RESEARCH:
Women Only Events
Research Report 

There’s something special about crossing a race finish line.

 

A sense of joy, achievement, community and so much more. Completing a challenge can be transformational, giving you confidence through the rest of your life. Despite this, women are underrepresented in trail races, especially as distances increase. Some of the reasons are societal – women have less available time to train, and are not supported to continue in sport through key life stages such as puberty, postpartum and menopause.

 

SheRACES’ original research, conducted in 2022, uncovered key barriers to women participating in races that events could address themselves. This led to the creation of race guidelines for female-inclusive events. These have since been incorporated into races from 5km to multi-day ultras, and around the world from Ireland to India – increasing female participation, giving women a better race-day experience and equally valuing our competition. In our most recent research, we wanted to understand the motivations and needs of women to race in women-only environments, which are rarely provided by race organisers, yet have the potential to open up the trails to many more women.

 

As well as conducting an open survey, we spoke to leaders of particularly underrepresented groups, such as Muslim women, women of colour and older women, to understand their specific needs in events. This summary presents our initial findings, specifically looking at the experiences of women at women-only races.

 

The full research encompasses more detail around race logistics and creating races for women and inclusive of women.