Despite decades of progress in sports science, women runners still wear scaled-down men’s shoes. A new study exposes how this one-size-fits-all approach affects comfort, performance, and injury risk, and calls on brands to finally design footwear built for women.
Study: “If a shoe had been designed from a woman’s foot, would I be running without getting the injuries?”: running footwear needs and preferences of recreational and competitive women runners across the lifespan. Image credit: DavideAngelini/Shutterstock.com
Women’s running footwear is rarely designed for women, but is more commonly a scaled-down version of running shoes designed for and tested in men. A recent study published in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine explored women’s views on the footwear they needed and would have chosen for recreational or competitive running, across their lifespan.
Introduction
Running shoes are typically made with men’s needs and the male foot anatomy and physiology in mind. These shoes are reduced in size and the color palette adjusted for use as women’s shoes. This design process is potentially flawed, ignoring that women’s feet have a different shape and operate via different biomechanics.
Apart from the foot shape, women have significantly different body mass and lower limb and foot lengths than men. They run with shorter steps, make shorter contact with the ground, and experience lower ground reaction forces. The vertical forces acting on the shoes at the midsole are, therefore, smaller but more frequent in women.
Women also show different hip and pelvic movements during running, potentially altering load impacts on the lower limb and foot. Moreover, women go through dramatically different life stages, including pregnancy, menopause, and their monthly menstrual cycles. This could make finding comfortable, protective footwear more challenging unless these factors are included in the design process.
The current study sought to establish what women felt they needed in terms of running shoes, depending on their running experience, age, and life stage. It also documented their subjective preferences, including shoe material, style, color, and brand.
About the study
The study was based on two groups of women runners in Vancouver, Canada. The participants were deliberately chosen for their differences in age, running experience, and the amount they ran in a typical week.
The groups included 21 runners, 11 being recreational, with a median age of 43 years. The median number of years they had been running was 15 years. Nine of the women ran during pregnancy or after childbirth.
The researchers aimed for a qualitative, phenomenological study driven by the data, without prior hypotheses. The data were used as a basis for reflection to arrive at independent information-driven conclusions.
After introducing everyone to the breakdown of a typical running shoe, the runners met for two hours of discussion in large and small groups. Discussions were based on a custom topic guide containing a wide range of open-ended questions. The analyses used a reflexive thematic approach, ensuring that themes emerged directly from participants’ own experiences.
Study findings
The researchers found three main themes:
- Comfort
- Injury prevention
- Adaptation to running style
Comfort ranked top in both groups, indicating its importance to competitive and recreational women runners. Women want comfortable, protective shoes that provide a good cushion for their feet, especially the forefoot. This corroborates prior research on women’s priorities in choosing running footwear.
Competitive runners felt that their performance improved with more comfortable yet well-designed shoes. They described additional potentially performance-enhancing components as things they would actively look for in running shoes. Importantly, this brought out a key difference in women runners: they would not buy uncomfortable shoes even if they enhanced performance.
In addition, women across the spectrum considered shoes to be key to injury prevention. They therefore bought trusted brands to prevent injury. This agrees with earlier research suggesting that the wealth of information on running shoes confuses buyers, especially when different sources contradict each other. In contrast, trusted sellers seem to strike a chord as people who know what they are talking about and are interested in suiting the customer.
The common perception among women runners that shoes play a role in injury prevention highlights the need for evidence-based education to address footwear myths and misconceptions.
However, this reflects perception rather than proven causation; future evidence-based education could help address such beliefs.
No running footwear that fully meets women’s needs is currently available. The most common modifications desired included:
- Wider toe box
- Narrow heel cup
- Increased cushioning
These features are crucial to designing women’s running shoes and require a second look by footwear manufacturers.
Importantly, as runners matured and grew older, their needs also changed, from style to comfort. They needed wider shoes to accommodate swelling or an increase in size during pregnancy or after delivery, and stable cushioned shoes with increased running experience and/or age.
Previous research has demonstrated changes in the foot during pregnancy, including a lower and less rigid foot arch, while the foot lengthens and widens during and after pregnancy. This has led to expert recommendations to examine footwear as a potential source of running-related leg pain postpartum.
Thus, social factors and the stage of life compete with the female foot anatomy in deciding what type of shoes women runners prefer. This is probably because of joint changes and possibly reduced impact tolerance, leading to runners setting a higher value on cushioning and comfort.
Future research should explore whether this holds true for men as well, and how the materials used and the structure of the midsole affect injury risk and increase shoe comfort. Longitudinal research would better show how women’s running footwear needs and preferences change over time, coupled with real-world or field studies to examine the relationship between shoe design and injury risk.
Overall, the discussion themes indicated dissatisfaction with currently available women’s running shoes designed for male foot anatomy and biomechanics. Both manufacturers and healthcare professionals should take note of these findings and design and recommend appropriate running footwear according to the woman’s stage of life, age, and type of running.
Current limitations
As a qualitative study conducted in a single region, the findings may not be fully generalizable to all populations of women runners. The researchers also noted that no “member checking” was done with participants after the analysis phase, which could affect interpretation reliability. Nevertheless, triangulation with survey rankings helped reinforce key themes.
Conclusion
These insights provide a foundation for the co-design of women-specific running shoes that better align with their unique biomechanical and performance needs. Footwear manufacturers should move beyond the ‘shrink it and pink it’ approach and develop gender-specific lasts and models.
Future research should examine whether women-friendly running footwear, designed to fit women at different life stages, including pregnancy and postpartum, improves running performance, comfort, and protects against injury.
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