Why are we not participating in sport?

There was a big piece on BBC Breakfast this morning about how adult participation in sport in the UK has decreased, despite the promised "Olympic Legacy". The Sports Minister is now looking at how funding can be improved in the hope that this will encourage people to take up a sporting activity.

If you scroll down the page I've linked to above you'll find a table which shows the particular types of sport or physical activity which have seen a decrease in participant numbers, and also those which have actually seen an increase. They highlighted some of these on the news this morning and I thought that these figures might actually give some indication of the reasons behind the overall decrease; for example, more people are cycling - could this be because more people are taking it up as a method of transport to work, college, town etc. to save money on their commute? Athletics has also increased - is this anything to do with the free ParkRuns which now happen on Saturday mornings in many towns and cities (including Bedford)? Economic factors surely play a massive part in how and when adults participate in sport; many people simply don't have the spare cash to pay for games or lessons, or court hires, or swimming pool entry, and budgetary pressures in many towns and cities may well have forced local leisure centres to reduce their opening hours or increase their fees.

So what's the solution? The government and Sport England are hoping that an overhaul in funding will help; in the BBC article it is suggested that organisations such as ParkRun will receive more financial support. I think it's free and informal events and activities like these which are likely to encourage adults to take some time out of their busy lives and to give things a go, without feeling pressured financially or personally.

What do you think?

Getting more women into sports...is it really about looking "unfeminine"?

This week, Helen Grant, the minister of sports, equalities and tourism, gave an interview to The Telegraph newspaper on the gap between men and women participating in sport in the UK - 1.8 million fewer women than men according to the article. Grant states in the interview that adult women should be asked what they actually want to do in terms of sport, suggesting that this might be something like Zumba rather than traditional team sports. The article also quotes her as saying that women could choose sports where they "don't have to feel unfeminine", such as "ballet, gymnastics, cheer-leading and...roller-skating" and this aspect of the interview has triggered discussion elsewhere in the media. I first read about this interview in opinion piece in The Guardian's Comment is Free section today which argues that "suggesting women take up cheerleading or roller-skating is in keeping with a Conservative agenda of preserving outdated gender values"  and a BBC article quotes a Labour MP as accusing Grant of promoting "lazy stereotypes".   Grant has claimed that her comments had been "taken out of context" in the interview, so it's difficult for us to know exactly what was said or meant (you wouldn't use any of these articles as scholarly material in an assignment!), but this got me thinking about my own experience as a woman who participated in sport as a child and then returned to it as an adult.

I don't think that "looking unfeminine" has ever been a concern for me. What I have experienced as an adult is unwanted comments for being a woman out doing sport - I tend to run on a treadmill in the gym rather than outside now because I just can't be bothered with having things shouted at me from passing cars - but I think that this is part of a much wider issue which goes beyond sport. I think it's the same issue which means that female athletes suffer comments on their appearance, and that the newspapers got excited about the 2003 redesign of the England netball team's kit making the outfits more "raunchy" and "sexy" (do a search in NewsBank for "netball kit" in 2003 newspapers if you're interested)...but that's a whole other, non-sport related blog post in itself.

I think that some of the other things which are going to be putting women off sport are factors which may well put men off too, like expense, time and feeling that they will not be good enough at it, and that's where some of the attention needs to be focused; identifying what the issues really are for women, and making sport more accessible for them.

Another issue mentioned in the article is the disparity between the media coverage of men and women's sport, which I think is really important too, especially in getting young people interested. When I was a child, the boys in my class had their football idols who they could look to emulate, men who were on the television and in the newspapers every week, who were considered heroes; we girls didn't have the equivalent. I think women's sport is gradually getting more coverage - in recent years there's been a lot more women's football on television, certainly -  but there's still a long way to go. I'd like to switch on the BBC or ITV and see highlights of our national netball team's games at a time of night that isn't the early hours. I'd like our female footballers and netballers and other sportswomen to be idols for young girls too.

I could go on forever about this topic so I'll leave it here...but I'd love to know what you think. Do you agree with Helen Grant's supposed comments, or any of the responding articles? What do you think gets in the way of women participating in sport...and what can we do to remove barriers?