Written evidence submitted by Women in Sport
About Women in Sport
Founded in 1984, Women in Sport is the longest-standing charity in its field with a proud history of securing change for women and girls. At its heart lies a deep understanding of the needs of women and girls in relation to sport and a passion to address the stubborn gender inequalities that still exist, including via policy and legislative change.
Based on expert insight, Women in Sport challenges the system, offers solutions and inspires change. Not only do we believe in girls and women having access to fair and safe sport for the joy, fulfilment and lifelong benefits it offers, but we care about this because it can address health inequalities and help society to thrive.
We are submitting evidence to this inquiry because we know that women and girls are missing out on the benefits of grassroots and school sport. This is not inevitable and there are tangible things the Government, the sport sector and schools could do to address this inequality.
Community sport
1. What is the current quality and availability of facilities for grassroots sport?
It is still too often the case that women and girls are treated as an afterthought in grassroots sport, with male sport prioritised. We frequently hear case studies of women and girls only being able to book facilities at ‘off peak’ times (including late in the evening, when women may not feel safe travelling to play) or being removed from facilities because they are ‘needed’ by men or boys. Just this year, we have seen high profile examples at grassroots and elite level of women’s teams having their access to facilities restricted and, indeed, being shut down entirely.
When it comes to the quality of facilities, again, it is still too often the case that women are forced to play on sub-standard courts or pitches because men ‘need’ the better one. This, alongside a lack of specific equipment for girls and women’s needs, is likely to be a contributory factor to the injury rate in women’s sport. There are also still too many examples of women’s sporting facilities that don’t have adequate single sex changing rooms or toilets and that don’t make adequate provision for women to manage their periods. These are vital for women to feel, and be, both physically and psychologically safe and, in relation to girls particularly, a key part of basic safeguarding.
All organisations that are planning to devote resources to grassroots sport should look at their plans through the lens of gender budgeting (see Q2) to ensure that women and girls are benefiting equally.
2. What sources of funding are available for grassroots sport and are they sufficient?
We know the allocation of money and other resources in sport is not fair. There is currently significantly less investment in women and girls’ sport than men and boys’. When it comes to distributing funds for grassroots sport, organisations should therefore use a gender budgeting approach.
Gender budgeting is a financial planning tool to achieve fair funding for women and girls by focusing on how money is spent by those funding sport and facilities. It can be used by any type of organisation, including National Governing Bodies (NGBs), local authorities, leisure providers and private companies. Indeed, some NGBs – notably British Gymnastics and the RFL – are already starting to use gender budgeting.
Gender budgeting is a two-stage process:
It's important to note that gender budgeting does not necessarily mean simply adjusting budgets to ensure a 50-50 spend on men and women. It means adjusting resources to ensure that the benefits are equal. This may mean that women and girls need more investment than men and boys for a time, to level the playing field.
It’s also important to note that gender budgeting doesn’t necessarily mean spending more overall. It is about how money is spent, not how much.
3. How can volunteers be better supported and what is needed to attract and retain more volunteers to grassroots sport?
Sport England’s most recent Active Lives Adult Survey shows there is a clear pattern of gender disparity in volunteering in grassroots sport. Whilst the share of people who say they volunteer once a year is equal (49% male, 50% female), as volunteering becomes more frequent the gender gap grows. Amongst those who volunteer most frequently, weekly or more, 63% are male and 37% female. Women are particularly underrepresented in pitch volunteer roles, including as coaches (33% female) and referees (25% female).
These statistics highlight the issues facing women volunteering in grassroots sport. Women have less free time than men and are shouldering the burden of care and other unpaid work in the home, as demonstrated by the latest ONS time use data. A societal shift to share the burden of caring and household work more equally is needed.
We should recognise that volunteering, whilst rewarding, can be a significant and tiring commitment for many people, especially women. With volunteers in sport bearing much of the societal responsibility of keeping people active, women shouldering the additional social burdens of care and unpaid work can quickly find the demands unmanageable.
It is also the case that, even at a voluntary level, the traditional structures that govern many sports are outdated and don’t work for women (or many men). These structures tend to require significant time investment, especially for voluntary governance roles, and so exclude many women by default. There is a clear connection between these outdated structures, a largely male dominated volunteer workforce and the gendering of volunteering roles where women are typically placed.
Our research also shows that women are less likely to have a positive experience volunteering, and working, in sport. They are more likely to face hostility and abuse. Much of this will be misogynistic and based on gendered stereotypes that still hold that sport is a man’s domain.
