This Girl Can: Helping more women feel they belong in physical activity

New research by This Girl Can found that only one in 10 women on lower incomes feel they completely belong in the world of physical activity. One in six women felt so unwelcome in a physical activity setting that they’ve never returned. And only nine per cent of women are active in a typical week.

These stark statistics show that despite knowing the benefits of being active, many women feel excluded from physical activity, by themselves, by society and sometimes by our sector.  

But This Girl Can also found that a massive 84% of women were looking for practical support that would help them feel more welcome in physical activity settings, which could include childcare, flexible timings or women-only facilities.

This shows that there’s a great opportunity for all of us to do more to demonstrate what true inclusion looks and feels like, and benefit from welcoming new women to our activities in return. By learning from the campaign research, we can all play our part in helping more women to join in, give physical activity a go, have fun and feel good about themselves.  

The Belonging Starts With Inclusion campaign aims to ensure all women feel able to get active, but This Girl Can found there were certain audiences who face the greatest barriers to exercise and have the most to gain. 

They are all women on lower incomes, and who are also:

• From South Asian Muslim communities   
• From black communities
• Aged 55 years or over    
• Pregnant and/or have a child under one year old. 

These women are the focus of the campaign – but the insights and resources the campaign provides can be used to support anyone who needs advice, guidance and motivation to get active.  

Read the Belonging Starts With Inclusion insight report and consider how you and your team could help more women feel like the activities you offer are for women like them. This might mean making small changes to your activities, or how you tell people about them.  

With the campaign motivating more women to look for exercise options, it’s time to see how you can help really make an impact. Together we can help more women feel like they belong in physical activity, and get active in ways that work for them. 

Below are some resources from Active Sussex which may help you to put into practice some of the learnings from the Belonging Starts With Inclusion campaign.

This Mum Moves

Find out more about our work on This Mum Moves Training (Sussex) where we ran training for healthcare professionals to give them the tools to empower birthing people to continue enjoying and benefitting from an active lifestyle during their childbearing years. You can read our learning and evaluation reports of the project here, or read a one-page guide on the project here.

Women’s Walks

Watch the video below to learn more about the DRI and Active Sussex Women’s Walks project for Black and South Asian women in East Sussex.

Older women 

Find out how an Age UK exercise class helped one woman after breast cancer treatment.

Learn about how this NHS Sussex funded project had an impact on one Brighton woman, helping her to stay active in later years. 

Find out more about the menopause and physical activity in this Active Sussex webinar, which includes recommendations for partners and activity deliverers to support women to maintain and re-engage with physical activity during menopause.

Access the This Girl Can – Belonging Starts With Inclusion toolkit here.