The following are women only facilities:
Curves Women's Only Health Clubs
Gymophobics
Fitness First for Women
Energie Fitness for Women
Contours Express
Ladies Workout Express
Ladyzone
The Equality Bill is currently gong through Parliament. The Government intends to pass the Bill into law before the General Election, but depending on when the election is called, it may run out of Parliamentary time.
If it does manage to get passed the full impact the Equality Bill will have on sport is currently unclear. If sport administrative bodies, such as Sport England, UK Sport, SportScotland and the Sports Council for Wales are included on the list of public bodies that the new Equality Duty is applicable to, the implications could be significant.
They would then be required to tackle discrimination and advance equality of opportunity, including reporting annually on their gender pay gap and considering using procurement to drive equality. What this will mean in detail for sport is still unclear however.
The Bill may also have an impact on the way local sports clubs operate. For instance golf clubs will no longer be able to treat female members different to male members.
WSFF will provide a detailed fact sheet on the implications of the Bill if it is passed into law.
The documents below cover gender duty and gender impact information.
- Sport and Equality
- Gender Impact fact sheet
- Equal opportunities monitoring
- Equal Opportunities Commission
If you need any other advice on equality for sport, head to http://www.equalityhumanrights.com
For more details on how your organisation can be more equitable, have a look at the documents linked below:
The following University research centres specialise in sports research:
- Gender, Sport and Society research forum - Gender, Sport and Society research forum
- University of Birmingham- School of Sport and Exercises Science
- University of Brunel - Department of Sport Sciences
- University of Wales Institute, Cardiff - School of Sport
- CIES (International Centre for Sport Studies) - International Centre for Sport Studies
- Leeds Metropolitan University - Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education
- University of Leicester - Centre for the Sociology of Sport
- Liverpool John Moores University - The Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences
- Loughborough University - School of Sport and Exercise Sciences
- British Heart Foundation National Centre for and Health
- Loughborough University also houses the Sports Development Centre and English Institute of Sport
- Manchester Metropolitan University - Department of Sport and Physical Science
- Sheffield Hallam University - School of Sport and Active lifestyles
- Southampton University - Southampton University
- University of Surrey, Roehampton - Centre for Scientific and Cultural Research in Sport (CSCRS)
The benefits of a nation of active women include:
Social Benefits
Playing sport and exercising increases physical health and mental well-being, which in turn:
- • Reduces costs to the NHS of treating disease linked to inactivity
- • Reduces sickness absence at work and increases productivity and staff retention
- • Reduces the level of teenage pregnancies as many studies show that girls who participate regularly in sport delay their first sexual experience
- • Increases energy levels, confidence and self-esteem, providing women with a greater capacity to successfully manage the demands of career, home, family and community, with mothers setting an active role model for their daughters
- • Produces a cohesive community in which individual women meet and socialise with others while sharing a common enjoyment of physical activity
- • Reduces reliance on unhealthy dieting and the type of body control that leads to eating disorders
- • Ensures greater levels of academic achievement, with many studies showing the link between increasing physical activity and better exam results
- • Benefits the environment as more women leave their cars at home and walk and cycle instead
Commercial Benefits
- Women now own 48% of personal wealth in the UK, which is set to rise to 60% by 2020
- 87% of consumer purchasing decisions are made by women
- A nation of active women represents a considerable potential market to every element of the commercial sector targeting an audience with an involvement and interest in sport and exercise; from television sports channels and traditional health and fitness brands to entrepreneurs seeking to create new products and services for fitter and healthier women and girls.
For the full Creating a Nation of Active Women report, click here.
Sports Agencies
- British Olympic Association (BOA)
- British Paralympic Association (BPA)
- Central Council for Physical Recreation (CCPR)
- English Golf Union
- Irish Sports Council Women in Sport
- London 2012
- Muslim's Women's Sports Foundation
- National Governing Bodies of Sport
- Sport England-GB
- sportScotland
- sports coach UK
- Sports Council Northern Ireland
- Sports Council for Wales
- Sports Leaders
- Sports Match
- UK Sport
- Youth Sport Trust (YST)
Sports Equity Agencies
Authorities
Health and Fitness Agencies
Education
International
Other key organisations
Government Departments
Youth and Community
Media
Womens Organisations
Equity Agencies
Disclaimer: Please note: Links will lead to other websites that are not under our control. The Womens Sports Foundation is not responsible for the content of any linked site, or any links contained in a linked site. Links do not imply any endorsement by the Womens Sports and Fitness Foundation.
WSFF has prepared a report covering milestones from the last 25 years and combines WSFF’s achievements and events which have shaped women’s sport.
