Building a more diverse future for women's sport

DIVERSITY isn’t a “nice to have’, it is essential.

- Cymru Women’ Sport chair Professor Leigh Robinson

It's not just about who plays, it is also about who leads, who makes decisions, and who tells the stories.

True inclusion means ensuring that women and girls of all ethnicities, abilities, ages, faiths, sexualities and identities can see themselves in sport. And most importantly, know that their voice matters.

Across the UK there is still significant work to be done so that all women and girls can see themselves in sport. The 2024 Diversity in Sport Governance report found progress is being made in some areas, such as increased representation of disabled people and ethnically diverse individuals on boards, but there continues to be more men than women represented at board level across the partner organisations.

In Wales, the picture is similar. More than half of Welsh national governing bodies (NGBs) have fewer than 30% women on their boards. Among lower-funded NGBs, only a quarter of board roles were filled by women, according to a Sport Wales report in 2018.

While scant information is available about the current figure, work done by volunteers to map the landscape in 2023 found that out of all Welsh sports boards, women made up around 34% of all board positions.

This means decisions about women’s sport are often still being made without sufficient input from women - and sometimes without any at all.