4. How can grassroots sport be made more engaging and accessible to under-represented groups?
For sport to be truly engaging and accessible for women and girls, gender stereotyping is the first barrier that needs to be removed:
For women and girls who do engage with grassroots sport, it must be a place where they feel and are genuinely welcome and included.
This includes sporting organisations at all levels taking action to make sure their culture is proactively anti-misogynistic. This should include an anti-misogyny policy, at NGB level at a minimum, which makes it clear that there is a zero-tolerance approach to misogyny and, crucially, sets out a clear complaints and enforcement process. We believe this should be a condition of any sporting organisation receiving public money.
There should be more opportunities for women and girls to find the sport they love, including not just meaningful access to facilities but also to organised activities. Some of these must be dedicated, single sex sessions. This is important for women and girls of all ages, but especially for teenage girls who our research shows are deterred from sport because they feel watched and judged. Where sport is competitive, there should be a female-only category.
Sports organisations should do more to ensure that there are women in leadership positions in their sport, at all levels. Women’s lived experiences must be part of the decision-making process in grassroots sport. Having a Board that is at least 50% female should be a mandatory condition of public funding for sports organisations. Visibility is also important, and the Government should work with public service broadcasters to ensure at least 50% of their sports coverage is of women’s sport. Our research shows that visibility, especially on free to air channels, has a role to play in inspiring girls to engage with sport.
School sport
5. How can schools better enable children to develop positive and life-long relationships with sport and physical education?
According to data from Sport England’s Active Lives Children and Young People report, girls are less active than boys in every school year. Overall, 45% of girls aged 5-16 are active (as defined by the Chief Medical Officer’s guidance), vs 51% of boys. Girls also report significantly less enjoyment of school sport than boys. In the 2024 Youth Sport Trust Girls Active Survey, 87% of boys said they enjoyed PE compared to just 66% of girls (which falls even further, to 58%, amongst girls in secondary school).
More must be done to close the gender skills gap as a first step to helping girls develop a positive relationship with sport. Our research shows that girls arrive at primary school with fewer fundamental movement skills - basic movements needed to take part in physical activity, such as kicking, running, bouncing, striking, and catching - than their male classmates, due to gender stereotyping in their earliest years. These skills are the building blocks children need to be able to progress to the more complex movements required to fully engage with sport. This gap in learning the basic skills right at the start, which the current approach to PE is not addressing, means that girls quickly feel at a disadvantage, particularly in team sports. Too many girls are leaving primary school with a physical literacy deficit.
This is why teacher training is vital when it comes to making school sport work better for girls. Specifically, there should be a far more robust teacher training programme for school sport that includes training on the impacts of gender stereotyping, on both girls and boys, and female physiology (including, vitally, the wide-ranging impacts of female puberty) for all teachers and coaches who will be teaching sport in schools. Whilst there are specific courses on these issues already available to schools who can afford them, this is something that the Government should be pursuing for all schools.
When it comes to formal PE lessons, research from many organisations, including the Department for Education, has consistently shown that pupils are not receiving the two hours per week that they are entitled to. PE is also not classed as a core subject, nor is progress in PE assessed in the same way as academic subjects, which means it is too often seen as a ‘nice to have’ rather than as a fundamental part of a child’s education. Making PE a core subject, with two hours a week of high-quality PE as a baseline not an aspiration, and treating attainment in PE (in both physical literacy and other skills) with the same respect as any other subject are key ways of ensuring more girls develop a positive relationship with sport. A thriving and well-resourced school sport network also has a role to play.
Additionally, schools should ensure that girls and boys have access to the same range of sports, particularly team sports. According to Active Lives data, the gender play gap in team sport for children is currently 23%. We know that team sport helps build particular skills in, for example, resilience, teamwork and communication, which are vital for personal development. Boys and girls must have the same opportunities to develop these skills.
Extra-curricular activities must be improved. Our research found that the provision of after-school clubs varies widely across schools and in our survey only 30% of parents described the provision as ‘very good’. Even when clubs are available, girls are not always able to get into them. Those clubs that were populated predominantly by boys sometimes left girls feeling like they didn’t really belong, and this impacted their likelihood of sticking with the activity. A more uniform, high-quality supply of extra-curricular activities (including some that are single sex) is a key part of the school sport ecosystem.
