Qualitative study uncovers double responsibilisation and embodied risk in female recreational runners, indicating the limits of lighting-based safety measures.
Key Points
To examine how female recreational runners negotiate risk and safety in everyday running, and how healthism and geographies of fear shape these negotiations.
Conducted 21 semi-structured interviews incorporating photo elicitation with AI-generated images among female recreational runners in southern Sweden.
Analyzed qualitative interview transcripts using reflexive thematic analysis.
Women assess running routes based on visibility, isolation, familiarity, and bodily sensory capacities, producing an embodied, kinaesthetic geography of fear.
Participants experience a dual demand termed double responsibilisation, where social imperatives to exercise for health conflict with the burden to actively manage personal safety.
Seasonal darkness and isolated forest terrains constrain when and where women run, demonstrating that visibility-enhancing measures such as lighting do not resolve fear rooted in unequal gender power dynamics.