Recommendation 17

We questioned Sport England on the limited progress in increasing activity levels among women aged 16–60. Sport England acknowledged that the figure was low but told us that it had a significant programme of activity had lined up for the final year of the target period which had to be suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This included a further iteration of its campaign ‘This Girl Can’, which it claimed had been proven in previous years to positively affect women’s attitudes to sport and activity, particularly among those who had previously felt excluded. It told us that, while it would have been a challenge to meet its target for activity levels among women aged 16–60, it was confident prior to the pandemic that it had “driven significant change in the activity of women as a whole”.27