Women and Girls

We're empowering women and girls to be active across Greater Manchester through action and commitment.

We’re committed to breaking down barriers and creating inclusive opportunities for women and girls to be active across Greater Manchester and beyond. Despite progress, many still face systemic barriers to movement, sport, and physical activity, with affordability, time, and safety key challenges.

Evidence shows women and girls are more likely to be inactive than men. Since the pandemic, inactivity has fallen, but the gender gap has widened, and activity levels in Greater Manchester remain below average.

That’s why this work matters. As part of a collective movement, GM Moving has learned that certain enablers and ways of working are essential for place-based approaches to succeed. By focusing on those facing the biggest barriers, we can tackle inequalities, challenge stereotypes, and amplify women’s voices.

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Our ambition is clear: safer, fairer, more inclusive communities. We’re acting across all levels, from individuals to organisations, public spaces, and policy, to stop harassment, encourage positive behaviours, and create environments where women and girls feel confident to be active. From grassroots projects to system-wide change, we’re ensuring every woman and girl feels welcome, supported, and empowered to move more.

 

Our bold partnership with Liverpool City Region: A Historic First

The Mayors from Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region have signed the IWG Women and Sport’s Brighton plus Helsinki Declaration. This marks our two city-regions coming together to close the gender gap in sport, physical activity and movement.

As part of this, we're partnering with Merseyside Sports Partnership to create plans to address barriers and to provide training, education, and new opportunities to support safe participation. This continues work we've already started, and the start of new action plans to close the gap. These plans will address safety issues that impact women and girls, provide workforce training and education, and ultimately create new opportunities for women and girls to get active with confidence.

Read more about the signing of the Declaration, and what this means for Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region. 

 

Our Commitments 

1. Exploring barriers for women, girls and gender diverse people  

97% of the Muslim women surveyed wanted to increase their physical activity levels, according to a report by MSA (2023).

We are committed to developing our understanding of the barriers that restrict options for moving more within our communities, from affordability to caring responsibilities and concerns about safety. We believe that only by truly exploring these barriers can we take targeted action to unlock opportunities.  

See how we put this to practice in our Right to the Streets Toolkit. 

2. Upskill and build capacity  

According to PWC in 2025, there is currently an 11.2% gender pay gap in the UK.

We are committed to working internally and with our partners to ensure that our workforces have the necessary skills, data and understanding to unlock opportunities for women, girls and gender diverse people.  

From our safeguarding team to our place partnership team, we are working to strengthen knowledge, share learning, and build confidence so that everyone can play their part in creating safe, inclusive spaces for movement and activity.

We've turned this into action through work such as our shared Menopause commitment.

3. Share data, stories and learnings  

In Greater Manchester, young women aged 20–29 have an average activity level of 68.5%. The Active Lives data from Sport England indicates that the women who are least inactive in Greater Manchester are women with a limiting illness, those out of work, and minority ethnic groups.  

We know that across Greater Manchester we are unlocking more opportunities to enable women, girls and gender diverse people to move more, and yet there is more to do and learn from each other. We are committed to playing our role to ensure that we are sharing our learnings across Greater Manchester and beyond. 

Visit our news page to see the latest ways and places we're sharing learning. 

4. Supporting engagement and co-design  

82% of girls thought that they should be more involved in designing playgrounds, parks and outdoor spaces (Girlguiding Attitudes Survey, 2020).

We believe that only by including the voices of women, girls and gender diverse people are we able to create tools, resources and opportunities that resonate and are effective. 

Our Feel Good Your Way campaign was co-designed by members of Bolton Youth Council, aimed at supporting girls with their mental health through physical activity.

5. Directing funding and support to walk more, through our Walking and Wheeling Fund and Festival

We are ensuring that we are making funds and support available to support women, girls and gender diverse people to walk and wheel more in a way that feels good for them.

See how our funding is directly supporting this, in the Inspirational Women video.

Our work so far

What you can do to play your part

We are not alone in doing this work, there is an abundance of actions you can take. Every action has a ripple.