Across their careers, female athletes face unique challenges. Compared to their male counterparts, there is however limited knowledge on how to best support the career development of female athletes.
Considering the unprecedented rise of women’s sports, our study aimed to assess female athletes’ perceptions of career development needs and knowledge gaps relevant to navigating a senior high-performance sport environment.
In adopting a co-productive, integrated knowledge translation approach, the project partners developed an international online survey covering 16 areas of career development. A total of 132 female high-level athletes (MAge = 25.9 ± 6.02 years) representing 17 different countries completed the survey.
Results show that female athletes express different career development needs in their early, mid, and late career stage. Athletes at early stages of their career felt least prepared to cope with travel, to navigate transitioning to a higher level, and to balance sport and family life. Overall, the areas in which athletes expressed they were least prepared for and wanted to be more informed about included contract negotiations, returning to sport after having children, and obtaining sponsorship contracts.
The following infograpic summarizes the most important data gathered in our research:
Our findings suggest the need to implement specific career support programs tailored to the career stages of female athletes. Consequently, these novel results will build the scientific ground for the subsequent design of the digital HerForm training hub. These platform resources will also be linked with on-site workshops, delivered by service providers in female high-performance environments in Europe and Africa.
The training modules will be made freely accessible via herform.eu by the end of 2025.
