Using the power of sport, women can teach girls and young women teamwork, self-reliance and resilience. But to break down barriers that disproportionately affect women in sports, all stakeholders need to collaborate to make gender equality a lived reality.
The research shows that a whole range of policies is needed to promote more participation in sports and to break down gender stereotypes. These include training athletes, encouraging more women to take on technical and management roles in sport, ensuring that coaching and management teams are gender-equitable, supporting dual careers for women and prioritizing the needs of athletes with respect to their physiological characteristics.
In addition, tackling the gendered nature of violence and discrimination in sport should also be high on the agenda, along with prioritizing trauma-informed and survivor-focused responses. Finally, addressing the gender inequalities in funding, investment and media coverage is vital to ensure that more women and girls can find the joy and lifelong benefits of sport.
Overall, the findings of this study confirm and extend those of previous research. The high ATGEQS scores of Nordic countries – Finland and Sweden in particular – are in line with the literature, which associates these results with strong welfare policies, progressive gender norms and good representation of women in leadership positions (80-84). By contrast, Austria, the Czech Republic and Romania show much lower ATGEQS scores, suggesting that these countries are more resistant to progress towards gender equality in sports. This resistance is likely to be related to the legacy of traditional gender roles, conservative religiosity and older socio-political structures (85-87). The ATGEQS approach is a valuable tool for monitoring attitudes towards the equality of men and women in sport. However, it should be supplemented by individual unstructured interviews to explore the complex and multifaceted experiences of women in sport.