The latest Active People Survey from Sport England has seen a reverse in a worrying trend with 245,000 more adults over the age of 16 regularly playing sport than was the case last year.
The bulk of this growth is down to women with 148,700 of the rise attributed to them.
Sport England is attributing much of this rise to the success of the This Girl Can which Sport for Business has highlighted as a viable campaign for Ireland to adapt. We will be convening a meeting of our Women in Sport group, supported by Liberty Insurance, early in 2016 to look at the possibility of doing just that.
“It’s good news that more women are playing sport, and driving an overall increase in the numbers,” said Jennie Price, Chief Executive of Sport England.
“It’s particularly great to see This Girl Can is making a real difference. That’s because we’ve really focused on what drives women’s attitudes and behaviours.
“If we’re to see a further step change in the total number of people playing sport, we need to take a similar, consumer-focused approach in areas where the figures are stubbornly low, like disability and lower socio-economic groups.”
There is though still a significant gender gap, bigger than it is here. 40.7 per cent of men regularly play sport compared to 31.2% of women. In Ireland, the latest published figures in the Sport Ireland Sports Monitor show those figures standing at 52.0 percent and 42.7 per cent respectively.
Gym exercise and boxing are the two sports in England to have shown the biggest increases over the period since Britain won the right to host the 2012 Olympics in 2006.
Swimming though has seen a decline, counter to what he have seen in Ireland but a trend that needs to be watched out for.
