INTERVIEW: How adidas Is Helping to Make Running Safer for Women
“Whilst 62% of men recognise there is an issue, only 18% believe the responsibility lies most with them.”
92% of women don’t feel safe while running. That’s a fact — one that was recently discovered by adidas as the brand started to explore the barriers to fitness faced by its female community. For many of us, the statistic doesn’t seem surprising, as the majority of women have experienced cat-calling at some point in their lives, but what’s most significant, is how the brand plans to tackle the issue.
In part, a large portion of the responsibility lies with our male counterparts, an element which adidas recognizes to be true. Within the brand’s research, it discovered that 62% of men recognise there is an issue, while only 18% believe the responsibility lies mostly with them to help women feel safer when running. As a result, “having the support of men is so important to creating true progress here,” explains adidas Women’s Global Communications Director, Sina Neubrandt.
In a bid to combat the issue, adidas has released a new campaign, dubbed “The Ridiculous Run.” The visual identity aims to depict the “ridiculous” measures that women have to take when trying to be safe on the road, from keys in their hands to only wearing one earphone.
We caught up with Neubrandt to find out more about the campaign, what sparked the research behind it and how adidas plans to address its male community about the significance of their support.
Scroll down to read the full interview and check out adidas’ “Ridiculous Run” campaign above.
Safety for women in running has long been an issue. What made adidas want to tackle this now?
Before we started out on this journey, we did some research on the topic and found that 48% of social conversation about women’s running was related to safety. And so often, the news agenda narrative places responsibility around preventing risk solely on women – from telling them what to wear, to not run at night, or not run with headphones, the list goes on.
These completely normalized yet “ridiculous” behaviors that make women feel safer when running showed the huge disparity in perceptions of safety between men and women – this is where we saw our role to spark positive change, where we could use our global platform to drive awareness on the need for male allyship and education. We’ve known the scale of the issue is longstanding, and as women runners ourselves, we all had some kind of personal experience that made us feel unsafe. So, we have been doing work on allyship and advocacy for a while now – we started working with the charity White Ribbon at the start of 2022 and have been training adidas Runners captains and coaches as part of With Women We Run (also launched in 2022) initiative ever since.
Adidas
What’s your own experience with running and safety been like?
I have had a lot of cat-calling experiences which have always made me feel vulnerable and exposed. I’ll never run when it’s getting dark and if I see another person or a group of people coming towards me, I will instinctively move to the other side of the road. I would love to think that my experiences are one-offs but the sad fact is that so many women have exactly the same experiences and so these precautions and behaviours have become a normality.
The research shows that 92% of women don’t feel safe when running. How is the brand hoping to make a change?
It’s a huge figure isn’t it, but I can’t say I’m surprised, and I’m sure many women reading this will feel the same. We’ve broken it down into three areas where we’ve invested to help create this change; firstly we’ve continued our work with our expert partner and leading charity on the prevention of violence and harassment against women – White Ribbon. White Ribbon guided us with advice, workshops and co-authoring tools such an educational programme that is available to all, designed to educate men on how to take action, become allies and really help drive change. We have already used this to train more than 250 coaches and captains (both men and women) from the adidas Running crews all over the world.
Secondly, we’ve created communities and spaces to support the cause with our long-term initiative With Women We Run by adidas Runners, which is focused on educating members and creating safe spaces for women to run. And thirdly, we have used our adidas Running app platform to engage and educate our wider running community on the issue, and to date, have over 120,000 signatures to our pledge (which is “I pledge to never commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women”). Our research showed that 69% of women have taken precautions to feel safer whilst running, and of that 28% shared their location with a friend. Our app now has the ability for a runners’ live location to be automatically shared with selected followers to help track their run.
Adidas
How does the male community play a part in this? What is adidas doing to speak to them specifically?
One of the most important findings from our research were that whilst 62% of men recognise there is an issue, only 18% believe the responsibility lies most with them to help women feel safer when running. Having the support of men is so important to creating true progress here.
By raising awareness for the realities that women face on every run, our goal is to help change men’s perceptions of women’s safety and encourage them to engage on how they can play a role in creating change. The Ridiculous Run initiative will roll out on our major adidas social channels and in media, targeting all genders. Through our work with White Ribbon, we’ve created tools and training that focuses on both education, exploring some of the root causes of the issue – and practical suggestions on how to support women when running that can range from hearing and believing women who have experienced this type of behaviour when running, to calling out problematic comments or actions when safe to do so or campaigning for change on a local level with councils or governments. The allyship educational programme is available here.
In the short term, how does the adidas running community help to begin combatting the issue?
I’d say the support falls into three categories – firstly providing safe spaces for women to run and a community who are training on the issue to support them. With Women We Run is live in 49 countries and 72 communities and hosts regular runs, workshops and events. For example, we launched the first women-only races in Saudi Arabia, with 5K race events held in Riyadh and Jeddah.
Next is education which focuses on bringing men into the conversation and creating allies. We do this using the toolkit and training we created with White Ribbon which explores the root causes while also offering practical suggestions for men to help women feel safer while running in the here and now. And finally, it’s community-led initiatives to create local change. For example, our Poland adidas Runners felt that better lighting and CCTV on popular running routes would enhance women’s safety during evening runs. As a result of petitioning and a voluntary budget for the City District Council, they installed a CCTV monitoring service and created adequate signage to help make the running routes safer for everyone.
Adidas
Finally, what further plans does adidas have to continue eliminating gender-based violence within running and sport?
We know that women’s safety in sport is a complex issue, there is no easy fix and this is very much a long term focus for us. We are committed to continue our work with White Ribbon and With Women We Run, whilst identifying new communities to engage to raise awareness around the world to encourage the need for education and allyship. We are also committed to continuously driving change locally with the help of our adidas Runners communities, captains and coaches. These continued efforts are crucial to drive further progress, what we can achieve when we all start working together is invaluable.
We are fully committed to collectively help stop harassment and any forms of violence against women to make running safer for all. We want to be the best ally we can be for our athletes, and our communities in helping to create a fair and accessible environment in Sport which is free of abuse or harassment of any kind.
