Checking in on the status of women's rowing

The World Rowing Federation, (FISA) has continued to take specific action to increase female participation in rowing and to reach the 50 per cent of female representation in the near future. In 2016, a step closer to gender equality will be attained in rowing, with the goal of reaching further equality by Tokyo 2020.

Ever since female rowing was introduced into the Olympic programme at the Montreal 1976 Games, there have been eight Olympic men’s events compared to six for women. Although the overall number of male and female events in Rio will remain the same, a larger number of female boats will be lining up at the 2016 Olympic Games compared to the number of female boats that raced in London.

At London 2012, all six women’s events had fewer entries than in the equivalent male boat class, whereas gender equality will be reached at Rio 2016 in four boat classes. The two exceptions are the women’s pair where there will actually be more entries than in the men’s pair (15 female boats compared to 13 male boats) and the quadruple sculls (10 male boats compared to 7 female boats).

FISA ranked seventh at London 2012 across all sports in terms of number of women’s events featured. Despite the relative high number of female events in rowing (FISA ranked fifth in terms of absolute number of female athletes competing), female athlete participation was lower than the overall participation rate of female athletes at the 2012 Olympics in terms of percentage. Indeed, 44 per cent of the athletes competing in London were female, whereas rowing had a 36 per cent female participation rate.

The rate of female participation at Olympic-level in rowing will be increased to 40 per cent for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. The overall IOC Olympic quota for rowing will remain the same with 550 athletes overall, but the number of female rowers in Rio will increase to 219 compared to 197 in London.

In 2013, FISA launched a detailed survey of female participation in rowing worldwide at the national and elite level. FISA also contacted other key international sports federations to compare women’s participation in rowing with women’s participation in other major sports.

Of the International Federations that responded to the survey, FISA is placed in fifth position overall in terms of percentage of women athletes involved in its sport worldwide, with 40 per cent of practicing rowers being female.

However, worldwide participation figures do not seem to be reflected at the World Championship levels. Whether at the senior, under-23 or junior World Rowing Championships, the average percentage of female participation (recorded from 2008 to 2012) has stood below the 40 per cent for masters (27 per cent), seniors (33 per cent), under-23 (31 per cent) or Juniors (36 per cent).

This has placed FISA near the bottom of the list of International Sports Federations in terms of percentage of women’s participation at World Championship level. Progress has been noted, however, at the most recent editions of the World Rowing Championships. Compared to the 2013 World Rowing Championships which had 117 female crews sent by 40 national rowing federations, the 2015 World Rowing Championships had 160 female crews from 51 national federations racing. The World Rowing Junior Championships saw a rise in female participation in 2015 with 41 per cent overall female rowers compared to 38 per cent in 2013.

At national championship level the percentage of women boats decreases in parallel with the increase in age group categories (39 per cent participation in the junior category, 36 per cent in the under-23 category, 34 per cent in the senior and masters categories).

Part of FISA’s strategy to improve these records is to encourage all member national rowing federations to enter female crews at the junior and senior World Rowing Championships and also to encourage all of them to participate in qualifying women’s boats for the Olympic Games. FISA is also planning to keep track of national federations with inactive or small women’s rowing programmes, to improve gender equality awareness, encourage the setting of objectives and provide financial assistance where needed.

The need to boost efforts at the grassroots levels (local clubs, schools and universities) has also been identified. Implementing gender-balanced talent identification systems at all levels is one of the many goals along the way of further promoting women’s rowing. Helping women stay in the sport rather than dropping out is another of FISA’s major goals.

More than just increasing the percentage of female athletes, FISA is aiming to see an increase in the representation of women at all levels in the sport, whether as coaches, umpires or federation leaders. With this strategy in mind, FISA organised a conference focused on women’s participation in rowing at the 2015 World Rowing Championships.

More than 40 participants from 25 nations took part in the all-day conference entitled ‘WhatsNext2Rowing’. The programme was broken down into four working groups that addressed the following themes: women in coaching, women in sports management, female umpires and athlete career programmes.

“We were positively impressed with the engagement of our member federations and the level of the participants at the conference, “says Daniela Gomes da Costa, FISA’s Development Coordinator. Da Costa was responsible for the women’s survey and coordination of the WhatsNext2Rowing conference. “The Whatsnext2rowing programme had high level speakers who contributed to our main objectives. We were able to identify future female leadership within national federations and disseminate knowledge about funding opportunities to promote women´s rowing at all roles and levels. More importantly we had very good feedback from this amazing group, and through the working groups activity we gathered good proposals on how to create more opportunities for female athletes, coaches, managers and umpires.”

For more information contact: daniela.gomes@worldrowing.com

To view the detailed survey results, click here.

To view the presentations made at the WhatsNext2Rowing conference, click here.