As a Dutchie, I love riding my bike. Cycling is a big part of Dutch culture and we love cycling so much that the Netherlands has more bicycles than people. Cycling, to me, means freedom – no delays, no peak hour, no rush, the feeling of wind in my hair (helmets are not a thing in the Netherlands). So, naturally, the first thing I did when I arrived in Melbourne was get myself a bicycle.

In Melbourne, the lack of bike lanes, in combination with often aggressive car driving, makes cycling among the super busy inner-city traffic a rather unpleasant experience. It's not surprising that many people stay far away from cycling.

What did surprise me is how gendered cycling in Melbourne is: more than four in five Melburnian cyclists are male. Typical of the Melburnian cycling scene is the preference for bikes associated with masculinity, such as road bikes and mountain bikes.

Dressing up as a professional cyclist (in an aerodynamic, shock-absorbing and padded cycle suit) is another highly popular phenomenon. Interestingly, in the Netherlands, where cycling is not a male-dominated activity, with female cyclists in the slight majority (56 per cent), the more or less gender neutral city bike is by far the most popular type of transportation among everyone, regardless of gender.