Relationship between Gender and Physical activity

This International Women's Day, we’ve analysed some statistics on the gender activity gap, and the work happening to address it.

Movement matters to all women and girls, but they also face additional barriers to an active life. Everyone across Greater Manchester has a role to play to close the gender activity gap and address the intersectional inequalities within it.    

The barriers to movement and physical activity

Despite good progress, women and girls still experience several complex and interconnected barriers to everyday movement, physical activity and sport.

These barriers are both structural and systemic.

One barrier is affordability. Women in general have less access to financial capital than men and are more reliant on infrastructure services to be active. Linked to this, women also experience more time pressures, often due to unpaid ‘care work’. Globally, women spend 2.8 more hours than men on unpaid and domestic work (UN Women, 2023). This can include direct caring activities, such as feeding a baby or caring for a relative, as well as indirect care, such as cooking and cleaning.  

Another barrier to women and girls being active is a lack of safety, and the perception of being safe. This concern is not unfounded; it’s rooted in reality. A survey of 2,000 women in the UK found that 1 in 4 female runners are harassed regularly. This threat to safety leads women and girls to change their behaviours when it comes to being active. New research from This Girl Can shows that 72% of women in the UK change their outdoor activity routines during winter. This includes 24% of women who ensure to take well-lit routes and 23% of women who avoid certain areas altogether.    

It is important to note that these threats to safety are intersectional. Black women, women of colour, disabled women, trans women and women from other marginalised groups experience more and different types of harassment.    

The future looks bright

We know that change is happening, and that we can help it to happen faster, and on a greater scale. By focusing on the experiences of the most marginalised and inactive women and girls, we can shift the dial. This targeted approach will tackle the structural, systemic, and cultural barriers to movement.

Looking ahead, we know there are many contributing factors to increasing women's activity in Greater Manchester.  

Already, we see the huge efforts and contribution being made to boost women and girls’ activity levels. This includes many people, community groups, clubs, schools, and stakeholders from transport, planning, sport and violence reduction. The future looks promising too, with bigger and bolder plans in the coming years.  We're excited to play a role in many of these powerful projects.

How Greater Manchester is creating change

Across Greater Manchester, change is happening on many levels. From cultural efforts that challenge perceptions and ideas, to actions on an individual level, everyone has a role in creating a supportive environment for women and girls to be more active. 

Here are the levels at which we and our partners making change possible across Greater Manchester.

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Projects enabling change in Greater Manchester

This is a small selection of the projects making this change possible across our city region.    

  1. Changing cultural norms and ideologies: Campaigns such as #ThisGirlCan and #FeelGoodYour way centre the experiences of women and girls challenging perceptions of what movement/physical activity looks like.

  2. Improving policy: The Right to the Streets project and the policy asks, which emerged through the participatory legislative theatre process with community members in Trafford. The core policy proposal was focused on making public spaces and parks more welcoming.

  3. Enhancing the physical environment: The Right to the Streets card game has been delivered to planners and engineers in GM to challenge preconceived ideas. It encourages them to rethink what solutions to women’s safety concerns in the built environment look like. This encourages the use of feminist design principles. 

  4. Enabling change for organisations and institutions: GM Moving bring together National Governing Bodies in a forum with focus on women and girls. This focuses on how sports clubs and organisations can create more inclusive spaces and opportunities for women and girls to be active. The LGBTQ+ forum, Tackling Inequalities Network and our other communities of practice address inequalities through creative and powerful collaboration. In localities, there are many fantastic examples of community provision for women and girls. There are examples in every borough of Greater Manchester, including Mile Shy Club, Stronger at Home and activity focussed on addressing inequalities for Muslim women.

  5. Hosting action-driven workshops for stakeholders: Our GM Moving Conference 2025 is hosting a workshop for stakeholders at all levels to discuss the realities of the gender activity gap, and action plans for change. Sign up here.

  6. Fostering a better social environment: There are several social networks that foster inclusive spaces for women and girls to be active, while providing peer support. This includes Girls who walk, sole mothers and ride for women. We've played a role too, particularly in our GM Walking Festival in 2024, when we targeted participation from women and girls.
  7. Training individuals: Many across Greater Manchester have engaged with active bystander training. This particularly recognises the role we can all play as individuals in the creation of safer spaces for women and girls.

How can you play your part?  

We all have a role to play to support women and girls to move more, here are a number of ways you could get involved;