Insight

Since launching in 2015, This Girl Can has always been shaped by our research and responded to the latest findings available related to women's motivations and barriers around getting active.

Its success is down to the fact that it has been truly insight-driven, and that in following the insight we were prepared to create a campaign which was (at times) challenging to us and challenged the status quo.

What women tell us

Nothing for us, without us.

We are passionate about the importance of listening to the women we're trying to reach and shaping experiences around their needs.

We strongly encourage anyone looking at creating activity provision for women and girls to utilise the insight we've provided within this section, or to refer to the other fantastic resources we've signposted to below.

Active Lives

Sport England runs two annual surveys: Active Lives Adult (16+), and the world-leading Active Lives Children and Young People (5-16), both of which give a unique and comprehensive view of how people are getting active and can provide the perfect starting point for looking at insight into women’s activity levels.

The results of the adult survey are published every April, covering the previous November-November period, with the children and young people results published in December, covering the previous academic year.

Use the links below to see the archive of all Active Lives reports and data tables that are available to donwload, or examine, explore and filter the data using the Active Lives Online Tool.

As told by the 51%

This Girl Can and ukactive joined forces to develop insight to better understand concerns, behaviours and perceptions women and girls have about participating in activities within gyms and leisure centres.

Read the report

The This Girl Can fundamentals

This Girl Can is Sport England's award-winning behaviour change campaign aimed at encouraging women in England to be more active.

The initiative was created to tackle the fact that, despite increases in the overall number of people being active in England, women persistently remained less active than men. 

According to research, 63% of men and 60% of women are currently 'active,' engaging in an average of 150+ minutes of physical activity per week, with our Active Lives Adult report (November 2020 -21) showing how this varies depending on background and ability.

Our manifesto

Women come in all shapes and sizes and all levels of ability. It doesn’t matter if you’re rubbish or an expert. The brilliant thing is you’re a woman and you’re doing something.

As a result of the This Girl Can campaign, 2.9 million more women have been inspired to be active.

We know that the pandemic and rising costs of living have disproportionately affected women, resulting in a drop in their activity levels, and although this was showing signs of increasing prior to 2020, progress has now stalled.

This is why now, more than ever, there’s a role for This Girl Can to help women be more active.

Fear of judgement

Research has also revealed that the fear of judgement is a significant barrier to women getting active - which can be divided into three key themes, both practical and emotional:

Ability

41% of women say they are worried about not being fit enough, while 28% worry about not being good enough.

Appearance

24% worry about being sweaty, 24% worry about being on their period and 20% worry about wearing tight sports clothing.

Priorities

For example, feeling that spending time with friends and family, or studying/working should be more important than being active - 31% of women say that not having enough time makes it difficult for them to increase the amount of physical activity and exercise they do.

Our aims

This Girl Can aims to break down these barriers by achieving the following goals:

Increase the number of girls and women being active in England 
Increasing women’s confidence about getting active 
Supporting the sector to become better able to meet the needs of women

Download the essentials

We've created a summary of the key takeaways from this page for you to easily download and refer back to later.

Front cover of The Fundamentals document - a woman at the side of a swimming pool, lifting up her goggles

Insight: The Fundamentals. Download the file - 864.63 KB

We know that 1.75 million fewer women than men were exercising regularly in 2014 and we needed to increase the number of women participating in exercise and sport to reduce this gender gap.

When we launched This Girl Can in 2015 we wanted to not just increase the number of girls and women taking part in sport and exercise, but to change how they think and feel about exercising and playing sport, as well as changing the opportunities available to women to become active.

The campaign summary below tells the story of what we’ve achieved, but more importantly what we’ve learned as we created a campaign that challenged us as well as our partners.

Further documents below the campaign summary share more learnings from our work to tackle inequalities among women and girls.

Together, we’ve achieved a lot but our work is not yet done – we will continue until no woman is left behind.

Campaign summary

Download the document below to read more about the insight that shaped our campaign and a breakdown of the results achieved within each campaign phase, as well as our partnerships and activations, and the impact they have had.

Cover of the Campain Summary document, with an older woman on the front, smiling and laughing as she takes part in an exercise class

This Girl Can: Campaign Summary. Download the file - 4.32 MB

Learnings from Couch to Fitness

We worked with Our Parks to create a guide with tips and advice for anyone interested in making their physical activity products or initiatives more inclusive, which you can download below.

It presents the learnings from Couch to Fitness, a free nine-week exercise programme aimed at beginners and built on our insight into the deep-rooted inequalities that persist in sport and physical activity.

