Published 2019
This is our toolkit inspired by Project 51, a partnership project with Sported funded by Comic Relief. Project 51 aims to help girls in the most deprived areas of the UK fulfil their potential and use sport to overcome the impact of negative gender stereotypes.
In this section you can find practical advice and tools to help you better understand your audience (girls aged 11-18) and the gender stereotyping that affects them. As well as research and insights from Women in Sport, we’ll also share supporting research from external organisations about girls’ lives, values and reasons to engage or disengage with sport that you might find helpful.
Understanding gender stereotypes
In this section we will provide you with background understanding about gender stereotyping and the negative impact it can have on girls engagement with sport.
Supporting Research
Women in Sport has been working to support girls in and through sport for a number of years. See some of our recent research and publications below and for a more in depth understanding of girls lives more broadly see our Reframing Sport toolkit.
How can you market your sessions and opportunities to girls? Find useful examples to inspire your own communications channels to be more inclusive, empowering and appealing to girls.
Project 51 Marketing Good Practice – take a look at how some of the Project 51 organisations have used social media to market their sessions to girls.
Noteworthy Campaigns:
Run by the Young Influencers involved in the project the account aims to engage other young girls with discussion about sport and physical activity, whilst portraying positive imagery of girls actively engaging with sport.
This campaign being run in Ireland is aiming to increase media coverage, participation and attendance figures for women’s sport by 20% by 2020. Their YouTube and Twitter accounts in particular are fantastic examples.
A Sport England led campaign to inspire everyday women and girls to get active in any way that suits them. There have been three phases of the campaign between 2015-18 including posters, videos, TV advertising and social media interaction. This Girl Can also launched an interactive app for advocates to create their own personalised posters.
A series of adverts that challenge stereotypes and aim to empower girls going through puberty, a time where confidence typically plummets. Their videos link brand messaging with sport to create powerful stories.
Supporting Research
Photography Bank
Coming soon…
Taking action and putting research and ideas into practice, here are the tools to help you to make a plan of action for working with girls in your area; what can you do, or do differently? Find best practice examples from our Project 51 groups to get you started.
Key findings from Project 51 – learn about the impact and results of Women in Sport’s and Sported’s joint 2-year venture, Project 51, a project designed to challenge negative gender stereotypes in sport at the grassroots level.
Top Tips for Consulting with Girls– quick tips and easy ways to consult with girls to design your sessions and inform your strategy.
Effective Practice for Engaging Girls in Physical Activity – a useful document with some key learnings from the Youth Sport Trust . Although their focus is on engaging girls in PE, their six principles are valuable and certainly apply to community sport and activities as well. Includes top tips and mini case studies alongside each principle.
Sport England Research Guide – an in-depth guide to effective research practice. A potential useful document for those interested in how best to consult and evaluate their consultation methods with girls.
A look into the creative ways organisations have looked to engage girls, where none dared go before:
Use this template as a framework for creating a simple action plan for your group including setting goals, steps to get there and measuring outcomes.
