What women think about when they think about running
Running through a city as a woman is at least uncomfortable, and at worst fatal. Architect and activist Sarah Ackland is determined to talk about Taking Space
When I write about women in running, I’d love to be writing about a world record, or a first time finishing a distance, or a new community leader, but the last two times, a female runner has been murdered the week of publishing. Alyssa Lokits did everything right on October 14 – she ran on a busy trail in broad daylight and screamed for help – but her attacker could not be stopped. It’s miserable.
What can we do? We can think big picture and change the structure of the people in control of our built environment – the people who decide what the world we live in looks like – but that’s a complex mechanism that takes generations of activism, education, and voting. What I have immediately available to me, is raising awareness of this awful issue.
Both of these things require available research and data to be effective. That’s where the work of Sarah Ackland comes in. Underpinned by her research as an architect, Sarah actively organizes conversation around how women run in their built surroundings via her organization, Taking Space.
What is Taking Space?
From the seeds of a PhD that changed direction due to Sarah’s personal experiences while running, sprouted Taking Space. It’s a public-facing endeavor that aims to challenge existing perceptions around the subject of women in public spaces by bringing people into a conversation with her own research.
Using events that start with a women-only run from an art gallery and end with an all-gender panel discussion as a platform, it’s similar in vibe to what Victoria Lo is doing in New York with Chinatown Runners and Mark White with Run Grateful around the world. Taking Space is not a run club.
“I haven't got 100 girls to make your kit look good. All I've got is actually… how can we make a space that's better for women, and how can we have a proper conversation about it?”
This work all began with that PhD in 2020. Originally meant to be focused on the lack of women in architecture, she was encouraged by her boss at the all-female practice she works at to bring her experiences as a woman running in a city into her thesis.
“I was just so annoyed. Every run I went on, I had a problem. There were cat calls, I felt like I was being followed, I was trailed by cars, I was worried about what time I was running, where I was running, having to overthink everything I was doing.”
“This PhD about women in architecture turned into women in public spaces through the lens of running.”
When she started the revised topic, Sarah tells me about the people who suggested that things were actually so much better for women now. That sentiment changed the following year, with news of the deaths of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa in London.
You might think that it shouldn’t take such massive events to put things into perspective, but that’s kind of the point here. Having these difficult conversations all of the time can make a difference.
What do I have in common with women?
Sarah and I spoke at the start of August, just when the race riots really had a stronghold on the UK. Her experience of people telling her things were better for women now reminded me of hearing people say that racism “isn’t that bad any more.” When there is a story from England in August 2024 of a South Asian father being dragged from a car while his son was in the back seat, shouldn’t you question your perception?
Trust me when I say that the level of latent racism in the world has never been good, it still isn’t, and it likely never will be, but we still have to hope and try, don’t we?
It’s one of the reasons I write about women’s issues so much. It’s the idea of intersectionality. Achieving equity for women in society seems so much more achievable than equity for me in society.
In the same way that certain events – and me talking about my perspective on them – can help more people understand a different, maybe more accurate truth for our shared existence, Sarah is also trying. Her academic dissection of architectural practices are rooted in reality, and might one day help save a life. At the very least, it might move the needle in making some people’s lives a little easier.
“The reason I started writing my PhD was, I was like, ‘If I as an able-bodied white woman with no obvious intersections can't run through the city, then there's tons of people who can't.’”
She immediately references cases like the Central Park Jogger, Olympic athletes being accosted between their hotel and the Olympic Games. There’s Ahmaud Arbery as well, of course. That she is acknowledging her privilege and is using it to force difficult conversations is a beautiful, and important thing.
“I come from a background of domestic and sexual abuse, so my experience on the streets is heightened, but that doesn't mean that those things aren't happening to me. I'm using my privilege to raise awareness, because if that's happened to me, it's happened to a lot of people.”
85% of women say they’ve been harassed while running
92% of women are concerned for their safety while running
If this feels like a barrage of new and foreign information, and you don’t know where you fit in, just taking part in the conversation, and thinking about how welcome or endangered you feel in daily situations is a great start.
