World Sailing Trust launches global Participation Study

The World Sailing Trust is today launching a global Participation Study to assess the status of sailing in terms of equity, diversity and inclusion.

Almost two years after the launch of the Trust's global survey on women in the sport, the Participation Study will serve as a benchmarking survey to assess the sport of sailing in all its disciplines, on a global scale.

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The mission of the Participation Study is to build a sport that is able to attract, retain and enable talent across in all its forms, and has a robust equity, diversity and inclusion policy. This will support greater participation and improved performance and will strengthen the future of sailing on a global basis.

The publication of the World Sailing Trust's Strategic Review into Women in Sailing in 2019 highlighted major issues of gender discrimination in the sport of sailing, confirming long-held anecdotal evidence that the sport was gender biased at every level. The results revealed a lack of diversity and inclusion, highlighting the need for action to ensure that sailing is ready for the seismic shift towards greater equity across all global cultures.

The 2021 Participation Study will set out to establish the status quo and identify how the sport reflects the world in 2021. However, continued monitoring and benchmarking of participation levels, and assessing and monitoring trends, is critical. As a result, the Participation Study will be repeated every two years so as to identify change and support those areas where there has been no significant advancement.

"By researching the sport, the aim is to explain the underlying mechanisms of how it functions, address how to best develop programmes to support its longevity, and assess the direction and strength of trends in participation," commented Dee Caffari, Chair of World Sailing Trust.

"Looking specifically through the lens of equity, diversity and inclusion, the report will aim to give a quantitative overview of sailing today and put forward a series of recommendations to identify and mitigate bias, respect differences, build empathic relationships, manage conflict and bring out the best in others - all of which are key elements in any great sports team."

The survey is again being hosted by Qualtrics and is available in English, Spanish, French, and Italian.