Improvements in female representation starting to emerge
An organisation advocating for women’s involvement in sport is starting to see improvements in female representation.
Women in Sport Aotearoa is this weekend holding a fundraiser evening at Awapuni Function Centre in Palmerston North this weekend to celebrate females in sport.
Guests include Raelene Castle, Farah Palmer, Barbara Kendall and Kayla Whitelock.
The event is hosted by business owners and community supporters John and Angela Turkington, aimed at improving gender equity in sports and recreation.
As part of the weekend, New Zealand rugby league players Charlotte Scanlan, from Manawatū, and Laishon Albert-Jones ran an introductory session for girls at Monrad Intermediate School yesterday.
Women in Sport Aotearoa chief executive Nicky van den Bos said the session at Monrad Intermediate was an opportunity for the community to have a go at a sport they could one day play at a higher level.
This was part of one of the organisation’s main goals of visibility for female athletes.
Van den Bos said if girls could see women in those positions it showed there was a pathway.
New Zealand hosting the women’s World Cup for rugby in 2021, cricket in 2022 and football in 2023 allowed girls to connect with their heroines, van den Bos said.
This could lead to an increase in participation and an increase in demand for sports that didn’t traditionally have big numbers of female players.
Improving the number of women in high-performance coaching and senior management, because there had been a lack of pathways previously, was another goal of Women in Sport Aotearoa.
Van den Bos said they wanted to see equitable access for women and girls across all sports roles and there was progress towards that.
They hadn’t met much resistance in their work.
She said everyone wanted to see things happen faster.
However, they were seeing growth in areas such as coaching, with the number of female coaches starting to increase.