\n<\/p>\n
Deignan has shared the stage with several riders who have set the highest standards on the road, including Dutch legends Marianne Vos, Annemiek van Vleuten and Anna van der Breggen.<\/p>\n
But off the bike women have fought in recent years to achieve parity with the men’s side of the sport when it comes to sponsorship deals, salaries and media exposure.<\/p>\n
At 500,000 euros, the winner of the men’s Tour de France earns 10 times that of the winner of the women’s event.<\/p>\n
Deignan considers herself fortunate to have the support of her Lidl-Trek team, who embraced her decision to start a family in her sporting prime.<\/p>\n
“I’m really proud that I was able to prove that becoming a mother isn’t necessarily the end of an athlete’s career – that you are able to come back successfully and as strong as I’ve ever been after having children.<\/p>\n
“There was an absolute mutual respect [between myself and the team] from the very beginning and because of that I felt very safe and secure in my return.<\/p>\n
“Our contracts have maternity clauses which they never had before I was pregnant.”<\/p>\n
Deignan came back from her first maternity leave and won more of the sport’s biggest races, including the 2019 Women’s Tour of Britain<\/a>, the 2020 La Course<\/a> by the Tour de France and Liege-Bastogne-Liege<\/a> the same year.<\/p>\n And Deignan acknowledges that her efforts have helped push women’s cycling forward, including a 2012 media conference where she let it be known to cycling’s governing body the UCI that not enough was being done for women in the sport.<\/p>\n “Looking back, I think: ‘Wow, that was a bit of a bold move. Could you not have gone a bit easier on yourself, Lizzie?’ But because of my upbringing, because of my family, it never occurred to me that inequality was a thing until I was outside my family, and I wasn’t getting the same opportunities as the men who I had grown up cycling with.<\/p>\n “[Women’s cycling] is unrecognisable compared to when I first started. I turned professional 18 seasons ago earning 200 euros a month – there’s now a minimum wage. There are so many different things in our contracts in our World Tour in terms race organizers needing a certain amount of TV coverage, minimum safety guidelines. All these things that we never had – I feel like our sport is at the forefront of equality. I’m really pleased that I’ve been a part of that.<\/p>\n “Doing things like having children in the middle of my career, at the height of my career, I think contribute to the fact that women are being taken seriously in the sport. But there is still work to be done.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n