The field includes the office: the six pillars of women in sport

Abstract

Recent academic focus has been on reducing the sex data gap for women in sport and exercise research. However, ‘women in sport’ is often narrowly represented by female athletes/participants, though there are numerous other positions in sport which are also threatened by a sex data gap. In this paper, we propose a six-pillar framework of sport to draw attention to the key areas that women can contribute to within a sporting organisation. In this paper we cover the current state of play of female participation across these pillars, identify some of the challenges and implications of women being a minority, and look at the benefits of taking a wider whole-of-sport approach to women in sport beyond just as participants. By conceptualising women in sport across this wider sporting context, we encourage readers to avoid ‘gender blindness,’ and we provide specific recommendations to help raise the profile of women in sport.

Keywords:

• Female
• organisation
• gender diversity
• science
• employment
• equity

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.