Take a tour of 5 Fun Facts About Shoes in Phoenix, United States - part of the World's Greatest Attractions travel video series by GeoBeats. Women own an average of fifteen to twenty pairs of shoes, while men average five to ten pairs. There are almost limitless materials for shoes, including cloth, canvas, plastic, rubber, rope, leather, and even wood. In Western countries, there was no such thing as separate men's and women's shoes until the eighteenth century. Most men buy about two pairs of shoe each year, while women typically buy as many as five pairs. Though people have been running competitively for as long as history can record, running shoes were not invented until the mid-nineteenth century.