The City of Casey and Federation University Australia have been working together on a project aimed at supporting local women to become more physically active.
Council approached Federation last year about possible partnership and research opportunities, including in the areas of sport and physical activity. Council wanted to know more about the barriers faced by women in accessing sport and recreation activities and how we can empower the community to become more physically active.
Federation conducted a series of workshops and a survey where researchers got a snapshot of the barriers to physical activity faced by local women and invited them to co-design sport and recreation solutions.
More than 75 women attended the workshops, who ranged in age from 18 to 71-years-old, many with children under five-years-old and more than half from households that speak a language other than English.
Some of the insights to come out of the research included:
- Cost, not having enough time, being unsure of what was available to them, and domestic and care responsibilities were the top four barriers to physical activity.
- On average, women reported 107 minutes of leisure-time physical activity per week, below the recommended 150 minutes.
- Women thought being active was a good thing but didn’t think they had the social support and/or experienced difficulties to be active on most days.
- Among the women-designed physical activities were learn to swim classes, group-based exercises like yoga and Zumba, walking groups and social sports with a focus on affordability and child-friendly or childcare options.
City of Casey Manager Active Communities Angie Peresso said Council is proud to have partnered with Federation on this research project.
“Through the project we’ve been able to gain a better understanding of the physical activity needs of women and girls of Casey and the barriers they face when trying to exercise and connect to their local communities through recreation,” she said.
“Based upon the findings, Council will develop and implement recreation programming opportunities that will address current barriers to enable more women and girls of Casey to be active more often and to improve their physical health and mental wellbeing.
“Through our #CaseyGirlsCan program, we’ve been committed to improving the health and wellbeing of Casey women and girls and we’re excited to expand on that using the insights from this research project.”
Federation University Senior Lecturer of Sport Management, Dr Meghan Casey said this innovative and engaging research design could be replicated to address barriers and co-design programs for other population groups and other local government areas.
“By having the women involved in the process of designing how the programs will look, how they should run, how much they should cost and these aspects, this will show us if that makes a difference in changing their behaviour,” she said.
“It’s well known that women generally have lower physical activity participation rates than men, but the City of Casey is also a growth area and has a culturally diverse population, and we know their participation rates are lower.
“Many women have caring and family responsibilities, not just for children but often for older relatives, so finding ways to support them to be more active is really important.”
The research project brought together research expertise from Federation University’s Collaborative Evaluation Research Centre (CERC) and Physical Activity and Sport Insights (PASI).
Council is now looking at ways to implement the participants’ recommendations and once programs are rolled out, researchers will later this year assess their effectiveness in getting more local women physically active.
See some of the great activities already on offer as part of Council’s #CaseyGirlsCan program on our website.
