New research and funds to encourage women to be more active

New funding to encourage women to become more active was recently announced by Sport England. The £10 million National Lottery fund will boost the Active Women project to help more women from disadvantaged areas get active through sport participation.

Currently in the UK, women are less active than men. According to the 2008/2009 Sport England Active People Survey [1], only one in eight women plays sport three times a week, compared with one in five men. Some of the barriers to women's sport participation include lack of self-esteem, time and cost constraints, childcare and transport.

Research into young women’s motivation to exercise

To better understand how to motivate young women to become more active, the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), in partnership with the Fitness Industry Association (FIA), developed a new research project, Sweat in the City, the results of which are now available on the WSFF website.

Over 2,000 inactive 16 to 24-year-old women in London took part in the study and were offered a three-month gym membership at various locations. To record their progress and change in attitude the participants replied to a questionnaire at the beginning and the end of the project. A blog was also set up to encourage networking and sharing of experience among the women.

The results show that the project was successful at increasing the participants’ exercise levels. Six months after completing the programme, 72 per cent of participants were still active. Some women continued going to the gym, many chose individual activities, such as cycling and swimming, and others looked at ways to build physical activity into their daily lives, for example by walking to work. This suggests that, after being re-introduced to exercise, many women seemed more open to try other forms of physical activity, which fit better into their lifestyles. WCRF UK recommends being physically active in any way for at least 30 minutes a day to help prevent many forms of cancer, as well as other long-term conditions. The best way to follow this recommendation is to build physical activity into daily life.

Not surprisingly, the most popular reason for joining the project was to lose weight. Although most women knew the long-term benefits of physical activity, these were not enough to motivate them to be active.

Lack of body confidence was highlighted as a common reason for young women not exercising. However, the research provides evidence that exercise can have a great impact on how women feel about their bodies and themselves. For example, at the beginning of the study 63 per cent of participants agreed that they worried about how they looked when exercising. After the project this had dropped to 49 per cent.

It is important for health professionals and policy makers to recognise the different reasons that prevent women from exercising and being active. Understanding motivation and changing activity habits of young women is particularly crucial as this could set the stage for life-long healthy exercise habits for women and their families.

References