Gravel Brands Are Failing Women Riders

Every single bike brand will tell you that more women on bikes is an important goal. Then many of those same brands will offer smaller bikes with build kits, specifically handlebars, that aren’t appropriate for smaller riders. The practice is even more common in the world of gravel cycling.

The details that set the stage

That’s the gist of the article but before we get rolling, I need to go a little deeper. That first paragraph rests on a number of assumptions and needs some explanation.

The first thing I want to address is how this intersects with women and cycling. I’m obviously not a woman and it’s not my place to say what women need. How this issue affects women is only half the point though.

The truth is I entered this conversation with my own needs centered  because the things that affect us personally tend to catch our attention. I ride a size 54, or medium, and over the years I’ve covered a number of gravel bikes with handlebars that aren’t right for me.

In the past I might have requested the correct size or simply dealt with it. It’s no big deal when a bar costs under $50 and takes maybe 30 minutes to swap including new tape. Now bikes are getting more integrated and things are getting more complicated.

When I reviewed the Pivot Vault and the Mondraker Arid recently, I made a point to call out the sizing issues. As a refresher, Pivot makes things extra confusing by using odd names for the frame sizes. Despite that bike being a small, I tested both of those bikes in essentially the same size and what would typically be called either a medium or a 54. In that size, Pivot uses a 42cm bar while Mondraker specs a size 44cm. There’s also the Revel Rover that uses a 44, the Trek Checkpoint with a 42, the Salsa Warbird with a 42… I’m sure I could go on.

As I wrote up those reviews, I asked the brands about the chosen sizes. The answer was, and is almost always, that it’s an adventure bike and the wide bar is there for stability.

Personally, the whole thing didn’t feel right to me. I know my shoulders measure 38 cm and if I ride wider bars my shoulders ache as the hours start to drag on. It never seemed to make sense that something was supposed to change on an adventure focused bike.

Let’s swing that back to women though. At 5’ 9” I happen to be exactly average height for US men. Average height for US women is only 5’ 3.5” and the situation for bar size vs frame size doesn’t get better as you go to smaller sizes. That means women are going to feel this inappropriate match up more often than men.

Maybe I’m totally wrong though? There’s certain reviewers that spend time calling for larger bars on every bike. I wonder though, are they mostly men riding larger bikes? With all this swirling in my head, I went searching for an expert.

Missy Schwab is an elite cyclist and fit expert

I knew that I didn’t want to sit and discuss what women need with another man. I also knew I wanted someone who was an experienced bike fitter and an elite level cyclist. The woman I found was Missy Schwab.

Schwab is a “6x national champion in track cycling, holds 2 US track records, and won a bronze medal at the 2015 UCI Track World Cup in Cali Colombia.” In 2016 when she wrote her bio she was “ranked #1 in the United States in the sprint disciplines” though she narrowly missed actually competing in the 2016 Olympics due to a training crash.

At this point, most people would call Schwab retired. She runs ERO fit studio in Pennsylvania and she’s got ten years experience as a bike fitter for athletes of all levels. Still,  in case you thought retirement made her slow,she recently grabbed a second place in the 2024 USA Cycling Elite National Championship for Women’s elite team sprint.

I did also reach out to Trek, Mondraker, Pivot, and Enve to get a sense of the strategy involved in picking the stock bars for each size. Specifically I wanted to know if any of the brands in question used the kind of data that Colnago used in sizing the new Colnago Y1Rs. Only Enve responded and I’ve got that info down below.

Now I understand that this was a lot of setup but it’s important to place the problem and explain how it affects me as well as other small riders.

Yes, different bikes call for different bar widths

As I said, the basic premise of the response I typically get from brands is that the bars chosen for a size have to do with the use of a bike. When it’s an adventure bike, you will see wider bars for added stability. This was also the gist of how Enve responded.

To be fair to Enve, as the only brand that responded, it’s important to note that the brand sidesteps the issue by allowing riders to choose the bar width at time of purchase. If you are looking at a size 49 Enve MOG, you can select the stem length, handlebar width, and handlebar model “depending on your riding style and preferences.” However, the G-series bar only goes down to 42 cm so I wanted to know why.

Enve responded with a short bit of info pointing to the focus of the G-series bar. Saying, “the Gravel Bar prioritizes handling and control, rather than chasing any aerodynamic benefits.” While pointing riders to other flared options in smaller sizes saying “for those seeking a fit and feel more in line with a road bike, that’s where our SES AR and SES Aero handlebar options come into play.”

Schwab agreed with this premise. Although she competed in track, she also told me she regularly rides a mountain bike and was clear “you’re not going to have the same width handlebar on a track bike that you have on a road bike and that will also come across to gravel.” She explained that she rides a size 54 frame also and runs 36 cm on the road but 30 cm on the track. Just as many brands have stated, different disciplines have different requirements.

