EXPERT ADVISORY — December 4, 2025 — R0140
As her shoes pad softly on the ground, recent news headlines play in her subconscious like a chilling soundtrack to her jog: Be vigilant. Yet another woman was violently attacked in the street, on a trail, in a park.
She runs from a bustling city scape into a vast wooded area — stopping abruptly when encountering a man standing within her narrow path ahead. She quickly looks around and calculates her options before eventually running past him, heart in her throat and a pit in her stomach.
As Gone For a Run — Brock University Professor of Kinesiology Cathy van Ingen’s new short film — fades to black, a text overlay reveals that “two out of three women have experienced abuse on a run.”
“Because the ending is unscripted, you’re left with the very same uncertainty that women carry into the world when they access public spaces, because the normalized expectation is that it won’t be uncommon for them to experience harassment,” says van Ingen. “Beyond every encounter, there’s still another run, there’s still another corner.”
Her latest documentary film project — intentionally released to coincide with the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women on Dec. 6 — is a visual representation of her research conducted with funding provided by Brock University through a 2024 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Explore Grant.
“I was looking for different ways to use storytelling to engage broader publics in research-based work, which is really what this film does,” says van Ingen, who also holds an MFA in Documentary Media. “This is a key moment to cast a spotlight on these issues, but I hope these conversations will also extend beyond days like Dec. 6 or March 8 (International Women’s Day).”
The film comes as a full-circle moment for van Ingen, whose 30-year career studying gender, sport and public space began with graduate research where she interviewed women about how they trained and negotiated their safety as long-distance runners.
She says the needle has barely moved on action against gender-based violence since then, noting it is still “overwhelmingly difficult for a woman to be taken seriously or to receive a form of justice.”
“Despite all our awareness about harassment and violence, there’s surprisingly little scholarly research on how it actually impacts physical activity,” she says. “We know from a global survey that 92 per cent of women runners are concerned about their safety while running. But we’re only beginning to understand how this shapes women’s experiences and choices.”
While the film itself focuses on women joggers, van Ingen hopes it will act as an “entry point” for broader conversation about gender-based violence.
“The wild thing is that being out for a jog in a public space is not the most unsafe place for women — it’s actually their own home — and it is more common for women to encounter violence by someone they know then by ‘stranger danger,’” she says.
Gone for a Run ends with three takeaways: “Stop telling runners to stay safe. Stop harassment. Stop gender-based violence.”
Doing so, van Ingen says, involves rethinking longstanding notions that women should be solely responsible for ensuring their own safety; listening to women’s lived experiences; and amplifying those messages to engage others in creating change.
“The number of shares of this film by women on social media has really driven this conversation forward,” she says, “but men and boys also need to share these stories, think about the way that their presence is read in public spaces, and be prepared to intervene and speak out against any kind of harassment and cultures of violence.”
Progress also requires a demand for accountability, van Ingen says, both societally and institutionally.
“How can you demand that these conversations happen? We need to do the work at the levels of law enforcement and criminal justice, but how can you hold your own running club or friend groups accountable?” she says. “These conversations and changes are happening in some spaces, but we need to keep talking about individual safety strategies, what is making public spaces unsafe, and how we can collectively work to change that.”
Brock University Professor of Kinesiology Cathy van Ingen is available for media interviews on this topic.
For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:
*Sarah Ackles, Communications Specialist, Brock University [email protected] or 289-241-5483
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