Nora Stapleton: With proper resources, women can unlock their full potential in sport

I had the grá; I just didn’t have the opportunity.

Then, in 2007 I was working for Bank of Ireland in Dublin when I tried out tag rugby. A couple of games in and I was asked if I’d play rugby for Old Belvedere. A few years later I made my debut for Ireland.

I still had the grá, and now I had the opportunity.

The Sport Ireland Women in Sport programme exists to give women and girls all over Ireland the chance to take part in sports. It also aims to influence and guide the sport sector and other stakeholders to ensure women and girls have an equal opportunity in sport, no matter the role.

In 2007 the Sport Ireland Irish Sport Monitor (ISM) survey showed the participation gap between males and females was 15.7pc. This year’s ISM report shows the gap is down to 2.9pc, the narrowest it has ever been. Irish women and girls are increasing their activity levels.

For almost 20 years now, programmes and initiatives created by Local Sports Partnerships (LSPs) and National Governing Bodies (NGBs) have encouraged, motivated, and provided opportunities for women and girls to take part in sport and physical activity.

The record allocation of €4m in Government funding for the Women in Sport (WIS) Programme for 2024 is an important contribution to the work of Sport Ireland and those LSPs and NGBs.

That work is happening right across the country, and even those benefitting from it may not realise that it’s Women in Sport funding that makes it possible. It’s in walking clubs run by LSPs and it is in Rowing Ireland’s Get Going Get Rowing initiative, which was initially created to increase the number of female rowers.

The research tells us that the best time to get girls into sport and to keep them there is when they’re young. That’s why Sport Ireland launched Her Moves in 2023, a campaign dedicated to teenage girls and working on ways to reduce the dropout level from sport. The campaign aims to reframe sport to teenage girls and encourages them to try out new sports.

One place we can start is with facilities and how parks and spaces for sport and physical activity are set up.

Women and girls use facilities and areas differently to men and boys. We need more toilets and changing rooms, more breastfeeding facilities, more creches, more small size playing areas, better access, better lighting, less hidden dark spaces. Lots of things come into play here and, thankfully, are increasingly a part of design conversations. A new rule that links sports capital grants to equal access for men and women is a big step in the right direction.

Moving from the pitches to the boardrooms, we are also starting to see change. The Sport Ireland Women in Leadership Snapshot shows the overall percentage of women on boards in the Irish sports sector stands at 45pc. In 2019, women only made up about 24pc of board members.

Again, sports bodies have played their part. Athletics Ireland has its leadership programme, ‘Forerunners’. Cricket Ireland has ‘On the Front Foot’. And Swim Ireland jumped in at the deep end with a programme that has helped over 250 women from different sporting bodies develop their leadership skills. Each of these programmes was supported by Women in Sport funding.

While women are catching up on the pitches and in the boardrooms, there is still a way to go in other areas of policy. Women still feature less when it comes to coaching roles, especially towards high-performance sport. The recently launched Sport Ireland WinHP Coaching Programme, which supports female coaches, aims to make a difference here.

We also need to do more to increase the visibility of women’s sport. It is an area where we can make real inroads by focusing on fan engagement. Too often, sport organisations take the template for the men’s event, scale it down, and deliver it for the women’s event.

Just like performances shouldn’t be compared, women’s and men’s events need to be treated as different products. The fans are different, the atmosphere is different, the sponsors tend to be different.

Research tells us that fans of women’s sport spend more on merchandise and recall brands more easily if they sponsor women’s sport, yet I’ve attended events where the only thing to buy was a burger.

Women’s sports events attract hundreds of kids and families, so why are we not doing more to provide entertainment at halftime. In 2023, the Sugarbabes performed at half-time during the England-France game in Twickenham? Did people attend for the rugby or the entertainment? Does that matter when they have a good time and buy a ticket for the next game?

Taking a more creative and innovative approach for how we deliver events could potentially unlock tens of thousands of new fans for women’s sport.

A recent encounter reminded me of how Women in Sport funding can make a difference.

In 2013, my team-mates and I had a Patrick’s Day to remember when we beat Italy in Rome to seal the Grand Slam. Back home, the impact was immediate and electric, with lots of young girls wanting to play rugby.

At the time I was working as Women and Girls Development Manager with the IRFU after a spell as a GAA Games Promotion Officer. With the IRFU we started directing young girls to the hundreds of mini rugby set ups in clubs across the country. However, it wasn’t long before we started hearing stories of girls dropping out after several weeks or months.

As I began to unpack the reasons, it was evident that joining a group of boys who have been playing rugby together for a few years can be uncomfortable experience if you are the only girl or if no one passes you the ball.

Off the back of this, I created ‘Give it a Try’, an eight-week programme in selected clubs where girls aged 8-14 could learn to play rugby in a fun environment. The 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup was coming up and I wanted to capture the interest from girls interested in rugby.

Fast forward 10 years, and I’m sitting in a waiting room when the woman next to me starts telling me all about her amazing kids, the sports they play, the matches they go to. Then she told me about this initiative that her club runs, that got her girls into rugby.

On the pitch it’s not always possible to score yourself, but you can put your team-mates in a better position to make something happen. By properly resourcing women’s sport we can develop and support females in unlocking their full potential.

Nora Stapleton is Director of Strategic National Governing Body Programmes and Women in Sport Lead with Sport Ireland, the authority tasked with the development of sport in Ireland. She represented Ireland in three Rugby World Cups and was a member of the Ireland teams that won the 2013 and 2015 Women's Six Nations Championships. She also represented Donegal in Gaelic football from 2002 to 2010 winning Junior (2003) and Intermediate (2010) All Ireland titles.

Sport Ireland is the authority tasked with the development of sport in Ireland. This includes participation in sport, high performance sport, anti-doping, coaching and the development of the Sport Ireland Campus.