Enhancing Girls and Women’s Health Through the Power of Sport
Enhancing Girls and Women’s Health Through the Power of Sport

Enhancing Girls and Women’s Health Through the Power of Sport

Sport for development programs can use sport-based metaphors and activities to impart important health knowledge.

April 6th marks the International Day for Sport for Peace and Development (IDSDP), an annual celebration of the power of sport to drive social change, community development and to foster peace and understanding. One major way that sport is driving social change is by enhancing the health and wellbeing of girls and women. This impact can be magnified when it’s approached through the lens of 3A’s: Assets, Access and Adherence.

Sport builds the assets of girls and women in multiple ways. It is well documented that participation in sport improves the self-confidence and self-esteem of girls. When girls are confident, they are equipped to make better decisions throughout their lives, including decisions around their health. For example, they may be better equipped to talk to a partner about safe sex, or to identify an unhealthy relationship.

Sport for development programs can use sport-based metaphors and activities to impart important health knowledge. Grassroot Soccer has found this to be an effective method to teach adolescent girls and young women about sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). For example, in the activity “Risk Field”, participants dribble soccer balls around a series of cones marked with risks for contracting HIV, such as unprotected sex, older sexual partners, and drugs and alcohol use. Coaches help make the connection for players between consequences in the game for hitting a cone and consequences in real life for risky behavior.

Sport can provide girls and women with increased access to various aspects of community life, including medical services, safe spaces, and opportunities to continue to improve their physical health.

A prime example of this approach are Grassroot Soccer community soccer tournaments, where high-impact SRHR services are brought from the clinic onto the soccer pitch as a more accessible and stigma-free way to sensitize and engage the community. By integrating access to health services with a fun day of soccer, these events provide a way for community members to receive family planning information, get referrals to clinics, and test for HIV. When these services are made available in an easily accessible way, and with the support of trained coaches, the outcomes can be tremendous: Grassroot Soccer participants are more than 3 times more likely to get tested for HIV than their peers.

In contexts where sports are male-dominated, girls and women often lack playing opportunities. When they do have access to these opportunities, it can be very transformative in breaking down entrenched community gender norms, which in turn can lead to healthier communities. When boys see girls in the sports arena, it can alter their perception of the role of girls in society, and lead to reduced stigma around women and sport for future generations.

Lastly, sport can promote adherence to healthy behaviors. Sport lends itself to building routines, whether it’s a consistent warm-up ritual or a regular practice schedule. This pattern of adopting routines can transfer to adopting healthy behaviors in other aspects of life, such as adhering to a regular pattern of exercise or a necessary course of medical treatment. By providing a supportive environment, sport-based programs can engage girls around SRHR so that they are set up for a lifetime of accessing services. Sport programs also teach accountability, a concept that can greatly impact health outcomes.

Accountability starts with setting a goal, then making a plan to achieve it, and then sharing that plan with others who will be there to keep you on track. One area where Grassroot Soccer has seen the application of this idea be very successful is through the SKILLZ Plus program for HIV-positive youth, who often face difficulty adhering to retroviral treatment. This program is specifically tailored to address their need for knowledge as well as emotional support. Taught by openly HIV-positive coaches, and generally implemented in partnership with local health clinics, this intervention uses soccer-based games along with discussion time to address important topics such as HIV prevention and transmission, antiretroviral drug adherence, opportunistic infections, disclosure, healthy relationships, and the importance of maintaining a support network. The results: participants in the program are 2.5 times more likely to adhere to treatment.

Let’s look at one example of this 3A’s approach in action. Through a 3-year study published in 2017  and funded by the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women and the Ford Foundation, over 8,000 adolescent girls ages 10-16 in three South African townships graduated from SKILLZ Girl, an all-girls Grassroot Soccer program. Leveraging a soccer-based approach, the program is designed to build adolescent girls’ confidence and self-efficacy, promote positively protective behaviors, and increase resilience; it provides gender-sensitive activities and knowledge around SRHR, including pregnancy prevention, empowerment, HIV prevention, and gender norms.

One sample lesson for SKILLZ Girl is “Healthy Relationships”, where the participants are divided into teams on the pitch. Before they compete in a shooting game, the coach presents them with a series of scenarios and each team must decide if the scenario represents a healthy or unhealthy relationship, such as “Your partner has never hit you, but threatens to hit you” or “You do not feel comfortable asking your partner to use a condom.” The activity provides the opportunity to discuss these topics in a safe space. After moving in to a shooting drill, the teams are then brought back together to reflect back on the discussion around relationships. By weaving in discussions, activities, and soccer drills and games, girls  have fun and gain meaningful information.

The study results showed consistent improvement in participants’ self-esteem and self-confidence, decreased acceptance of violence, improved disclosure and reporting of violence, improved gender equitable norms, and increased utilization of HIV testing and SRHR services. The study also noted that longer exposure leads to greater perceived benefits of sport and less girls justify violence against women and girls after going through SKILLZ.

Data like this backs up a sports-based approach to reaching girls and women with effective SRHR programming, but even more research is needed into ways that sport can have the greatest impact in improving the health of girls and women.

Sport is more than just a game. It can be a pathway to healthier lives for girls, women, and their communities.