Active Mobility to School (AMTS) interventions have emerged as promising strategies to address declining physical activity levels among children and adolescents. While previous research in both Global South and North contexts has shown different impacts for girls and boys, analyzes have largely remained limited to sex-disaggregated results, without interrogating how gender and societal norms surrounding mobility shape these differences.
This research addresses that gap by examining how girls and boys, as direct beneficiaries, differently perceived the wellbeing outcomes of a cycling-based AMTS intervention, using the case of Al Colegio en Bici (ACB) in Bogotá, and positioning “gender needs” as a central analytical lens. It argues that (active) mobility is gendered in practice and socially framed as a “boy’s thing”, which disproportionately restricts girls and consequently shapes their perception of the intervention.
Findings indicate that girls experienced more pronounced benefits in certain wellbeing components. These are attributed to gendered constraints girls faced prior to the intervention, including lower physical activity, bodily discomfort, and limited cycling competence, in contrast to boys who had already normalized cycling. Responding to these constraints, the analysis concludes that ACB, with its gender-blind design, enhanced girls’ cycling independency by addressing their practical gender needs (PGNs) in mobility, yet remained limited in meeting strategic gender needs (SGNs) necessary to transform gendered practices of cycling.