Sport England has recognised that women are not all the same and has created a segmentation model that identifies 19 groups (of which 11 are made up of or include women) according to key life-stage and lifestyle identifiers such as age, affluence, marital status and parental obligations. These help to explain individuals’ motivations, attitudes, behaviour and barriers towards sport and active recreation.
Each segment has been described within the context of sporting activities and levels of participation, which vary enormously between the different groups. An additional understanding of attitudes, sociodemographics, health statistics and marketing communication preferences has developed a fully-rounded picture of each segment.
To discover Sport England’s segments, head to Sport England Market Segmentation
1. Give the customer what she wants
• Selling the existing product harder won’t work. Policy makers and activity providers must invest in understanding the needs of women - 51% of the population – and develop new products and experiences that compete successfully with how they currently choose to spend their time
• For most women, physical activity is not about winning. Their motivations and expectations are often different from men’s. It’s about health and social motivations – fun, family, flexibility – and about fitting sport and fitness into busy lives
• Women want the sort of high quality experience and customer service they enjoy in other environments. For sport and fitness that means clean swimming pools, showers that work, even hair straighteners in school changing rooms. It also means better signposting and support so that whether someone is new to a sport, or trying to move up to the next level, they can find what they are looking for, and enjoy a warm welcome when they get there
• For school age girls – a key target group – a wider range of activities should be available in all schools – like dance and yoga – and girls should be able to wear what they feel comfortable in
2. Create a society in which being active is attractive
• Girls grow up with a different set of expectations from boys: society teaches them that it’s attractive to be decorative and passive rather than physically active. A new ideal of female beauty is needed; one that changes perceptions of body image and celebrates fit and healthy women and girls, holding them up as role models to give the rest the confidence and expectation to be active
• Sport must be redefined and re-branded to make it “cool” and “fun” for girls – the second priority identified in consultation. Women’s sports and sportswomen need to be better promoted – and not just on the back pages. From the glossy magazines to newspapers, sportswomen should be celebrated across the media
• Women need to be better educated about the benefits of being active. The guidelines need to be reviewed so that they are memorable and useable, and then promoted in social marketing campaigns
3. Develop policies to improve leadership, investment and profile
• Adopting a customer-oriented approach and changing the prevailing culture requires a policy environment that leads and facilitates progress. Policies need to be clear, joined-up and rooted in strong consumer insight; clear commitments and targets need to be made, and progress measured
• A higher proportion of women are needed in senior positions – particularly in sport – to achieve critical mass, ensure better understanding of the women’s market and to act as role models for others in the sector
• Existing and new equalities legislation needs to be utilised by encouraging cases to be brought and better promoting the risks to agencies that fail in their duty to women
• Public investment in sport and fitness needs to be tracked to ensure women enjoy its benefits. Ring-fenced funding for women’s sport remains the most popular initiative in consultation
• Women’s sport should enjoy a greater share of commercial revenues, not just as part of good CSR, but also as a sound commercial investment in the future
For more information, download the Creating a nation of active women report or head to the Policy section.
More than 80% of women and girls are not doing enough physical activity to benefit their health. Young women are now half as active as young men. The situation is forecast to get even worse over the next ten years. The WSFF’s ground-breaking research study, It’s time, revealed the extent and complexity of the problem and predicted that participation rates could fall by another five and a half per cent by 2017 without urgent and informed action.
Creating a Nation of Active Women sets out the strategic direction and approach that will help policy makers and providers understand how to shape the extensive actions necessary to make physical activity an integral part of life for women and girls in the UK.
The importance of role models in women’s sport cannot be under-estimated. Whilst young boys can look to Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard and imagine themselves running out at Old Trafford, most young girls are more likely to look to models, WAGs, pop singers and their mums as their role models. Some sports, and indeed individual sportswomen, have realised the power of a figurehead in creating publicity around their sport.
As our research shows, there is still a huge battle to be fought before parity in coverage and promotion is achieved. Indeed, it is often as a result of sexism that women’s sport suddenly achieves national focus - compare the impact that Mike Newell’s comments on female referees made, contrasted to the normal struggle of women in sport to make an impact. Often, women sport stars are depicted as ‘glamorous’ or sexualised inappropriately in order to retain their rightful place on the back pages.
We understand that the entire media industry isn’t to blame – indeed there are many advocates in the ranks of journalists. Certainly women’s sport is often guilty of poorly promoting itself (or not understanding how best to), but when they get it right the rewards are great. Netball’s deal with Sky Sports has proven that women’s team sports do have a place in this multi-sports channel landscape.
