Upholding girls’ and women’s rights through sport

Distinguished Vice President of the Human Rights Council

Members of the panel,

Excellencies, Colleagues,

Sport embodies many of the principles at the heart of human rights:

Fairness and equality, with rules that apply to everyone.

Inclusion, which makes true greatness possible.

Altruism and cooperation, which turn individual talent into a skilful and effective team.

The drive for excellence, through healthy competition with oneself and with others. Beyond their vital contribution to health and well-being, sports help people acquire life skills that are profoundly useful: discipline, resilience, respect for others, and the confidence to strive for excellence. This is also a critical path for leadership and for empowerment.

Yet girls and women who seek to participate in grass-roots, amateur and professional sports and the governance of sports continue to face a multitude of intersecting barriers.

The regional consultations on sport and racism convened by our Office last year evidenced systematic gender-based barriers to opportunities, pay and visibility for women in sport.

In many places, women and girls' access to adequate facilities and coaching is limited – reflecting a generalized attitude that their participation in sports is less valuable than men's.

The case of Afghanistan's women's sports teams, which have been forced into exile, is especially egregious.

Girls and women with disabilities, as well as those from specific ethnic and racial groups – particularly Black or Indigenous girls and women, and those with migrant backgrounds – face additional, multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.

For example, in some countries, Muslim women and girls are excluded from participation in sports by bans on religious attire – and in others, by requirements that they wear cumbersome clothing that restricts movement.

Gender stereotypes still shape, from childhood, who is encouraged to compete and lead. When girls are told — directly or indirectly — that sport is “not for them”, that strength and ambition are unfeminine, or that their bodies should be controlled rather than celebrated, their choices are narrowed long before they reach a playing field. These attitudes undermine confidence, limit access to training and support, and help explain why many girls drop out of sport, especially in adolescence.

Many girls and women continue to face violence, including sexual violence and sexual harassment, in the context of sports.

When girls and women muster the determination to progress in high-level sport, they remain underpaid and are less likely to secure sponsorships or leadership positions. In this way, stereotypes do not merely reflect inequality in sport; they reproduce it.

Yes, professional women’s sport is expanding rapidly as an economic sector, generating income through salaries, sponsorships, broadcasting, merchandising, and leadership roles. Women’s elite sport was worth at least US$2.35 billion in 2025 ^[1].

However, access to these financial gains is still very uneven and the economic empowerment of women and girls through sport is markedly less powerful than for men.

There can be no justification for this. 

Last year, the Council's Resolution 59/17 urged States to take action. Action to change mindsets; to develop new laws and policies; to reduce pay gaps; to create facilities and pathways for girls' and women's sports; to increase the representation of women in leadership positions; and, overall, to promote the participation and empowerment of women and girls. 

Because all women, and all girls, have the right to participate freely in sport, as part of everyone's right to participate in cultural life.

Our Office works extensively to promote the equality of women and girls, from strengthening national legal frameworks to promote non-discrimination; to working with businesses and trade unions to ensure equal pay for equal work.  We also help to advance gender equality in sport through advocacy and advice to governments and sporting institutions on how they can align their laws and policies with human rights standards.

As our 2020 report on the Intersection of race and gender discrimination in sport emphasised, effective empowerment of women in sport requires States to enforce anti-discrimination laws, protections, collect disaggregated data, and ensure safe, inclusive environments – so that all women and girls can participate in sport, equally. 

Many girls and women also continue to face violence, including sexual violence, exploitation and harassment, in the context of sports. 

Effective empowerment of women in sport requiring enforcing anti-discrimination protections, collecting disaggregated data, and ensuring safe, inclusive environments so that all women and girls can participate in sport with dignity, equality , without any form of discrimination – and without violence. To this end, it is vital to establish, and enforce, adequate safeguarding frameworks, including independent, confidential reporting channels; impartial investigative mechanisms; and remedy.

The recent re-introduction by some sports governance bodies of long-abandoned mandatory genetic sex tests on all women and girls in professional sport raises serious concerns about bodily integrity, informed consent, and privacy. Our Office calls for a return to a more balanced approach to eligibility in women’s sport that is based on human rights standards and peer-reviewed evidence, avoiding unnecessary blanket exclusions, particularly of trans women and intersex women.

We also urge States and sporting bodies to work with athletes on public education campaigns to counter gender-stereotyped and racist attitudes, and to address negative portrayals of women and girl athletes in the media.

And we urge sports’ governing bodies to allow these athletes access to justice; and to strengthen protection for athletes under the age of 18. 

Human rights law and principles require States and sports federations to uphold everyone’s personal autonomy – including both the freedom to choose to wear religiously significant attire and the freedom to choose not to wear such clothing. 

Women and girls are active and powerful agents of change, and the full realisation of their rights benefits everyone.

Part of the value and beauty of sports is their capacity to amplify our human rights messages of inclusion, of equality and of dignity.  These are some of the very few human activities that can unify people across the globe. Let this be true for all people – including all women, and all girls. 

Thank you.