Dr. Una May:

I thank the Chair and the committee for its invitation to address it this afternoon. I am joined by Ms Nora Stapleton, the women in sport lead with Sport Ireland. I will present a summary of my prepared opening statement. The committee will have heard much of its contents already. Ms Stapleton and I will be available for questions afterwards. Ms O'Connor, as a close collaborator of Sport Ireland, has presented much of the detail of the women in sport policy, which forms the basis of much of our combined efforts in tackling the challenges facing women in sport today.

The Sport Ireland women in sport programme was first created in 2005 following research that identified a significant gap in the participation rates of females and males. The programme was reviewed and relaunched in 2019 alongside Sport Ireland's policy on women in sport, which identifies four key areas that have emerged as current gaps and future opportunities for women in sport. The committee has heard what these are but I will repeat them. The four areas are leadership and governance, coaching and officiating, active participation, and visibility.

Sport Ireland’s vision for women in sport is one where women have an equal opportunity to achieve their full potential, while enjoying a lifelong involvement in sport. We also have a women in sport steering committee which meets four or five times per year. Over the years of the women in sport policy, €22 million has been invested through the programme in national governing bodies and local sports partnerships. While participation levels in the population in general have increased in recent years, a slightly larger increase in participation among women has led to a narrowing of the gender gap from almost 16% in 2007 when data were first collected under the sports monitor to 3.4% in 2019.

The onset of the pandemic in March 2020 has had an impact on sports participation trends nationally. Sport Ireland has continuously monitored these effects and unfortunately the research has identified growing gradients in sports participation for women. Male sports participation has recovered faster than female participation resulting in a widening of the gender gap. Notably, more women are walking for recreation so they are remaining active.

Previous waves of the sports monitor research have indicated the key barriers to sports participation among women, of which time is the most significant. Other barriers to female participation include lack of awareness of physical activity guidelines, lack of confidence, poor health and injury, cost, access to facilities and, at certain stages in women's lives, pregnancy.

More recently, Sport Ireland has started to identify the particular needs of women at specific target subsections of female population because, as we know, one size does not fit all.

We have been targeting the teenage years, prenatal and postnatal times, menopause and older women for example. Ms O'Connor mentioned the teenage girls and young women. The Adolescent Girls Get Active research report focused on girls who are currently disengaged with sport. This was a very enlightening report which gave us much information. As Ms O'Connor mentioned, comments that they feel they are “not good enough” or “not sporty” seem to be rooted in their experience of traditional, more male-dominated team sports and the stereotypes reinforced in popular culture and experiences.

They feel there is a lack of social space for teenagers where they feel welcomed. This includes what they consider to be uncool facilities, for example a community centre which is not as trendy as they would like. They also referred to limited opportunities to try new things and learn new skills, leaving them with a lack of opportunity to feel good about themselves.

Girls who are active in their teenage years and develop a love of sport are much more likely to establish a life-long relationship with sport and exercise in adulthood. That is why this is an important age group for us to target. The type of sport engaged with also influences their future participation. Sport Ireland has created an evidence-based coaching workshop for coaches of teenage girls with a view to developing more informed coaches who can help reduce the dropout of teenage girls from sport. We hope that by February 2022 more than 1,000 coaches will have received that training.

On leadership and governance, we welcomed the recent Government announcement regarding a new target of 40% gender balance on the boards of sporting organisations. We are pleased to reiterate what the Minister of State and Ms O'Connor mentioned about the increase in board membership and the increased percentage of females on boards in recent years. We hope to see that continue to grow. We realise this is a big challenge for some sports.

As part of our work on board membership, we have created a gender diversity on boards toolkit. As part of the research for that project, we identified challenges that impact the recruitment and retention of women on boards. These include the format and timings of meetings, the absence of leadership training, traditional recruitment methods and a lack of mentoring and support to new female board members. These have all been addressed in our recently created gender diversity on boards toolkit which supports boards in developing and maintaining better gender balance. Sport Ireland continues to create other programmes and resources to support women and men in leadership and governance equally.

Through its women in sport funding programme, Sport Ireland supports several women in sport leadership programmes which are ongoing in the LSPs and NGBs. These programmes support current female leaders as well as those with potential to hold leadership and governance roles within their sport in the future.

Under the visibility pillar we see the importance of making females visible in all areas of sport, including leadership in sport, coaching, officiating and participation. In 2019, Sport Ireland conducted a report on print media coverage of women’s sport. That is something we need to develop. We have also identified that some sports do not have the necessary resources to ensure that female sporting news is available and shared with media. In addition, there is a new challenge, which is also an opportunity, with the way in which people consume sports news. It is not just through mainstream television and newspapers, which are being replaced by pay-per-view television, live streaming, social media and podcasts. Sport Ireland is exploring these new ways to support the visibility of women in sport. We have seen the opportunities that this provides and have developed the first media training programme for female pundits and analysts with over 120 females benefiting from various levels of support and training in this programme.

There are many examples of programmes and initiatives through which Sport Ireland is currently supporting the visibility of women, such as our Women on Wednesday sports series, our Women in Sport Week, which will take place again next year, and the Her Outdoors campaign.

We have a coaching working group within the women in sports steering group which is looking at challenges relating to coaching. Ms O'Connor mentioned many of the barriers on women coaches, including time constraints and worryingly sexism and gender-related issues in sport, lack of confidence, lack of NGB and club support, and parental factors. These are all areas we can tackle.

The first action coming from the research as part of that project has been the development of a women in coaching toolkit to support organisations to help them in their planning for the recruitment, development and retention of women in coaching.

The culture within sport organisations is also a factor that can affect female coaches. If the culture has been traditionally male dominated then the environment can sometimes not be conducive to making female coaches feel valued and supported. The women in coaching toolkit aims to educate sports on this topic and guide them on how to address these issues if they exist in their sport.

The number of women coaching in high-performance sport in Ireland is very low. Over the coming months, Sport Ireland plans to establish a coaching network for elite-level female coaches. Ms O'Connor also mentioned the gradients within volunteering. We know that those gradients vary at different stages in people's lives. Women are more likely to volunteer when they are younger than when they are older.

As mentioned by the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, I recognise the phenomenal success of many of our female high-performance athletes in the past year who are reflecting an advanced Sport Ireland high-performance system in which our women athletes have achieved more than 50% of the major medals won by sportspeople in 2021.

I again thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for the opportunity to address it. I hope it can assist, advise and support us in our goal of ensuring that women have an equal opportunity to achieve their full potential while enjoying a lifelong involvement in sport.