Despite a surge in the popularity of women’s sport, most women athletes receive substantially lower pay and have less job stability than their male counterparts. Few women occupy coaching and leadership roles, ethnic minority and Indigenous women still face barriers at grassroots and elite levels, and LGBTIQ+ constituencies continue to experience marginalisation within and beyond sport. While recent efforts support a wider range of gender-affirming practices, as demonstrated by the Australian Human Rights Commission and Sport Australia’s 2019 recommendations for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport, there remains little empirical scrutiny of the extent to which policies are effecting change and how.

This Australian Research Council-funded project aims to understand contemporary gender inclusion efforts in Australian sport, including the barriers to achieving gender parity in leadership roles and broad accessibility for groups who experience various forms of marginalisation. It seeks to generate new knowledge about the regulatory mechanisms and social conditions that can facilitate change. Expected outcomes include enhanced analytic guidelines and governance strategies that support equity in professional settings and health promotion through wider inclusion.