Women almost twice as likely to be injured walking down stairs as men

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Young women are almost twice as likely to suffer an injury walking down stairs as men of the same age, reveals new research.

Wearing high heels and talking on the phone are among the main reasons, according to the observational study of US college students.

Researchers found that women in their twenties were more likely to engage in distracting "risky behaviors" - such as multi-tasking or holding a conversation - while descending stairs compared to young men.

Falling on the stairs is more likely to result in injuries than other types of falls, say scientists.

The three groups of people most likely to fall on the stairs are children under three years of age, adults in their 20s, and adults over the age of 85.

In the young adult group specifically, women are injured 80 percent more often than men - the highest injury rate across all ages and sexes except for women aged over 80.

To examine why young women sustain so many stair-related injuries compared to young men, researchers videotaped two indoor staircases on a US university campus, one short (two steps) and one long (17 steps) over the course of a semester.

They analyzed 2,400 young adults recorded on either the short staircase or long staircase and identified eight "risky" behaviors: no handrail use; not watching the stairs while descending; wearing sandals, flip-flops, or high heels; having an in-person or smartphone conversation; using an electronic device; hands in pockets; holding something; and skipping steps.

The research team also identified five participants who lost their balance, all of whom recovered: four were men, on the long staircase, and one was a woman, on the short staircase.

Study co-author Professor Shirley Rietdyk, of Purdue University, said: “The young women we observed demonstrated more risky behaviors than the young men.

"Women were significantly less likely to use the handrail), more likely to be holding something in their hands, more likely to be engaged in conversation, more likely to wear sandals and heels, and also demonstrated a higher number of co-occurring risky behaviors.

"However, women were less likely to skip steps and more likely to look at the stair tread during transition steps than men."

She said previous research has shown that women tend to interact more closely with colleagues, presumably why so many of the people engaging in in-person conversations on the stairs were women.

Rietdyk said: "Overall, the results suggest that women are often multi-tasking and therefore possibly distracted while descending the stairs - and that this might be more dangerous than skipping steps or not looking at the stairs, the behaviors more often seen in young men in this study."

She added: "Future studies should also examine physiological differences that may lead to greater injury risk, such as differences in strength or reaction time.”

The findings were published in the journal PLOS One.