The women’s FA Cup final is now regularly televised, achieving 1.5 million viewers on BBC in 2008. This interest has helped reassure decision makers in television that there is mileage in expanding their coverage and making long-term commitment to the women’s game. We hope the new broadcast deal making Setanta and ITV the FA’s women’s football media partners will mean increased coverage, and further recognition for the players involved.
Newspaper coverage
Over three days, Sunday 9th March, Saturday 15th March and Friday 29th March, the sports pages across all of the national daily newspapers were reviewed to provide some headline results into the level of women’s coverage. Over the three days, the newspapers dedicated a huge 1482 articles to sport yet only 2% (28 pieces) were dedicated to women’s sport. The average space (including results and fixtures and photos) awarded to women’s sport each day was 197cm2, just 1.1% of all of the space available.
Just 2% of articles and 1% of images in the sports pages of national newspapers are devoted to female athletes and women’s sport.
Television
To coincide with our newspaper review, we also studied the TV sport schedule. On Friday March 14 (beginning at 6am), Sky Sports 1 showed a full 24 hour programming of entirely men’s elite sport. Predominantly cricket and football, but boxing and NFL also got a look in. Its sister channel, Sky Sports 2 followed the trend and dedicated none of its schedule to women’s sport.
Sky Sports 3 offered some coverage of women’s sport in its mixed winter sport and magazine shows (Transworld Sport) and a repeat of its Netball superleague coverage meant that Sky had allocated just three hours of its 72 hours available to women’s sport.
Online
A look at some of the most popular sports news internet sites, continues to shine a light on the pecking order of men and women’s sport. Of the ten sports news internet sites that we reviewed on Wednesday 16th April, there were 367 links from the front page to articles, but just five links went to female sports (1%).
There was not one image of a female athlete on the front page of the top ten websites. Out of 129 images (both photos and film images) – there were four images of women (3%): Sky Sports did have a film of two female sports presenters, a third was of Kate Lawler in her underwear in a marathon photograph shot, and a fourth image was of an advert for women’s health.
For more information, read Women in Sport Audit.
Finding funding for sport can be difficult. There are so many options and categories to choose from; even when you have a great idea for a project you might fall at the first hurdle deciding where to get the money to support it. WSFF has prepared a Funding Factsheet so you can get more details on this key area.
If you are an athlete and looking for financial support, we recommend you contact SportAid.
Only one in five members of the boards of NGBs for sport is a woman. One quarter of sports have no women in board positions at all. While almost half of all staff in NGBs is female, just 22% of Performance Directors and only 20% of senior management teams are women. This is despite women making up half the population. It is no coincidence that less than one in ten women play competitive sport and more than 80% of women do too little sport or exercise to benefit their health.
For more detail on leadership and sport, head to The Commission’s Trophy Women report
WSFF has produced a series of free, downloadable fact sheets including insight factsheets, analysis of how women participate and are involved in various sports.
WSFF does not currently stock posters of inspirational sports women. We recommend you contact the National Governing Body of particular sports directly as they are more likely to hold posters specific to your sport or fitness area.
WSFF’s Muslim Women in Sport fact sheet covers the issues faced by Muslim women and considers what their religion says about participation.
The Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation (MWSF) is a volunteer led charity set up in 2001 with the aim to increase the numbers of Muslim women involved in sport through playing, coaching, refereeing and volunteering. MWSF run high quality all-female training sessions and provide consultation to clubs, councils and organisations offering Muslim sporting opportunities.
For more information, head to Muslim Women's Sport Foundation
WSFF has links with a number of high profile role models, however it is best to create relationships with sports agents directly.
For schools we recommend looking into the Youth Sport Trust’s School Sport Ambassadors programme which aims to help inspire more children to take part in PE and school sport. The ambassadors promote the benefits of sport and a healthy lifestyle to young people. They visit schools and sporting events across the country to support our initiatives and help increase young people’s enjoyment of sport.
For more details:
Youth Sport Trust
Sporting Champions
Athletes Direct
RAMP - Respect Athlete Mentor Programme
WSFF is a small charity so we are unable to speak at all events. Instead we have put together a list of handy reports and fact sheets for you to print off as required.
WSFF is a small charity so we are unable to help find sources of research for dissertations or give interviews. Instead we have put together a list of handy reports and fact sheets for you to print off as required.
Check out the links below for details on sports clubs and sports community programs.
- England - www.activeplaces.com
- Scotland - www.sportscotland.org.uk
- Northern Ireland - www.sportni.org/
- Wales - www.sports-council-wales.org.uk
Frequently asked questions
