Adidas has engineered a new trainer which caters specifically to the needs of female runners.

Across North America the popularity and participation of women’s sports is both socially and culturally enmeshed. Moreover, in Europe and Great Britain concerted strides are being made to increase female involvement in activities which were once considered the domain of men.

A process aiding this welcome advent is the realisation by large companies that women are a huge and viable market, which, largely, is being missed.

Today, sportswear giant Adidas launches the first running shoe designed solely for women, the PureBoost X. It is important to note that there was nothing tokenistic about its creation, this is not a smaller version of a men’s shoe in a colourway perceived to be more feminine. Rather, it has come about after three years of considered research.

Adidas turned to Aramis, a motion tracking technology used to analyse stress on the wings of planes. They discovered that the expansion of a runner’s sole when it hits the ground and comes up again is more pronounced in a woman’s foot. In an effort to mitigate this, the upper was detached from the Boost sole. As a result the shoe wraps naturally around the arch creating a much more comfortable running experience.

Whatever Adidas’s reasoning, commercial or otherwise, the release of the PureBoost X is could be another step in advancing both gender equality, and the growing collective belief that gender has no unilateral hold over us.


Discover more about the changing attitudes to gender in our Gender Report, which includes qualitative and quantitative research and case studies as well as profiles and expert analysis.