Running a different race: The rhetoric of “women’s-only” content in runner’s world

Abstract

When Runner’s World (RW) senior editor Eileen Portz-Shovlin (2002) recounted the birth of the magazine’s "Women’s Running" column in 1994, she began with a story about a women’s road race in Sweden the previous year. When she and a friend arrived at the starting line, she looked around at a field of 30,000 other women runners, proof of what she already knew: Women’s running was a phenomenon. "We were hearing about big women’s races," she reported. Participation in the "Race for the Cure" (breast cancer research) series, women’s races started in 1983 also grew during the 1990s, becoming some of the largest 5K (3.1 miles) events in the country-drawing upwards of 20,000 runners (Zemke, 1998).