Girls in Tennis – The barriers we face, the opportunities created, the joy it brings

We’re very fortunate that tennis is one of the few sports that is closing the gender gap within the sport. During 2023 a record 5.6 million adults played tennis- 42% were female. As well as 3.6 million children playing- 49% of which were female.

Benefits of playing tennis

Tennis has equal prize money for both males and females. It also tops the spot for highest paid female athletes across the world. When looking for a sport for your child to do, why not choose tennis? It has the most career opportunities for adults, it teaches you skills for life e.g. problem solving, communication, independent thinking and many more. Young teenagers who play tennis have been known to get better grades, have better behaviour and be more community minded and well-rounded.

Barriers for girls

Girls are more prone to dropping out of tennis during their teenage years compared to boys. They’re facing a lot of changes, hormonal, mental and physical. Girls and boys are very similar when they’re younger but as girls begin to develop the changes get harder and the gap gets bigger. The boys they used to compete in running races with are now speeding past them, lifting more weight and are a stronger athlete all round, compared to girls who are adapting to potential weight gain in areas they’re not used to or feeling more run down from different hormones. All these negative changes accompanied by low self-esteem and lack of confidence lead to girls putting their racket down.

What can we do to help?

We know there are only benefits to playing sport and if we can encourage our teenage girls to remain on court then we can help them through this next stage of life. Girls respond well to people they can relate to as well as being in a group or a community of like-minded people, whereas boys tend to find it easier to be competitive individually. This is true in some girls not enjoying competition or individual scoring, so team challenges or focusing on rewarding the process not the outcome is important.

Girls have to see to believe. Within the tennis coaching workforce in Britain only 23% are female, this drops to 17% of coaches in senior roles, how can teenage girls expect to continue when the people surrounding them are purely men. Yes, male coaches are great and can provide the same level of coaching as a female, but they’ll never understand how a female is feeling and how their body changes from week to week.

Girls who see female coaches/tennis leaders around the club have people they can relate to and get a sense of belonging which is really important for them.

At the time of writing this, On the ATP (Men’s world rankings) no female, coaches a top 100 player and on the WTA (women’s world ranking) there are only 8 female coaches of players in the top 200. Females are no less capable than a man but there’s more stereotypes to break and barriers to overcome to be seen and heard in the coaching world.

For us to support more females playing tennis the female coaching force needs to grow.