Running joke
Thousands of non-elite women at the Great North Run got neither privacy nor fair competition
Yesterday, the organisers of the Great North Run flushed away women’s dignity. While men were provided with urinals, thousands of women were expected to squat in unisex, so-called PEEQUAL units: holes in the ground with no doors, no privacy, no toilet roll and only a bag for used sanitary towels and tampons.
Apparently unconcerned that this toilet provision raised obvious questions under the Equality Act, the organisers emailed participants beforehand to say that facilities would include “portaloos, men’s urinals, and PEEQUAL - an open-air squat urinal designed for women, trans women, AFAB, and non-binary runners”.
Reports from the event suggest that women who wanted privacy were forced to queue for portaloos.
The piss-taking did not stop there. While the 20 elite female runners were permitted to compete against their own sex, in accordance with British Athletics rules, women in the mass race had to compete against men.
Great Run permits males to self-identify into the female category for its mass-participation events.
SEEN in Sport said on X that the Great North Run defended the policy on the grounds that most participants are focused on completing the event and achieving their own aims, rather than racing specific rivals or studying results among “10s of 1000s” of runners. In other words, women who are not among the elite can jog on.
Great Run is not the only mass-participation race organiser to treat the female category as expendable. Parkrun, which operates more than 1,400 events across Britain, also permits males to self-identify into it, pushing women and girls down its leaderboards.
The split between elite and ordinary runners gives the game away. Great Run recognises that sex matters: men were provided with urinals and the 20 elite women with a protected race. Yet it refused to extend either privacy or fair competition to the thousands of women making up the mass field. The organisers had the facilities, the rules and the evidence in front of them.
Anger at the unfairness is growing. Reality Rules Runners UK, a new sex-realist Parkrun club, is campaigning to restore fair competition and sex-based categories. It is aiming to recruit 800 more women and men before 3 October, putting it among Parkrun’s 20 largest clubs and demonstrating the strength of support for rules that reflect reality.
Here’s hoping that the finish line may soon be in sight for mixed sex facilities and races in British running.