 threads each week. obviously with a opt out button.
I was PM'd by a lurker who says I kinda keep popping up wherever he looks on t'site...
*ahem*
I was also asked if I natter as much in RL as I typed... I'd love to have replied "Ooooh nooo.... I'm dead shy and quiet" but that would be a blatant lie...
I don't think you can ever pursuide people to join in, it has to be of their own choice, making it friendly and inviting is important also keeping it interesting is another.
Anyway Matt I would of thought you had enough ladies to keep you busy...you are greedy!
hey look who it is! Where the devil have you been? Welcome back one of my favourite ladies!
And I've been single for over a year I'll have you know! I just don't mix work and pleasure
Re the PM to everyone - yea I could but i don't want the millions of PMs ill have in return. The mailing list is bad enough with people not being able to figure out how to turn it off.
And I've just checked the DB which shows 4,402 active members in the past 1 month (That is people who have logged in with an account).