Ms Mary O'Connor:

I thank the Chair and the committee for inviting the Federation of Irish Sport to make a submission on the challenges facing women in sport. The federation is a representative body for 110 sporting organisations across Ireland, including 81 national governing bodies, NGBs, and 29 local sports partnerships.

Some of the issues facing women in sport in Ireland were highlighted in the 2018 report, We are Sport, commissioned by Sport Ireland. It stated that the six core barriers for women in sport were confidence, prioritisation, motivation, education, influencers and structures. There are also significant challenges for women with disabilities being involved in sport in Ireland. In Ireland, individuals with a disability are far less likely to participate in sport, walk for recreation, volunteer for sport, be a sports club member or attend a sporting event than those without a disability. Barriers associated with low levels of participation for people with disabilities are lack of confidence, feeling vulnerable, social isolation, transport issues, inadequate facilities, cost of equipment and a lack of funding.

In March 2019, Sport Ireland launched a new women in sport policy. Coaching and officiating, active participation, leadership and governance, and visibility are its four key target areas. I will outline the main challenges facing women in sport under those four pillars. In Ireland, 51% of women have never volunteered for sport. Those who do volunteer are less likely than men to coach, referee or be a club official. In 2020, 2,374 female coaches from 60 different sports responded to a survey by Sport Ireland. The survey identified barriers to progression which can be grouped into five areas, namely, time constraints, sexism and gender-related issues, lack of confidence, lack of national governing body and club support, and parental factors. The primary reason given by active female coaches who did not plan to continue coaching or were unsure were club issues, personal impact and parental impact. The key objective under the active participation pillar is to significantly reduce the active sport participation gradient between men and women and reduce the drop-out from physical activity and sport in young girls.

The Sport Ireland report, Adolescent Girls Get Active, identified the following barriers relating to teenage girls and physical activity. The most powerful barrier that prevents inactive girls from taking part in sport and physical activity is not feeling good enough to join in. This stems from both their perceptions and experiences of competitive sport. These girls have narrow and often negative experiences of a small number of traditional and dominant team sports in Ireland and think this is all that sport is and can be. They feel too old to start a new sport in their teens. Girls associate sportiness with team and contact sports, so girls who are interested in exercise do not feel targeted by sporting initiatives. There is a feeling that there is no room for fun. Inactive girls are more attracted to activities that focus on fun, enjoyment and well-being and take the pressure off having to be talented. There is not enough provision catering to different abilities and levels of competitiveness, although this is improving.

On the leadership and governance pillar, some 71% of women perceived the administration and management of sport to be too male dominated. A key objective of the women in sport policy is to progress towards greater gender balance in board membership of funded bodies. The second objective is to provide a pathway for women aspiring to become leaders of funded bodies. In March 2020, females made up an average of 29% of boards across funded national governing bodies. This was an increase from 24% when the Sport Ireland policy on women in sport was published in 2019. In 2021, women accounted for 32% of board members in funded sport bodies and 37% of board members in local sports partnerships, LSPs. Barriers to women’s leadership in sport can be defined as any construct, norm or practice within the structural or cultural domains of sport serving to bar passage to or restrict or limit the ability of women to lead, guide or have influence. These barriers can be further categorised as structural barriers, cultural practices and capacity gaps.

The way board meetings have been run historically can make it challenging for women to commit. An example is the timing of meetings in the evening when women tend to have most of the family responsibilities. Time constraints remain a challenge for all volunteers. As the level of commitment to a club committee and boards increases, fewer people are likely to want to give this time to volunteering. The lack of term limits for board membership can mean no opportunities for changing the board membership which reduces the opportunities to vote a woman on to the board.

On visibility, women make up 40% of all participants in sports worldwide, yet somehow receive only 4% of sports media coverage. In Ireland, in 2018 just 3% of print and 4% online sport coverage was dedicated to women’s sport. A Sport Ireland report on Irish print media found that 4.2% of articles in 2019 represented female sport or athletes while 5.8% of images in 2019 represented female sport or athletes. There was notable variation between newspapers. One newspaper had 2% of articles representing female sport or athletes while another had 7.4% during the same period. There was a 1.1% increase in print media coverage of women’s sport over a four-year period. Asked why coverage was so low in meetings with the print media, the responses included a lack of information and stories provided by the sports, having to provide the content that their readers want, which is not necessarily women in sport, and the lack of dedicated women in sport resources. Media outlets - print, radio and television - do not have any key performance indicators on gender and are not held accountable if women’s sport is not included in their coverage of sport.

Members should note that no direct reference was made to the challenges facing women in sport in high performance in this submission. Although relevant, the federation does not believe we are best placed to present on those challenges.

Many challenges still face women in sport in Ireland. However, considerable work and development have been undertaken since the launch of the women in sport policy in 2019 and significant outputs from that work should become apparent over the lifetime of the policy to ensure sustainable progression, along with the actions outlined in the recently launched Sports Action Plan 2021–2023.