The starting point is too wide

According to Schwab the problem is more about the starting point. Even bikes that offer a bar on the smaller side of the trend line are calling for a 42 cm bar on a 54. She’s quite clear that individual athletes will have different needs but is it likely that someone on a 54 needs to move up 4 cm for riding gravel? Schwab seemed skeptical of that idea. Instead she mentioned considering “maybe a 38-40 bar to have a little bit more width” in case there’s a need to “stand up or really pull through.”

Although Schwab was emphatic that different riders will have different needs, I pushed her on that point. For one thing I happen to ride the same frame size as her and seem to have the same shoulder width. More importantly though, a brand has to make a decision for everyone buying a bike in a particular size. I asked Schwab about this and she told me “as a general rule of thumb every gravel position that I have set up as a fitter I 100% can say that I have recommended a narrower handlebar for every athlete who comes in with a gravel bike. They’re too wide.”

The need for wide bars might point to other issues

Although our conversation was about bike fit and handlebar size, Schwab pointed out how interconnected bike fit and ride performance can be. Specifically she mentioned briefly how the need, or desire, to use wider bars might be a sign of other issues.

The first time this came up was as Schwab referenced her own experience with the precise nature of track cycling. Within that context she pointed out “in the Velodrome, when we have athletes that aren’t able to handle a narrow handlebar, there’s an imbalance in the shift of power driven through the leg. So if you need a wider handlebar to keep yourself going forward in a straight direction, that to me resembles some sort of instability.”

Then, later in the conversation, this concept came up again. This time I had asked Schwab why some cyclists might choose wider bars despite recommendations. In response, she told me her own experience as she explained “before I knew any better, I preferred the feel of wide handlebars” and “I thought I looked so cool sprinting because I could throw my bike side to side.” Then, almost as an aside, she told me that at that time “I didn’t understand how to generate power without yanking on my bars.”

How can individual riders solve this problem?

Although my hypothesis is that gravel brands are failing women and small riders, I also asked Schwab how she deals with the fallout of that.

She told me the path to finding the right bar size isn’t generally an exact science. At the highest levels of competition you’d want to treat it as a scientific problem and “you’d have to do testing on an athlete, power testing, speed testing, whatever data point you want to pull from” until you found the right solution. Unfortunately not many will have that path available. Ideally bike brands would do that for us but I wasn’t able to find a brand claiming to do that in the gravel space.

That leaves most riders to find a bike fitter and solve it for themselves. Schwab explained that in her studio, she has “every size of handlebar” and that “we install different size handlebars.” If that sounds simple, it is. She told me “a lot of times it comes down to feel for the athlete but it also comes down to visually how the bar centers under them. The relaxation of the angles of their wrist, the ability of them to open their chest and the distance between their scapulas, also like a lot of athletes come in complaining of upper back pain, neck pain, wrist pain, things like that, pressure on their hands. You can root a lot of it back to handlebar size.”

In other words, it comes down to the experience of a bike fitter and Schwab says “my general rule of thumb when I fit two handlebars is when you’re on the bike looking at an athlete from head on, what is their natural wrist position? Is the wrist straight up and down? Are they rotated out? Is the pressure on their hands distributed evenly? Are their shoulders relaxed? Do I see an equal distribution of the spread between their shoulder blades across their chest?”

That experience then combines with the feedback of the athlete. “How does the athlete feel and how does the athlete look and are they able to actually sustain that position? Obviously on the track we look for something that is just strictly performance-based. Other athletes you want to look for overall comfort and some athletes just have personal preferences.”

Personally I was also interested to see if shoulder width measurement was a factor. When asked about that, Schwab said “it can be” but mostly cautioned that it’s important to consider it on the bike, not standing. She told me that “I have people who are like when I stand up straight and hold my shoulders back, this is how wide my shoulders are.” then went on to remind riders to consider “when you get on the bike how is your position different?”

Conclusion

Although I asked for a number of brands to add a voice, only one did. In the end I spoke to one bike fitter who has one perspective. Missy Scwhab has ten years of experience making athletes faster and more comfortable and she’s also competed at the highest level. She is still only one person. She is also very clear that every person is different and that at least part of bike fit is feel vs science.

That all means you may disagree. Schwab has “never put a pair of 44s on a single bike in 10 years” but you and your bike fitter might find that a 44 cm bar works for you and your needs.

Beyond that, all I can tell is my own point of view. I’m 5’9” and I need a 40 cm, or smaller, bar no matter the use case of a bike. I believe gravel brands are failing women and small riders by not offering bars in reasonable sizes for the frames they pair with. A new rider who gets a bike that doesn’t fit is a clear barrier to entry and should be an easy fix. This is low hanging fruit for inclusion.

Thanks to Missy Schwab who helped make this article happen. You can benefit from her expertise at ERO fit studio in Pennsylvania.