These motorcyclists at the India Bike Week shatter myths about ‘women bikers’

Maral Yazarloo-Pattrick, Sameera Dahiya, and Urvashi Patole smash stereotypes about female bikers in India

When Maral Yazarloo-Pattrick wanted to ride a motorbike for the first time when she was 23, she was told, going by her long nails and high heels, “this is not a woman’s thing”. A fellow student at Pune University, where she did her PhD in Marketing, did not allow her to sit on his motorbike because she was not a rider. 

Thirteen years later, in 2018, she completed a solo world tour, spanning all seven continents, and covering over 1,00,000 kilometres. And, she did this when she was pregnant.

“In a world run by men, when a woman wants to ride a motorbike, the first reaction is that they cannot do it,” says Maral. “I faced the same thing. But what I did, most men have not. This goes on to say that not only can women do what men can; women can do things men cannot think about.”

Maral will be among the many bikers at the India Bike Week, an annual motorcycle festival, the eighth edition of which will be held in Goa on December 2 and 3. While most of the festival attendees have been men, there is an increasing group of women at the festival, which is a noteworthy development for the Indian motorbiking community.

According to Martin da Costa, the festival director and CEO of 70 EMG, the number of women riding into India Bike Week has increased by over 250% over the past five years. “We guesstimate that the number of women leisure biker riders in India has more than doubled since 2018,” he says.

The figures refute the notion that motorbikes are purely a man’s pursuit. Motorcycle advertisements almost always feature only men. Women, if at all they are featured in the ad, are used as objects of glamour. They are usually in awe of the hunky man riding a well-built vehicle. 

“Motorbike brands focus more on men because they believe men know more about vehicles than women. This is because men are more exposed to automobiles from an early age,” says Sameera Dahiya, who has covered 16,300 kilometres including 28 states and six Union Territories in 24 days. “But things are slowly changing now. There is now an increasing acceptance of women on motorbikes. For instance, you see more women in motorsports. I think women riding bikes will gradually be normalised.”