Sign in
Sign in
Contact

Facilities and Access
Women and Girls

Despite the growing momentum in female sport, women and girls remain underrepresented in many sport activities. Whether you have many or few females in your organisation, there are a range of simple actions you can take that will make a big difference to women and girls feeling comfortable, welcome and safe within your sport.

Talking to women in your club or organisation, and other women, about how you can make your facilities more female-friendly will help you to identify areas for improvement within your sport’s facilities, activities and communications. This Club Help resource provides ideas on how to seek feedback from members.

 

To encourage greater participation from women and girls it is critical to have accessible facilities. Reviewing and identifying improvements to facilities to address the needs of women and girls will assist in understanding where your organisation is at. It is important to recognise that all women are different – for example, you should consider women with a disability or older adults who want to participate in your sport.

If you need help improving your facilities, contact your State Sporting Association or local council. The Sport and Recreation Victoria: Female Friendly Sport Infrastructure Guidelines details how to make facilities accessible to women and girls, and provides information on the principles of Universal Design.

 

State Sporting Associations involved in the Everyone Wins program used facility audits to assess the accessibility of club facilities, leading to the creation of guidelines for how clubs can improve accessibility of facilities.

The VicHealth evaluation found that time, cost, location and transport are the main barriers to participation, particularly for people not currently involved in sport. Therefore, sports need to consider ways to overcome or work around these barriers. They can:

  • Get input from females when designing sport programs.
  • Change program/competition times to meet women’s needs.
  • Ensure programs/competitions are close to public transport.

Programming your activities to better meet the needs of women is a great way to encourage participation.

To learn more about the specific barriers that women face across different life stages, check out the VicHealth Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity snapshots (pages 3-5) and research into five life stages that give insights for engaging Victorians in physical activity.

This Girl Can – Victoria

In 2015, Sport England launched a game-changing campaign to empower women to become more physically active – regardless of their ability or body shape. It inspired a massive 2.8 million women to try (or get back into) fitness and sport. After seeing the success of that campaign, VicHealth was determined to do the same for the women of Victoria. That’s why 2018 will see the launch of the This Girl Can – Victoria campaign: a mass media, large-scale investment to smash the barriers (real or perceived) that stop women and girls in our community from getting involved. It’s a celebration of women doing their thing and being active – no matter how well they do it, how they look or how long it takes. This Girl Can – Victoria supports gender equality by challenging traditional gender roles (sporty and active as male traits) and by celebrating women who are fit and strong.

https://thisgirlcan.com.au/

This Girl Can - Celebrating all kinds of active

Helping Women & Girls Get Active

VicHealth have developed a helpful guide to for all sporting organisations looking to design programs for inactive women and girls. The Helping Women & Girls Get Active resource outlines four key strategies that can have a big impact on participation for women, and some ways your organisation can start – or keep doing – each one. You’ll be able to introduce most of these quickly, easily and with little cost.

Sport organisations can engage with the community to promote activities in many ways. These include websites, newsletters, social media, flyers and other promotional materials. These channels can be used to show females that your sport is welcoming, and encourage them to get involved. And because these communications will be the first information some women see about your sport or organisation, they need to make a positive impact to inspire them to get involved.

Try to make the messages, photos and language you use relevant to women and girls. For example:

  • Photos: Use photos that show different women participating in your sport.
  • Language: Talk to women about which words and phrases would encourage them to participate.
  • Approaches: Use the right channel for each audience (for example, younger women may respond more to social media).
  • Respect: Review existing material to ensure that it is respectful.