WOMEN ON THE RUN

In March this year, adidas released global research that found that

92% of women runners felt concern for their safety, compared to just 28% of men. What’s more, more than a third of the women surveyed said they had already been physically or verbally harassed. The findings were based on a survey of 9 000 runners across nine countries. South Africa was not among them, but we don’t need a survey to tell us what is already in the news.

Most of the women surveyed reported taking precautions to feel safer while out on a run, such as wearing loose clothing, running with someone they feel could protect them or wearing one earphone. These findings informed a video that adidas created to raise awareness around the lengths women have to go to just to feel safe while running. They called it The Ridiculous Run. To me, those precautions didn’t sound ridiculous at all – they sounded like common sense.

And therein lies the difference. It’s not that men are not at risk – in fact, research consistently shows that men are at higher risk of being robbed, physically assaulted and killed – it’s that they don’t appear to feel as vulnerable as the adidas research suggests women around the world are feeling. not exactly rosy, with the global average total for women dipping slightly lower than the previous year.

But when it came to safety, the picture was particularly bleak.

The research found that one in three women worldwide does not feel safe walking alone in her neighbourhood at night. Translated into numbers, it really sinks in: 1 billion women feel unsafe walking alone at night on the streets where they live.

And South Africa was among the worst, with 76% of women reporting that they felt unsafe.