The Gender Participation Gap in the Marathon Majors
I’m going to preface this post by saying that I’m working with very limited data and that my comments shouldn’t be taken as definitive, in fact the data is so limited I’d say my comments are informed speculation.
A few weeks ago I shared a post analysing statistics published by London Marathon that suggest that nearly 10,000 fewer women than men participated in the 2023 edition of the race (you can read it here). Off the back of this I thought it might be interesting to look at the participation stats for the other Marathon Majors - Boston, Berlin, New York, Chicago and Toyko - and see how they compared.
It was easier to find the information I needed for some marathons compared to others and that does make me wonder where the race organisers’ priorities lie when it comes to ensuring gender diversity on their start lines. I guess if the information isn’t freely published then people like me can’t scrutinise it! I chose not to make data requests to the marathons because at this stage I just want to get a feel for where things sit.
So let’s get into it.
What Are The Marathon Majors?
The Abbott World Marathon Majors is a group of six of the largest and best known marathons in the world, think of it as a showcase of the best of the best when it comes to road marathons. They’re all special in their own right, but if you want to secure a coveted place as a Six Star Finisher you’ll need to run them all:
New York Marathon
Boston Marathon
Chicago Marathon
London Marathon
Berlin Marathon
Tokyo Marathon
All the races have their own entry criteria and policies and are responsible for publishing their own data, which is part of the reason I’ve found it hard to find the information I need for this post.
The Gender Participation Gap At The World Marathon Majors
The Gender Participation Gap At New York Marathon
In 2022 around 44% of the nearly 49,000 runners were women, which is a much smaller gap than what we saw at London Marathon this year. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to locate a breakdown of participants by age and gender, so unfortunately I don’t know if this trend continues through the age groups. My hunch, based on the trends we’ve seen in participation at other comparable marathons, is that it doesn’t.
The Gender Participation Gap At Chicago Marathon
Chicago Marathon had close to a 50:50 split between men and women in 2022 and a total of c.39,500 participants. Again, I couldn’t source a breakdown of participants by age and gender, so I don’t know if this trend continues through the age groups.
The Gender Participation Gap at Boston Marathon
Boston Athletic Association release quite a bit of information about the demographics of Boston Marathon participants, so I’ve been able to get a much better picture of the gender balance in the race.
In 2022 just over 25,000 people ran Boston Marathon and of these 43% were women. This is a bit lower than at New York and Chicago and my first thought is whether Boston’s qualification process has something to do with that. Unlike the rest of the races that make up the World Marathon Majors Boston requires most runners to achieve a qualifying time or run for charity and I wonder if that has an impact on who enters. In contrast, other races in the series have mass participation ballots that don’t require a qualifying time or commitment to fundraising (this is how I secured my London Marathon 2023 place).
It’s a little bit frustrating that BAA hasn’t broken down participant numbers by gender for those between 18 and 39 because I can’t tell if there’s the same drop in women participating after 30 that we saw in the data from London Marathon 2023 discussed here.
The starkest thing about this data is how wide the gap becomes after the age of 40. One of the thoughts that’s crossed my mind looking at the stats from all the US marathons (Boston, New York and Chicago) is whether the narrower gender gap is because of the effect of Title IX. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in all federally funded school programs, including sports programs, in the USA. The impact of Title IX has been really significant, it has been credited with reducing barriers for girls and women and increasing female participation at the high school levels by 1057% and at college level by 614% (data source). However, data from the CDC shows that there’s still a gap in participation in physical activity between men and women of around 7%, which is bigger than in the UK where the gap is around 5% according to the Active Lives Survey 2021-2022. This data is a little old (it was published in 2018), but it gives a feel for what’s going on in the USA more generally. This gap appears to narrow (albeit by a small amount) with age, which contradicts my theory that Title IX may have had an impact on participation levels in women under 50, but I think it would still be worth a more in depth study if someone fancied taking it on.
Percentage of adults aged 18 and over who met 2008 federal physical activity guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities through leisure-time aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities, by age group and sex: United States, 2018 via CDC
The gender participation gap at berlin marathon
This one was a non-starter, I couldn’t find any data beyond the total number of participants.
The gender participation gap at tokyo marathon
So this is where things flip. Unlike the US marathons which seem to be edging towards a 50:50 split between men and women, Tokyo Marathon is A LONG WAY OFF. In the most recent edition of the race just 24% of the c.38,200 participants were women.
Stats from the bi-annual SSF National Sports-Life Survey 2020 (there is a more recent edition, but they’ve only shared the exec. summary at this point) don’t reflect the participation levels seen at Tokyo Marathon. This chart isn’t the clearest, but the numbers are broken down by level of activity:
0 - nothing
1 - participate at least once a year, but less than twice a week
2 - participate at least twice a week
3 - participate at least twice a week for at least 30 minutes a week
4 - an ‘active sports participant’ who participates at least twice a week, at least 30 minutes at a time at moderate intensity.
Looking at the chart, a marginally higher proportion of women than men meet the requirements for activity levels 3 and 4.
The SSF National Sports-Life Survey 2020 provides breakdowns of what sports people participate in both overall and by gender, and I think it could provide some interesting explanations. Overall just over 10% of those surveyed participated in running/jogging. Looking at the breakdown by gender that percentage leaps to over 15% for men, but drops right down to just under 6% for women. This actually really surprises me, Japan is known for having a really strong running culture, the Hakone Ekiden is basically like the Super Bowl, but perhaps this isn’t translating the mass participation? It’s also worth reflecting on the research I’m looking at, it only surveyed 3,000 people, so it could have missed the mark. For example, an earlier White Paper by Japan Productivity Centre published in 2013 suggested that 25.5 million Japanese said they ran regularly, more than any other sport and representing around 20% of the nation’s population.
Another thought is that Tokyo Marathon is relatively new, it only started in 2007 compared to the other Marathon Majors which have been around a lot longer and have arguably contributed to the idea of mass participation marathons as something nearly anyone can do. However, in 2019 the Nagoya Women’s Marathon attracted around 22,000 participants, the majority of whom were Japanese.
Essentially I have no idea what’s going on here, and although I can hypothesis until the cows come home I reckon this would be a great area for further study.
Conclusions
To be honest writing this post has left me with a lot more questions than answers about the gender gap in the World Marathon Majors. The data available really varies from race to race and, while I’m pretty well versed in the sociology of sport participation in Europe and North America, I just don’t know enough about what’s going on in Japan to really understand why participation in Tokyo Marathon looks the way that it does. This is one of the starkest things you learn when you become an academic, there is A LOT that you don’t know!
This is an area that is ripe for further study. If I had more time I’d be making information requests to get the data for each race and probably putting it through one of the various analysis tools that social scientists often use to understand vast quantities of data. But I have a thesis in the works and, right now, that’s not going to happen. It has however been fun looking at the data I have been able to get hold of and speculate about why things might look the way that they do.