Any gravel bike suggestions for a petite woman?

[Sparky56]

to follow up on above conversation with my personal reviews of a couple of the bikes mentioned here.

1) Frog 78 — my son has this bike he is 5 ft tall, 11yrs old— he’s cycled up Mt Ventoux on it and we have also been bikepacking off road on it. Super versatile. HOWEVER - this is our 4th frog bike and it seems like their quality has deteriorated over the years. Cheaper components than previously & it was really badly set up (by Frog, we ordered it direct). Anyway it now works well for him..

2) Reilly Gradient - I’ve got this bike - absolutely awesome bike and first class customer service. Trainsharp will let you have testrides of this and others.

3) My daughter (who is 5’2”) has a Genesis CDA 10 in size small. It works for her (although not for the chap in the bike shop who is the same height but different proportions). theres also an XS. shes happy with the bike.

[rjb]

Specialised make Women Specific Bikes in a range of sizes to fit them.
Worth a look.

[rualexander]

Specialised make Women Specific Bikes in a range of sizes to fit them.
Worth a look.

Not any more they don't
They just make various sizes of all their bikes.

[pjclinch]

Specialised make Women Specific Bikes in a range of sizes to fit them.
Worth a look.

Not any more they don't
They just make various sizes of all their bikes.

Perhaps worth noting that this (for once!) isn't everyday sexism in action, but the discovery that a lot of the "women specific" stuff was based on false assumptions, e.g. that the typical man at height x and the typical woman at height x would tend to conform to different proportions, such as the woman more likely having longer legs and shorter arms, but that turned out not to be the case.
While it's certainly true that some women will have proportionately shorter reach, so will some men and average proportions are such that if "women specific" frames assume shorter reach at the same height then lots of women with longer reaches would be poorly served.

And so, as noted above, the game these days is just to make sure more smaller frames are available and surf the market to choose for individual preference with regard tube lengths, geometry, stem angles/length etc. etc.

Where there are dedicated women's bikes these days it tends to be frame sizes ranging smaller and with stuff like a WSD saddle, where there obviously are differences between Mr. & Ms. Average, but if you're happy to shop for your own seat then as long as the frame fits there's not much in it.

Pete.