Women’s sport, as a whole, often gets a rough time. Less coverage, less pay, less perceived commercial pulling power, and less awareness. However, university sport is one of the environments striving for gender equality.
For almost ten years, we’ve been tracking participation levels in our league and knockout programmes, and are pleased to report that during this time, there has been an average increase of 30% in women’s teams across 16 sports.
When we look at some sports, that percentage rises even higher. Women’s lacrosse teams rose by 78%, with a total of 135 teams competing in the 2019-20 season, whilst the number of women’s rugby union teams increased by 41% to 124 teams.
Other sports with a notable increase included table tennis (73%) and volleyball (71%), whilst the most staggering statistic was in futsal – where participation increased by 282% over the last nine years (84 teams in the 2019-20 season, up from 22).
When looking at the stats from event-based sports, the number of female competitors increased by an average of 24% over the last seven years; cross country by 25%, swimming by 30%, climbing by 26%, and boxing by an impressive 65%.
Jenny Morris, BUCS’ Director of Delivery, is delighted with the figures. “It’s fantastic to see the prevailing growth of women’s sport within higher education. When we look at women’s sport in general, it’s often easy to just see the challenges and barriers, but the university sector evidences some of the most tangible progression that women’s sport has made in recent years.
Our institutions deserve huge credit for this; many run multiple participation initiatives and are constantly striving to achieve gender equality within sport - providing physical access, monetary help, high-quality experience, and other opportunities for women that may not be found outside of higher education. Obviously, the sector is not perfect - it doesn’t claim to be - but we have made huge strides over the last ten years to make women’s sport a real priority.”
The talent keeps increasing too; at Nationals in 2020, the last major event we ran before the pandemic, five records were broken;
- Cassie Wild (University of Stirling) 50m backstroke | swimming
- Marie Wattle (Loughborough University) 50m butterfly | swimming
- Abbie Wood (Loughborough University) 200 individual medley | swimming
- Cheyanne Evans-Gray (University of East London) 60m | athletics
- Holly Bradshaw (Loughborough University) pole vault | athletics
At BUCS, we want to help as many women as possible achieve their sporting goals – be it taking up basketball as a first year, representing their university in a BUCS Big Wednesday final, or competing for Team GB whilst studying for their degree. We take pride in developing the next generation of athletes and future sporting leaders that have an equal place in the sporting world. Long may it continue.
