The Inaugural Women in Sport & Exercise Conference: Consensus Statement

Abstract

The inaugural women in sport and exercise conference was held at Staffordshire University on 13th-14th June, and brought together a number of academics, clinicians, practitioners, sport leaders, policymakers and administrators, charities, current and retired athletes, and the general public for a showcase of current research on female-specific health and medical issues and opportunities arising from women's participation in sport and exercise. Aside from these common themes, the conference sought to kickstart a redressing of the gender disparity of participants in sport and exercise science research. Courtesy of Costello, Bieuzen, and Bleakley (2014), we know that females are significantly under-represented in research across all of the sports science and sports medicine disciplines. Ultimately, the result of this is the extrapolation of the findings, provided by male participants, to female athletes and exercisers (Costello et al., 2014). Contributors from a diverse range of disciplines such as physiology, biomechanics, psychology, nutrition, endocrinology, sociology, and sport policy sought to present their work from an academic, a professional practice, and a policy perspective. The commonality amongst all contributions was the consideration of females as a unique population both in research and in practice. Although the contributions were many and varied, there were a number of common themes that became apparent during the course of the two days. These were: encouraging more females into sport and exercise, physical training and nutrition, menstruation, psychology, pregnancy, injury, ageing and the lack of a level “playing field”.