A major new report in the UK has defined six key values that are fundamental to how women and girls want to live their lives and important in how sport seeks to engage them to participate at every level.
Research funded by Sport England has been tested and tweaked by Women in Sport working alongside Education groups and sports governing bodies and the results are published in a new report which can be downloaded below.
According to the report “Gym-based fitness still claims the lion’s share of women’s participation. Although some women enjoy and participate in ‘traditional’ sport, the majority still feel unenthused and distant from it.”
“A class based gym session feels more accessible and relevant to women than playing netball or hockey.”
“NGBs of sport are responding, and in many cases re-thinking, the delivery of sport for women with positive results. But there are still many deep-rooted barriers preventing women from engaging with sport.”
“Unless the way sport is framed changes, we can expect to see little significant change in women’s levels of participation in sport in the future.”
The six key values are:
Feeling good tapping into a growing awareness of wellbeing and the importance of ‘me-time.
Looking good remains a more important motivating factor than for men. That’s just the way it is.
Nurturing friends and family especially and often becoming the family lynchpin prioritising others needs over their own.
Achieving goals, often in a more planned and determined fashion than men
Developing new skills in order to enhance personal development. It sounds soft but it’s real.
Having fun as an important motivating factor and relevant in terms of having a choice rather than an obligation to do something which can work against the traditional team structures of set training times.
The report lists three case studies in athletics, soccer and tennis where specific programmes were built in order to test and review how women engaged with particular sports and the summary of learnings about focusing on multiple values and continually assessing the relevance of campaigns are lessons worth bearing in mind.
Sport for Business has brought together a powerful group of people from across sport, business, government and media and will consider this report as one of the bases for the work it plans to help drive greater parity of esteem for Women’s sport in Ireland over the coming months and years.
Read 8 takeaways from the first meeting of the group here
Download the report ‘Understanding Women’s Lives – Re-designing and re-positioning sport and physical activity to engage Women’ published by Women in Sport
Download the report 
