Who plays and who is left out: what the data say about inclusion and sport
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The gender gap in Spanish sport is narrowing, but young women, migrants and people with disabilities still lag behind. Here is why I-PLAY aims for 40%.
In Spain, more and more people do sport, and the gap between men and women has narrowed. But look at young women, migrants or people with disabilities and the picture changes. We review the data gathered in our State of the Art report and explain why I-PLAY has set itself a 40% target.
The good news: the gap is narrowing
According to the Spanish Sports Council's (Consejo Superior de Deportes) Survey of Sporting Habits, in 2022 57.3% of the Spanish population aged 15 and over did sport: 63.1% of men and 51.8% of women. A difference of 11.3 points.
Later data compiled in our report point to a clear improvement: women's participation is reported to have risen to around 59.5%, with the gap narrowing to some 6.7 points, the lowest on record. This is real progress, the result of years of equality policies in sport.
The bad news: young women are still off the pitch
When we look at young people, the gap returns with a vengeance:
43% of young women aged 15 to 34 do no sport or only do it occasionally, compared with 24% of men of the same age (Youth in Spain Report 2024). A nineteen-point difference.
70.1% of girls aged 8 to 16 do not meet the World Health Organization's physical activity recommendations, compared with 56.1% of boys (PASOS 2022 study, Gasol Foundation, with 2,892 participants from 242 schools).
Adolescence is when many girls give up sport. And what is given up at 14 is very hard to regain at 30.
The overall figures are improving; those for young women, far less so. That is why inclusion has to be designed in, not taken for granted.
Migrating also means starting from scratch in sport
Young migrants face a set of barriers that research describes quite precisely: the cost of activities, language, discrimination, academic pressure, family and gender norms and, at times, fear or insecurity in unfamiliar spaces.
And there is an underlying problem: there are no regional data on sports participation by migrants in the Basque Country or Navarra. Nor is there a regional survey on the practice of traditional sports and games. In our report we treat this as a finding in its own right: what is not measured is not planned for.
Disability: less participation and little preparation
Across the European Union as a whole, people with disabilities participate systematically less in sporting and cultural activities (Eurostat, 2022). In Spain, reports on children's physical activity point to lower levels among children with disabilities and insufficient preparation among physical education teachers to include them.
In the Basque Country there are leading organisations, such as the Basque Adapted Sports Federation and FEKOOR, with which this work has a great deal in common.
A legal framework that pushes forward
The regulatory context helps. Sports Law 39/2022 recognises sport as a right for everyone and requires parity measures in federations. The Spanish Sports Council has also launched an Inclusive Sport Master Plan 2025–2028 and its Women and Sport programme. The rules already exist; now they need to reach the playground, the club and the town square.
Our commitment: 40%
At I-PLAY we have set ourselves a measurable target: at least 40% of participants should come from vulnerable groups, such as women and girls, migrants and people with disabilities. When the project was designed, the estimated starting point was below 10%.
How do we plan to achieve it?
Games with adaptations written in advance. Each of the 12 game sheets includes specific measures for people with disabilities, for migrants or refugees, and for equal participation between girls and boys.
Training for educators. Designing an inclusive adaptation is one of the compulsory learning outcomes of the curriculum.
Partnerships with organisations that already have groups. Associations of migrants, women or people with disabilities, with whom we can co-design activities.
Measurement. We will collect disaggregated participation data to check whether the 40% target is met, and we will report on it transparently.
Join us
If you work with teenage girls, newly arrived young people or people with disabilities and would like to try traditional games with your group, get in touch via abarka.org. The games are already documented; what we need now is people keen to play them.
Sources: Spanish Sports Council (Consejo Superior de Deportes), Survey of Sporting Habits 2022; Youth in Spain Report 2024; PASOS 2022 study (Gasol Foundation); Eurostat 2022; compiled in the I-PLAY D2.1 State of the Art report – Spain/Euskal Herria (2026).