Charlie Blair and University Women's Coordinator Elly White discuss the recruiting and retaining of Women at University level, and how it can improve GB ultimate.
Recruiting women to Ultimate: UNIVERSITY
The recent poor showing at Nationals has been a wake up call to the UK about the problems women’s ultimate is currently facing. A recent debate on The State of Women’s Ultimate in the US (highly recommended viewing) has sought to address the problems that they are facing regarding growth and development. This has inspired the tSG to devote some much needed attention to the situation at home, taking insight from the discussions of our US counterparts to think about what we should be doing to better women’s Ultimate here in the UK.
Much progress has been made since the establishment of Women’s Tour, but the fear remains that the gap between men’s and women’s is growing ever wider as the infrastructure and resources for Open continue to increase at a pace unparalleled in the women’s division. University plays a vital role in ameliorating that margin. This piece serves to make you and your committee both recognise the importance of recruiting and retaining women as well as suggesting the most effective means to do so.
Much progress has been made since the establishment of Women’s Tour, but the fear remains that the gap between men’s and women’s is growing ever wider as the infrastructure and resources for Open continue to increase at a pace unparalleled in the women’s division. University plays a vital role in ameliorating that margin. This piece serves to make you and your committee both recognise the importance of recruiting and retaining women as well as suggesting the most effective means to do so.
The Issue
The single biggest factor holding back the development of women’s ultimate is a problem shared by those in the States: numbers. In the USA, women make up only 30% of USA Ultimate’s membership. According to approximate figures provided by UK Ultimate, here too, women represent just under a third of total membership (27%). Amongst student membership however, there is a slightly higher representation, at around 39%.
To address the issue of numbers, we need to consider the points of entry that the majority of women have to Ultimate. Despite great progress in junior programmes and a huge expansion in the number of schools now teaching ultimate in the UK, for the majority of women it currently remains at university.
