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Paper short abstract:

Long excluded from motorcycling, female motorcyclists handle maintenance and repair of their bikes in a variety of ways, including emotional labor and dependency, apprenticeship, and technological autonomy relative to male bikers.

Paper long abstract:

The association between motorcycle and masculinity has been a cultural reality in the 20th century, but things are changing rapidly. Drawing on ethnographic data collected from 2012, I discuss the cultural complications generated by the entrance of women into the world of motorcycles. If one approaches maintenance and repair as heterogeneous networks of human actors and non-human actants, I ask how do female motorcyclists stabilize such networks to keep their bikes functional? What kind of labor do they need to deploy, what objects and actors do they need to enter into a relationship with, what sites do they need to visit, and what knowledge do they need to master in order to keep their bikes in a functional state? The ethnographic material reveals that the female bikes whom I got to know approach repair primarily in three ways: as emotional laborers and dependent participants inside male biker groups; as apprentices who gravitate around repair shops, where they often perform minor repairs and support the social reproduction of the male mechanics; and, finally, as actors seeking maintenance and repair autonomy in order to perform minor and major repairs by themselves. These three strategies reflect female motorcyclists’ responses to the gendered nature of moto-mobility and generally reproduce male domination in motorcycling.