This said, the Girls Active Survey also showed that 62% of girls want to be more active in school. Whilst 58% of those who said so wanted this to be through more PE, 46% said they wanted it to be through “more opportunities to be active in other lessons”, demonstrating the potential for a more active approach to all school subjects. Integrating physical activity, including opportunities for play and time spent outside, across the whole school day would be hugely beneficial. This of course includes the playground. Our research has shown the extent to which boys dominate the playground, particularly with games of football, to the exclusion of girls. Schools should do more to actively redress the balance; for example, by making sure a wide range of sports are available at break times.
There is now a well-established body of scientific evidence showing a link between physical activity, increased brain function and educational attainment. According to a survey carried out by researchers at Canterbury Christ Church University, 91% of primary school aged children and 63% of secondary say that being active during the school day helps them learn. This demonstrates the importance of school sport, and why we must make it work for girls.
We can’t consider girls’ engagement with school sport in isolation from their wider lives. Female puberty is also a major barrier to participating in sport. Our research shows seven out of ten girls avoid being active on their periods. There is a role here for schools. Better education on female puberty – for girls and boys – would go some way to reducing the stigma and fear around periods, as well as better preparing girls on what to expect and how to manage their periods, reducing the number of girls missing out on school sport for this reason.
6. How should schools and sports organisations work together to deliver better sporting opportunities for children in and outside of school hours?
The simple fact is there needs to be more opportunities for girls to play sport.
As outlined above, school sport currently isn’t delivering for girls. With unequal opportunities for girls in PE lessons, in the playground and in extra-curricular settings more must be done to ensure they have meaningful access to school sport. As many opportunities are provided by NGBs and professional coaches, there is clearly scope for sports organisations and schools to coordinate their resources more effectively to close this gap.
Outside of school, the situation is similar. Our latest research (to be published later in the year) clearly shows that there are fewer opportunities for girls to play sport outside of school, and that there are significant regional and local disparities in what opportunities they can access. There is also a strong link between areas of deprivation and a lack of opportunity for girls. Sports organisations should consider what they can do to close these gaps, and we will be sharing our research with them to help them to do so.
This is another area where a gender budgeting approach would help allocate resources more effectively. It could be used by schools, NGBs and others providing sport in schools to ensure that their sport spending is benefiting girls and boys equally.
Governance
8. How effective are national and local government and sport governing body initiatives in delivering school and grassroots sport, and how might they be improved?
Ensuring there are more initiatives for grassroots and school sport for women and girls is one way the situation could improve. However, what’s more important is that all initiatives are designed with a deep understanding of women and girls at their heart and that there is adequate investment in providing opportunities for girls.
One example of such an initiative is Big Sister, designed and run by Women in Sport, Places for People, Places Leisure, and Hey Girls. Big Sister was based on Women in Sport research into teenage girls, which showed that given the right support and opportunities, teenage girls are motivated to take part in sport.
In its ten-month pilot, Big Sister:
Thanks to our ongoing partnership with Places Leisure, Big Sister has now rolled out nationwide as a permanent programme.
9. How can the Government facilitate better coordination across the sport ecosystem to deliver grassroots and school sport?
Under previous administrations, several bodies were set up – for example, the National Physical Activity Taskforce and the Women’s Sport Board – to facilitate progress against government goals for sport and physical activity. It is not clear what the status of these bodies are under the new Government, nor was it clear that these bodies were set up in an optimal way. The Task Force had a rolling membership, for example, and therefore no permanent representation of women and girls. However, the structures could be made to work, if they have clear aims and the right membership.
Another role the Government could fulfil is enabling and mandating the consistent collection of gender disaggregated data across sport. This is particularly necessary when it comes to financial resources, and why we believe the Government should make gender impact reporting mandatory. This would make sure all sports organisations (in England) are identifying and assessing the scale of inequalities in their current resource allocation.
Although there is some evidence of cross-Government working to leverage the benefits of sport (for example, joint work between DCMS and the Department for Education on school sport) it is still the case that sport is often forgotten in wider discussions around government priorities. One area where this is most apparent is health, where despite significant discussion of prevention, sport is still peripheral. Given the obvious physical and mental health benefits of being active, this is a clear missed opportunity.
This is especially the case for women and girls, who are disproportionately affected by several gendered health inequalities that sport can help to prevent or ameliorate. To take just two examples:
The cumulative impact of these health inequalities on the NHS and on the economy should be obvious to any government. We are all missing out if we cannot reap the benefits of sport to the health of society.