The non-profit organisation Run Her Way and the Bxl Girls Run Club have launched a survey to investigate the experiences of female runners in Brussels and identify safe running routes.
"On Strava, you can often see how long a running route is and what the elevation gain is. However, it doesn’t say how the route is experienced by women,” says Kate Tellier, who founded Run Her Way in 2024. “You don’t know if there’s lighting in the dark or how isolated the area is.” Her main goal is to get more women running by making public spaces safer.
The number of women taking part in sport isn’t just down to motivation, health or fitness, she told Bruzz. A key factor is their sense of safety as they move around the city.
Tellier’s group is keen to change that by collecting data on women’s experiences, sharing safe running routes with others, and sharing those results with policymakers to bring about changes.
“This could involve better lighting, but also training bystanders to intervene if something goes wrong,” she says.
To launch the survey, Tellier is working with the Bxl Girls Run Club , a group founded in 2024 by Sybila Galera Hauer. Run crews are increasingly popular and sometimes attract hundreds of runners. “Many of those large running clubs became a sort of living dating app, and I thought that was a shame,” says Galera Hauer. “I wanted to set up a club without men flirting, a safe space for women who just wanted to run.”
Of the 65% of women who say they have experienced aggression, fewer than 2% report it to the police
The survey is being shared via the Bxl Girls Run Club’s social media. Maps have been added where women can mark a favourite route or indicate places they avoid. They can also indicate whether they have ever taken precautions out of fear of harassment, such as wearing more clothing, carrying self-defence items or crossing the road to avoid groups of men.
“The survey has only just been launched, so we’ll be able to say more about Brussels in a few months’ time,” Tellier says. “Many things recur, so I expect similar stories to those in the Dutch cities we have already investigated.”
Some stories do recur across multiple cities: women are catcalled, spat at or even pelted with eggs. They rarely report such intimidation officially, because they don’t consider the situation to be serious enough. “Our data shows that of the 65% of women who say they have experienced aggression, fewer than 2% report it to the police,” says Tellier.
I wanted to set up a club without men flirting, a safe space for women who just wanted to run
Her research also shows that 5-6% of women stop running in public after a negative experience. “Sometimes they only feel they can run on a treadmill, which is a great shame,” she says. “Harassment must never be normalised. Women who say they feel very safe later list all sorts of ways in which they adapt to prevent potential harassment.”
Once the survey results are in, the real work can begin: sharing the routes with runners and local authorities. “We haven’t been around for very long, but we’re already seeing an impact, as awareness of the problem is growing,” Tellier says. “That’s just the start, of course, but I sense a lot of openness from both female runners and cities to work on the research findings.”
