Dr. Allison Ezzat, an associate member of WHRI and a researcher with the BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit, recently co-authored a study exploring how female runners choose running shoes. 

Athletic shoe manufacturers have invested a great deal of time and money into designing footwear to improve performance and reduce the risk of injuries. The vast majority of research in this field, however, has focused on men and boys. Manufacturers tend to follow a “shrink it and pink it” approach to designing women’s footwear, taking designs optimized for male feet and simply changing the colour of the shoes and offering them in smaller sizes. Female feet, however, tend to differ from male feet in a variety of structural and mechanical ways, and footwear should be designed to accommodate more than just size differences.

Study participants were recreational and competitive runners who ran a weekly average of 30km. Participants had between 6 and 58 years of running experience.