I was thinking about this thread while taking a pile of cardboard off to be recycled today. The picture above shows a fairly typical part of the route.
Notice that I am well away from that nasty big road.
Once out of our village, where I was on a residential street that is a dead end for cars, I was on this sort of traffic free route right up to about 10 metres from the recycling centre. In fact, my route is more direct than the local roads for various historical reasons.
Even in the pishing rain there were a few cyclists about, and in an admittedly unscientific survey, there seemed to be about a 50/50 gender split, on MTB's, Dutch style bikes, with and without trailers. The only thing I didn't see was roadies in lycra.
Equally there were very few wearing h*lm*ts, which (whether right or wrong) is often a good indicator of how safe people feel on bikes.
My route included town and countryside, open areas and woodland and it made no difference to the numbers of cyclists around me.
As said up thread, I think this is the best way to make cycling 'inclusive': make sure there's safe and convenient infrastructure so cycling can be a normal activity for people regardless of gender.