Addressing the gap in participation between women and girls and their male counterparts has been on the jadwal for a while now, yet it still remains an area where more needs to be done.
Board Member, Samar Wafa was a panellist at the 2016 Conference looking at what is needed to attract more women and girls into community activity. We caught up with her beforehand to get her thoughts on the subject…
I was honoured when I was asked to be part of a panel looking at this subject. It’s something that I feel very strongly about, not only as a woman but as a coach and a mother.
We have come a long way and there are great examples where all of the strands are coming together and women and girls are trying new activities, enjoying them and feeling comfortable while they are participating in them. But there is still so much to do, there are still huge parts of female communities that are not being reached.
For me, the most important factor in us needing to address the gap, is that being active is essential for our health. And I personally do not think that this message is understood enough.
Physical activity is often, when targeted at women, aligned simply to weight loss. Yes it can have that effect but it I think it could be channelled in a much more positive way. Being physically active can offer so much more. It is essential to our overall health and it is this message that needs to be understood. It’s a much more positive understanding around body image that needs to be brought into play.
I’ve experienced first-hand from my uptake of Taekwondo and running that regular physical activity can help delay the onset of age-related health problems, help maintain balance, co-ordination and core strength (and these are important not only to older women but adolescent girls too!)
The difficulty comes, as we already know, in the fact there isn’t a one size fits all way to encourage this understanding and to motivate individuals to have a go. The barriers are different for different women, and it’s our duty to understand what these are and then approach holistically.
And I’m not underestimating the challenge that this poses in terms of capacity. I’m a coach myself and know that getting the workforce right is absolutely essential in getting more women and girls active.
For me this is something that we as a sector must support. Capacity building within clubs and educating coaches, are two key factors that will help us in bringing in more women and girls to the world of sport.
We need to help coaches to understand how to inspire all walks of life and provide them with the skills to ensure that whoever comes through the door, whether they are like minded or not, still leave having had the best time possible.
And there are coaches already out there doing a tremendous job at this, but it is a skill and one which, if we support others to develop, could offer huge rewards and a whole new untapped market.
Of course bringing new blood (so to speak) into the workforce will also help this. If we can recruit volunteers and support from the groups which we are trying to reach then this will of course help us to reach more individuals from those backgrounds, while also offering an alternative way for them to get involved in the world of sport.
That brings me onto role models. We have some brilliant Welsh sports women to look up to, but I wonder if they are actually familiar enough to a lot of women across Wales. I think that we need to see and hear more about the sports successes and trials of everyday women.
I’m thinking about the Alfie’s Angels, women with families, women who haven’t grown up with a love for sport but who have nervously entered it later on in life, who will never attempt to win a medal for their country, but who are still enjoying their own personal successes.
Thinking about my own life and my personal role models, the likes of Professor Laura McAllister of course come to mind, but in terms of the people that have really given me that motivation to get out there on a cold and wet morning, it’s my friends.
I took up running for the first time this year after seeing a friend of mine transform herself through it. She went from not being able to run to the lamppost at the end of the street 4 years ago to now being a competent triathlete and signing herself up for the Iron man competition (she’s 50 next year by the way).
At first seeing her commitment put me to shame, but she absolutely supported me to start my own little running journey. She just got it – when I didn’t feel like going any further or had a little wobble, she knew exactly what to say because she had been through it. And that has kept me at it.
She has no idea how much of an impact she has had, I expect just the same as many other women. It could be that we hold the key to getting more of our peers, more active. I’ve experienced it myself and I’ve seen it as a coach, where friendships and the support that they offered kept groups of women coming back week after week.
The difficulty here is in us all realising that we can have this power. It’s not something that comes easily to a lot of us, celebrating our own success and recognising the influence that it could have over others, but if we did it could be another powerful tool in our quest to get more Welsh women more active.
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