The Maunga Wāhine project aims to make sure competitive snow sports is a place where girls and women feel welcome and valued, and where we can grow and thrive, no matter what our snow sports aspirations are.
We want to better support women and girls, who compete or coach in snow sports, achieve their sporting, professional and life goals, whatever they may be. And as a result we hope more women will choose some of the exciting careers available right across the snow sports industry.
Thank you to all the women and girls who completed the female snow sports athlete survey and shared their insights and experiences with such clarity and honesty. The results powerfully illustrate that while women and girls love competing in snow sports, would encourage others to get involved and considered pursuing it as a career, there’s still much to do before girls and women feel equally included, valued and supported as snow sports competitors.
Click the link below to read a summary of the results and learn how they’re directly informing the work we’re now getting on with in Snow Sports NZ.
The female athlete survey has been so important in shaping the work of Maunga Wāhine that we’ve brought forward our Female Snow Sports Coaches Survey. We’ll officially launch the survey shortly but the link is live now. So if you’re a woman who has coached snow sports in New Zealand, please click here to complete the survey. And please share the link with any other women you know who have coached snow sports in New Zealand. The more who complete the survey, the more confidence we can have in the results. Every women who completes the coaches survey will go into the draw to win a $400 Outside Sports Voucher.
Maunga Wāhine Project Focus Areas:
We’re focussing on three things:
Co-creation is at the heart of Maunga Wāhine. We’ll work directly with female athletes and coaches themselves and we’ll pull in experts in female success to shape our work. We're starting off by working with 5 resorts to pilot the work: Cardrona, Treble Cone, The Remarkables, Coronet Peak and Mt Hutt as well as with Wanaka Snowsports Club and QAST. Once we know what works, we'll roll out the work more widely.
But for the purposes of the athlete survey, we're keen to hear from ALL CURRENT AND FORMER ATHLETES from right across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Why:
In 2022, in collaboration with industry partners and stakeholders, Snow Sports NZ undertook a strategic review. The main output of that review was a refresh of Snow Sports NZ’s Strategic Intent and during that review a consensus emerged across stakeholder groups that more should be done in snow sports to better support women and girls.
Women and girls make up 39% of Snow Sports NZ members, but they make up a smaller proportion of our high performance athletes. We’ve never had a female snow sports Paralympian or High Performance Snow Sports NZ coach. Women are also under-represented in most snow sports careers including coaching, guiding, patrolling, judging as well as in governance and leadership positions.
A similar pattern is seen across most sports. Historically women and girls have had to fight to be allowed to participate in sports. And once we'd won the fight to participate, we were largely treated like ‘little men’ with very few adaptations being made to the way those sports were run to better accommodate women or support female success. But women are not little men. And the failure of sporting bodies to adjust or adapt sufficiently, and in some cases their failure to consistently keep women and girls safe, has resulted in women being under-represented in almost all areas of sports participation, competition, administration and sports leadership.
The good news is that right across the world, and here in Aotearoa New Zealand too, this is changing. Addressing female under-representation in sport by better supporting women and girls is central to the strategies of both Sport New Zealand and High Performance Sport New Zealand. And it’s this focus that unlocked the Sport NZ funding for Maunga Wāhine. At Snow Sports NZ we’re stoked to be able to get on with this important work and are excited about the positive impact it’ll make.
Who:
Maunga Wāhine is run by Snow Sports New Zealand with funding support from Sport NZ. Louise Johnson was appointed as the Maunga Wāhine Project Manager in January 2024 and leads this work. Louise can be contacted at [email protected]
News & Updates: