Women reveal vile abuse they receive while running: 'I have to hold keys between my fingers'

Sarah Darwen was out running one early morning when she began to worry that two men were following her. It was dark and quiet and she felt alone, even with her dog beside her. She clocked them instantly as they started walking towards her.

They dipped into a housing block and looked as though they were fumbling for keys, before they were behind her again, walking quickly. She took the next right turn and they stayed behind her. Every time she turned right, they were there. Fear kicked in. It was survival instinct.

Darwen cut through to a pub which had CCTV cameras. She turned back and they were watching her but standing still. She ran at a quicker pace but felt she could not go home in case they found out where she lived, so she did a few runs around the street until she was sure they were gone.

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When she got home, she shut the door quickly, took the dog’s lead off and looked through the peephole of the door for 10 minutes to make sure they hadn’t followed. 

Darwen does not know whether those men had actually been following her that day a few years ago, but the fear was enough to make her change her running habits for good. She has never run in the dark since.

“It has stayed with me,” Darwen says. “Running was my safe space, and as soon as I felt that was compromised, it changed everything. It sounds quite dramatic, but it has been really impactful.”

Darwen is unfortunately one of many women to feel unsafe when running. More than two in three women (68%) have experienced abusive behaviour while out running, a study from the University of Manchester revealed this year.

Dr Caroline Miles and professor Rosemary Broad, from the university’s policy engagement unit Policy@Manchester, surveyed 498 women about their experiences running. It found that women often run around work and childcare commitments at quiet times of the day, putting them at risk.

The most common type of abuse experienced was verbal (91%). A substantial number of women also reported being followed (29%), flashed at (10%) and experiencing other forms of abuse (20%) – often from men in vehicles.

Thirteen of the women surveyed had been physically assaulted (4%) and seven women (2%) had been sexually assaulted.

Sydney McAllister, co-founder and managing director of This Ends Now, which fights for an end to gender-based oppression, said: “It’s horrific. Personally it’s something I have thought about for most of my life – not just out running but just being a women in society. It’s that idea of holding keys between your fingers. 

“It’s deeply saddening to be discussing this issue in 2024. But we as a society aren’t doing enough about prevention. The conversation with women’s safety is always about what women can do – that could be carrying your car keys or a rape alarm. In my opinion, we should be thinking about what we can do as a society to tackle the root causes of male violence against women and girls.”

It can get worse for female runners over the winter, when the evenings get darker. Strut Safe, a volunteer-led support line that people can call when feeling vulnerable for a friendly chat and company, recently ran a poll on Instagram with 628 respondents. 

Nearly all (95%) of people said they change their running habits once the days get shorter. 

One respondent, Jess, a 30-year-old said: “I won’t run outside or even go to the gym in the dark, even in London, where the streets are busy. I tend to cancel my gym membership in winter, even though it’s only a 15-minute walk from my flat. 

“To me, it’s not worth having the stress or worry and knowing there is potential risk of being a woman alone. I find it hard enough in summer running in shorts as it makes me feel exposed and vulnerable, so I tend to cover up or wear hoodies round my waist even on hot days.”

Another female respondent, Caroline, who is also from London, said: “I used to feel fine running in the dark but following high profile cases of street violence over the recent years, it suddenly dawned on me the dangers of being out on the streets during the winter months. I will now look at my training schedule for the week and try and work out if I can squeeze runs in at lunchtimes during work-from-home days so I can run in daylight.

“Sometimes this isn’t always possible and I still have to run when it’s getting dark so I try to go as early as possible and stick to well-lit, main-road routes, but even then I still never feel 100% safe.”

There are lots of schemes and tools to help women feel safer when out alone. Strut Safe is designed to help people of all genders if they feel anxious, and there are tracking devices which may help build confidence – Amazing Jane Activewear even has a GPS tracker built into leggings.

But although these might alleviate some anxiety, campaigners are clear that the onus has to be on society as a whole to ensure that women feel safe – and are safe.

“The horrible thing is that this world is always going to have people with ulterior motives. That’s never going to go away. But there needs to be more awareness. There needs to be more of an understanding among men and education on how certain behaviours can affect women’s lives,” said Claire Goodliff, who co-founded Amazing Jane Activewear.

Caragh Campbell, a call handler and outreach team member at Strut Safe, added: “I would like to see street violence taken more seriously. I would like lower levels of harassment being taken seriously, so that it builds a bigger picture, and people don’t feel like they’re just getting kind of fobbed off. 

“I would like to see a sentence that mirrors the distress that it causes and the implications that it has and what the victim’s gone through. Sometimes you see news reports excusing the behaviour and saying: ‘The victim did this.’ But it’s never the victim’s fault.”

Policy@Manchester also analysed police data which showed there were 81 offences involving abuse of runners by Greater Manchester and Merseyside Police in 2021 and 2022.

But only 5% of the women surveyed who had experienced abuse reported it to the police. Miles and Broad claim this could be because the abuse of women has been normalised, they did not perceive it as a criminal offence, and low confidence in the police.

The researchers urged police to make it easier for women runners to report abuse, such as engaging with other platforms like an app in which women could report their experiences, rather than directly contacting the police.

They also also called on the police to do more to encourage women to report incidents of abuse “and improve their communication with victims about outcomes of investigations”. Police could then use this intelligence to identify patterns of abuse and detect perpetrators.

Darwen added: “Men should be challenging misogynistic behaviour. Stop wolf whistling or making comments about women running – or even walking down the street. Challenge that kind of behavior by being more mindful about the fact that a woman running is possibly going to be scared by your presence, and be mindful of how you can alleviate that.”

A good example of that might be a man crossing the street to make a woman feel more comfortable, rather than coming up behind them, particularly when they too are running. 

McAllister said: “So many men don’t even realise that women feel this way. I’ve had conversations with women who have been talking to me about the issue and can really relate, talking about patriarchy and feminism and the need for all of this, and then they speak to their male partners about it, and they’re like: ‘What are you on about? Surely you don’t feel that way?’ That level of surprise is so shocking. It all goes back to education. It needs to be spoken about a lot more.”

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