COVID-19 impacted students’ levels of physical activity, regardless of gender. After returning to school following extended periods of lockdown, “girls engaged in significantly less moderate-to-vigorous” physical activity after returning to school when compared to boys. Researchers have identified upper secondary school female students as an at-risk group, requiring ‘specific COVID-recovery intervention’.

Low numbers of women in key leadership roles have been popularly addressed through interventions that “stimulate girls’ leadership aspirations through the public pedagogy of role models”. Recent research suggests that existing approaches which use celebrities and women in leadership positions as role models do not challenge the “traditionally individualist, authoritarian and masculine” themes present in frameworks of leadership.

Research in Wales has suggested that the physical activity of girls can decline more than that of boys as they reach adolescence. A ‘primary school-based community linked role-model programme’ draws on evidence that suggests role models could hold a crucial role as an inspiring influence to encourage girls to be (and remain) physically active.