“I always say to people, ‘Put your body in a space and feel how much space you can take up.’ I think if you actually take that reflective moment – to actually feel aware of how comfortable you are – I think you can unpick how others might feel in that space.”
Primarily, I run for my health, and then I try to run in a way that I enjoy. If that joy were to be stripped from my running practice, would I still be able to maintain the consistency of exercise to keep my body healthy? Call it a ripple effect, if you like, but as soon as you consider that 50% of the world has that joy stripped from them, it becomes much more of an issue.
Using architecture to explain being exhausted
It’s funny because looking back at the subjects that I was both good at and enjoyed at school, I often wonder if I shouldn’t have trained to be an architect. Sarah puts paid to that swiftly by pointing out how the industry is badly paid with long hours.
“One of the reasons that I started running was that I needed some space for myself. That taught me more about the city than I ever learned in architecture school.”
“Running makes you come up against the city harder. You spend more time outside actually hitting up against the city physically with your body, but then you form a closer, stronger connection to that city, and closer bonds with the people in it. How people can then not consider what that body they are in means, I find impossible.”
Understanding the architecture of her city more deeply via running, and understanding the people around her, led to understanding the extra work that women have to do while running, and that others might have to do as well.
“For a lot of us, the way that we navigate our days, there's a lot of unconscious decision-making going on, which is exhausting. What route are you gonna take? Where are you going to go? What are you going to wear? This is all something that anyone with an intersection is going to have to confront.”
This idea of having to perform extra labor by being in spaces not designed for you fits in with the idea of people only having brain capacity for 10,000 decisions every day. If you’re having to think twice as hard as the next person, that mental overload leads to something called ‘decision fatigue.’ You lose focus. You’re mentally exhausted, but a physical act like running, for instance, will now be a more strenuous act. You’re going to perform below your potential.
If you’re thinking that surely some forward-thinking architecture could help solve all of this, it’s not as simple as that. I studied the work of Henri Lefebvre at university, but his ideas of inclusive social and public spaces, and how spaces are created by people so are inherently political, are 50 years old. If no serious progress has been made in that time, and the problems persist, there has to be a reason. Men again, I’m afraid.
“Architecture has got a real ego to it. Architects think they can design out the problems, but the psychology behind people's use of space is so hidden, especially when most of the city has been built by men.”
“Only 30% of architects are women in the UK, and only 1% of architects are black. That means that all those decisions that people of color, and women are making – of how they navigate – are lost. I think the world would be very different if the designers reflected the body of people.”
It’s that question of equity again – in the workplace this time. It’s been proven that companies with more diverse and inclusive workforces make better decisions 85% of the time, and are 35% more likely to outperform their peers. The lessons are right there to be learned.
So what are we to do in the meantime? When 9 in 10 women worry about running alone, is there a solution? Not a fast one. Can we raze cities to the ground and start again? No. Can men… stop? Seemingly, also no.
So we’re left with discussing the problems, understanding how the situations have come to be, and taking any necessary steps. If these conversations can go any way toward making running a more joyful act for women, aren’t they worth having?
Links & related articles
Taking Space [WEB]
Housekeeping
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Thanks for reading
- Raz x
Thanks for this! One reason why I never run with headphones is that I want to be aware of my surroundings at all times. I have not yet been hassled on my early morning runs in Paris, but it’s always in the back of my mind. Hypervigilance is exhausting. And I don’t even run that far 😆
I appreciate your consistent bringing into the conversation what so many people experience when running, let alone just walking around. Men who don’t harass others on the street for their gender, or size, for being a person of color, tend to be surprised at finding out about it and about how much it wears on a person over time. Thinking about how coaches can help. For middle or high school coaches, bringing it up for how to handle in the moment or simply acknowledging that it can happen and it’s wrong. Maybe even some self defense training for a worst case scenario or for confidence building? I’m curious how coaches address this aspect of distance running with teen and adult runners.