Although Portland, Oregon is widely regarded as a "bike friendly" city, its bike equity remains in question. This thesis explores the barriers to biking that women and people of color face in Portland. This research uses feminist geography scholarship to understand how cycling spaces are unequal for marginalized cyclists. Using data from 28 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with infrequent and marginalized cyclists, I found that gender and race inequalities shape their barriers to biking. A hegemonic white, elite, and masculine bike culture controls the domination of cycling spaces. Women's gendered spatial inequalities are shaped by their childrearing demands, geography of fear, and street harassment. Cyclists of color experience a fear of public space due to racial profiling and police violence, and racial spatial inequalities are shaped by Portland's historic and racist city planning that gentrifies and displaces residents of color. Furthermore, intersectional inequalities of gender, race, and class, emerge and illustrate how cycling spaces are built to be unequal. These findings suggest that spatial inequalities in the urban landscape are pervasive in multiple spaces such as bike lanes, and that more research and policy is needed to increase ridership among women and people of color.

The goal of environmental education (EE) has always been to increase knowledge about the environment and to foster positive environmental attitudes. Increasingly, as the call for integrating EE programs into mainstream science curriculum intensifies, it is important to continue to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs not only through measures of change in knowledge and attitudes, but through the additional criteria of meeting the needs of different gender and ethnic groups. The purpose of this research was to identify whether a watershed education program was meeting the needs of diverse learners within the context of a year-long, integrated, sixth-grade science curriculum. This study specifically sought to answer the following questions: 1) Do differences exist between genders and ethnic groups in regards to change in environmental knowledge after participation in an environmental education program? and 2) Do differences exist between genders and ethnic groups in regards to changes in environmental attitudes after participation in an environmental education program? A mixed-methods approach consisting of a pre/post-test survey, interviews, and observational data was used to evaluate these questions. The quantitative results of the survey data suggests that, overall, students had statistically significant (p < 0.01) gains in environmental knowledge, but no change in attitude towards the environment after participation in the program. When subpopulations are broken down into gender and ethnic groups, however, there is statistically significant support for the idea that ethnic groups--and, to a lesser extent, gender groups--were affected differently by the program. One important finding was that Hispanic and Native American students had significantly less gain in knowledge than their White, Asian and African-American peers. Qualitative interviews and observations shed light on these findings and illustrate the experiences of students during the year-long program. Other findings, trends, observations, and opportunities for future research are also discussed.