Women in coaching
This fact sheet is provides a starting point for those looking to develop their own projects aimed at getting more women involved in coaching.
Since 2000 the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF) has delivered targeted workforce development programmes to encourage and enable more women to become involved and develop as sports coaches.
In collaboration with other organisations that have run similar programmes nationally, we make some key recommendations about growing, retaining and sustaining your female coaching workforce.
How can sports clubs attract and retain women and girls
Each sports club is unique, that’s part of the beauty of sport. Each team or club has its own history, its own traditions and characters as well as its own future aspirations.There is no one-size fits all approach for clubs trying to attract women and girls, however, there are some key elements which the WSFF believe should be effectively implemented by most clubs. Download the factsheet for more information.
Barriers to sports participation for women and girls
In this fact sheet we explore the range of practical, personal and social and cultural barriers that prevent women and girls becoming involved in sport and exercise. Our list of barriers also contains ideas for sports deliverers to implement to encourage and enable women and girls to participate.
Creating a nation of active women: A framework for change
Creating a Nation of Active Women provides the framework to address the crisis detailed in It’s time. But it’s more than a strategy for change. It is a stark call-to-action for those with the power and responsibility to effect that change.
A national target has been set for two million more people to be more active by 2012, of which at least one million should be women. But with 24 million women not doing enough physical activity, that should be only the beginning.
With practical recommendations, the strategy provides a framework, compromising three key imperatives, for those who develop policy and design, and who deliver and promote sport and exercise for women and girls.
It's time: Future forecasts for women's particiation in sport and exercise
Published in 2007, It's time is a ground-breaking research study into women's participation in sport and exercise.
The report reveals the true extent of the crisis in women's physical activity, highlighting the critically low levels of women's participation in sport and exercise. It's time explored and explained the reasons for this and the complex motivations that are specific to women.
Did you know that more than 80% of women are not doing enough physical activity to benefit their health? Young women aged 16 – 24 are nearly half as active as their male counterparts. The statistics are even worse for low income and black and minority ethnic women.
Forecasts in participation rates for women in the next ten years show an even gloomier picture: one forecast shows a potential fall of 5.5% by 2017. This could amount to 1.25 million fewer women being sufficiently active.
At the same time, three out of five women believe that they do enough exercise to be healthy, whereas in reality less than one in five are actually doing enough.
These figures come at a time when Sport England has pledged to increase participation in sport and exercise by 1% every year. A target of getting two million more people active by 2012 from low participation groups (including women) has been set.
Government is facing up to the challenge of creating a fitter and healthier nation – and the London 2012 Olympics have been sold on a promise of a legacy of increased participation – but this report argues that it’s time we faced up to the realities of trying to create a nation of more active women and girls.
It’s time … the sport sector viewed women on an equal basis as men.
It’s time … we made women aware of the importance of being active, and provided the activities and facilities that women want, where they want, and at the times they want.
It’s time … we took meaningful action to challenge a culture that allows girls to grow up believing it is more important to be thin than healthy.
