Why are Women Reluctant to Run?

Of 120,000 runners at 596 parkruns, 43% were women. This research suggests that women are more likely to be 'reluctant runners'. A reluctant runner can be defined as someone who has signed up for a parkrun but has never taken part, or ran once but never returned. Women in Sport explored the motivations and barriers to running for these women to discover suitable interventions to encourage women from preparing to run to actually running. Through interviews, they discovered practical barriers to participation such as time, route and concept as well as others such as self-confidence, clarity of target audience and lack of motivation. In order to understand how women feel after attending their first parkrun, seven women across four parkrun venues in England were interviewed. All the women had a positive experience, showing that once women get there, it is worth it. To encourage women to actually run and experience the benefits of parkrun, interventions such as improved first timer information and briefings and targeted reminder communications and social media were identified. This project has challenged parkrun to ‘think differently’ about how they engage with their female audience.