Arab News Japan

DUBAI: Japanese multinational corporation, ASICS, is on a mission to expose and resolve the potential factors that lead to the global gender exercise gap.

ASICS is launching a world-wide study and is urging all people in the UAE to participate in this survey to help figure out what might be causing a massive gender gap in the fitness and/or sports industry.

ASICS’s famous slogan ‘a sound mind is a sound body’ is the driver behind the corporation’s core belief that everyone, disregarding gender, age, race,…, should experience the positive physical and mental benefits of exercise.

The company is always on the look out for changes in trends and athletes’ demands, and last year it uncovered a major gender exercise gap with women, especially with young women, through analyzing the ASICS state of mind index.

This index is a score on a scale of 100 that measures 10 cognitive and emotional aspects; some of them are positivity, satisfaction, stress management, composure, and concentration.

Marketing manager from ASICS Arabia, Ana Seixas said “The scale of this is huge, affecting thousands of women each day. We know that many women have stopped exercising and many girls don’t have the chance to regularly exercise in the first place. Plus, sportswomen aren’t always given the same opportunities and can face more challenges than their male counterparts. As a result, they have lower State of Mind Index scores, meaning they are missing out on the positive mental benefits that exercise brings”

The global study launched by ASICS aims to evaluate and understand the motivators as well as the barriers of women’s exercise levels and analyze differences between generations and geographies.

The study includes quantitative research with thousands of people across the globe and is being led by two leading researchers in movement and the mind.