Football has the power to change who gets to lead, and who gets left out. Across the Asia-Pacific, girls still drop out of the game earlier than boys, coaching remains male-dominated, and few young players ever see a female role model on the pitch. Equal Play Effect was built through sport for development to close that gap, giving grassroots organisations a practical, ready-to-use way to put girls and women at the centre of football.
Equal Play Effect
Equal Play Effect – a project in collaboration with Women Win and Common Goal – is a replicable, adaptable and scalable solution to accelerate progress towards gender equity in football. The program is designed to support and advance the efforts of grassroots organisations towards achieving gender equity in football. It aims to help increase leadership, representation, and participation of girls and women in football for good programmes, and ensure that every young girl has a female role model in their community.
Creating Chances, as a member of Common Goal, and Women Win, led the project in the Asia-Pacific region, motivated by collective effort, dedication, and shared vision of 5 partner organisations across the Asia-Pacific region: Inspire (Indonesia), TheWE United Project (Nepal), PlayOnside (Thailand), Football for All (Vietnam), and Fundlife International (Philippines).
Football for Gender Equity: A Coach’s Toolkit is designed to:
- Provide coaches with the tools and knowledge to create fun, safe, and inclusive spaces for girls, women, and non-binary people to participate in football skill and social and emotional wellbeing activities.
- Build the capacity and confidence of coaches across the Asia Pacific to deliver and design gender inclusive activities and programs. Develop the program participants into role models to increase the participation of girls and women in playing, coaching, community, and leadership positions across the region.
- Promote gender equity in coaching and participation that contributes to advancing gender equity in sport.
Football for Gender Equity: A Coach’s Toolkit will be the foundation of Creating Chances’ transformational Football United program, enabling young women and girls from metro and regional areas of NSW to realise their potential through sports participation, coaching and leadership opportunities, and access to quality coaching, resources and role models.
“Leveraging the experience of almost 20 years of our high impact, values-based Football United program, we are proud in leading a project that ensures girls are at the centre of decision-making in the Asia Pacific. Our programs are designed to increase resilience, self-confidence and provide a sense of belonging amongst young women, and it’s been an enriching journey to work alongside extraordinary partner organisations from 6 different countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
By ensuring equal play, creating local role models, and empowering women as leaders and coaches, we can build a more inclusive football culture across the region to inspire future generations.”
Assmaah Helal, Creating Chances
The project was coordinated by lead author & project coordinator Eve Wilcox with support from the team across the Asia Pacific: Assmaah Helal, Ketrin Marpaung, Lhakpa Lama, Rojie Mae Valiente, Hnin Hnin Hayman, and Huong Phan Thi Thu.
Downloads
Football for Gender Equity: A Coach’s Toolkit [ENGLISH]
For downloads in Nepali, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Burmese and Tagalog, please visit Women Win’s Learning Playground.
Equity and Access in Sport: Why Policy Alone Isn’t Enough
Australia’s sport sector is shifting. The Australian Sports Commission’s National Gender Equity in Sports Governance Policy now requires national and state sporting bodies to meet set targets for women’s representation on boards by 2027, with funding tied to progress. But policy at the top doesn’t automatically translate to equity and access in sport on the ground. Girls still need a coach who knows how to run an inclusive session, a club that makes space for them, and a local role model who shows them the pathway is real. That’s the gap Equal Play Effect was designed to fill.
Sport for Development and Peace, Built Locally
This is what sport for development and peace looks like in practice. Not a slogan tied to one day on the calendar, but a working method: five partner organisations across Indonesia, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines adapting a shared toolkit to fit their own communities, resources and cultures. The project treats equity and access in sport as something built locally, not handed down from outside, which is why it has stayed adaptable enough to scale across such different contexts.
Bringing Sport Equity Home to Australia
The same thinking applies at home. Creating Chances’ Football United program takes the same model of sport for development used in Equal Play Effect and applies it to metro and regional NSW, giving young women and girls a direct line from participation to coaching to leadership. As Australia works to close its own gender gap in sport governance and grassroots participation, programs built on sport equity from the ground up, not just policy from the top, are what will move the needle.
