'This Girl Can': Overcoming barriers for women and girls in sport

Research has illustrated that there are many barriers facing women and girls when it comes to actively participating in sport. Individual, social and environmental factors play an extremely important role.

Drawing from the International Journal of Physical Education, Sports and Health (2015), it states that barriers impacting female involvement in sport include lack of confidence, cultural factors and social norms, competing priorities and lack of time. The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (2008) points to a litany of factors including the male-dominated culture of sport, lack of funding for female sports, perceptions about femininity, attitudes and prejudices about disability and ethnicity. The Adult Active Lives survey found that pressures such as fear of judgement of their appearance, fear about their ability to take part and fear of judgement for choosing to spend time on themselves rather than on their families discourage many women from being as active as they should be.

Following this research, This Girl Can campaign was launched by Sports England in 2015 to challenge the conventional idea of what exercise looks like and to inspire more women to overcome the barriers that exist in the area of sport.

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