The latest phase of This Girl Can is designed to tackle the enjoyment gap: the fact that 2.4 million fewer women than men strongly agree that they find sport / exercise enjoyable and satisfying.

Here we bring together the insight that we uncovered that inspired us to focus on the enjoyment gap.

The stats

We know that 36.9% of men and 25.3% of women agree that they find sport/exercise enjoyable and satisfying – a difference of -11.6%.

And the figures are even lower for women with certain characteristics when compared to men (36.9%):

Disability and/or long-term health condition: 22.0% 
Lower socio-economic groups: 17.3% 
White British: 12.3% 
Women with 1 child in the household: 11.8% 
Women with 2 or more children in the household: 11.7% 
Asian (ex. Chinese) background: 11.2% 
Chinese background: 11.0% 
Other ethnic origin background; 8.3% 
Black background: 6.7%

The Four Action Areas

We’ve identified four action areas where we believe we can dial up enjoyment levels for women and shrink the enjoyment gap once and for all. (Savanta ComRes Activity Check-in Data - Wave 3.)

Social

51% of women say they enjoy the social side of activity.

Suitable

18% of women say they choice of facilities, activities or classes they can access doesn't suit their lifestyle. (Walnut, This Girl Can Campaign Evaluation - Wave 24.)

Self-affirming

23% of women don't feel comfortable in themselves exercising. (Walnut, This Girl Can Campaign Evaluation - Wave 24.)

Safe

1 in 5 women say they worry about their safety while working out. (Walnut, This Girl Can Campaign Evaluation - Wave 22.)

The enjoyment gap is not inevitable and is completely fixable by challenging the practical and structural obstacles that make activity feel less welcoming for women and focusing on making activity more safe, social, self-affirming and suitable for women.

Read more about the enjoyment gap and how to tackle it using the link below, and download our summary of what we mean by the enjoyment gap so you can easily refer to it later.

The Enjoyment Gap

The Enjoyment Gap. Download the file - 970.76 KB

Introducing the COM-B model

Forming the building blocks of an active lifestyle

Throughout its history, the award-winning This Girl Can campaign has been shaped by an insight-led approach. 

Understanding women, their lives and their attitudes towards physical activity has played an important role in developing the campaign’s creative, partnerships and activations.  

We recognise that some people are more likely than others to be active; this is often influenced by what is going on around them, making it easier or harder for individuals to lead an active lifestyle.

There are several different frameworks and behaviour change interventions in use, and each one has the own strengths and limitations.

The COM-B model is a behavioural framework that informs our understanding of people's attitudes toward physical activity and how this relates to behaviour, and is helping us to understand why some people are more physically active than others.

It is now one of the most well-established models of behaviour change used and offers a good framework for our current ways of thinking, and it is the model that we used to develop This Girl Can.

How does the model work?

Test image of the COM-B model

The COM-B model helps us to understand the drivers and contexts that influence how likely someone is to engage in an active lifestyle.  

Context is important! We know that some people are more likely to be active and some are more likely to be inactive; this is typically because of what is going on around them making it easier or harder to live an active lifestyle rather than because of them as individuals.

The COM-B model works on the premise that for behaviour (B) to take place, at any moment in time a person must have sufficient amounts of capability (C), opportunity (O) and motivation (M).  

Where behaviour doesn’t occur e.g. low activity or someone no longer doing an activity, the model is used as a diagnostic tool to help identify what needs to change. It is a useful tool for us to use to consider the role we might play, and the things we might do or change to support people to live active lifestyles.

A deeper dive into the COM-B model

A detailed look at the COM-B model

How to use the model

To support the COM-B model ‘The Behaviour Change Wheel – A Guide to Designing Interventions’ provides a useful guide for policymakers, researchers and practitioners to apply an evidence-based approach to designing behaviour change interventions.

Learn more about the wheel

Download the essentials

We've created a summary of the key takeaways from this page for you to easily download and refer back to later.

A woman and her child do yoga - the front cover of The COM-B Model document

Insight: The COM-B Model. Download the file - 539.9 KB

What women tell us

Active Lives

As told by the 51%

Further reading

Women in sport

Women's Sport Trust

International Working Group on Women and Sport

The This Girl Can fundamentals

Our manifesto

Fear of judgement

Our aims

Download the essentials

Campaign summary

Learnings from Couch to Fitness

The stats

The Four Action Areas

Introducing the COM-B model

Forming the building blocks of an active lifestyle

How does the model work?

A deeper dive into the COM-B model

How to use the model

Download the essentials

Insight

What women tell us

Active Lives

As told by the 51%

Further reading

Women in sport

Women's Sport Trust

International Working Group on Women and Sport

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