The governing body has launched this project to explore pregnancy, childbirth, and return to sport for female athletes.
The CARES project (Childbirth And Return in Elite Sport) aims to research and create better policies to understand the aspects of pregnancy and motherhood with respect to pro-athleticism. The focus is to create support systems, to protect female athletes and reduce inequalities.
For the project, the governing body is calling upon females— both those who have experienced motherhood and those who haven’t. Two surveys will be held and it will be a collaboration between the Health and Science and Competition departments of World Athletics, with contributions from the World Athletics Athletes’ Commission.
The first survey will focus on athletes who have experienced pregnancy/motherhood since 1st January, 2019 during their career. They will be able to participate in the survey regardless of whether the pregnancy resulted in childbirth. This survey will collect information on various perspectives: pregnancy, childbirth, professional support, financial aspects, perceived barriers and facilitators. This survey will also look at the data from the World Athletics database (including performance metrics) to find new patterns.
The second survey will be aimed at female athletes who have not experienced pregnancy. The focus is on maternity-related support, how they perceive organisational support and possibly the ranking systems.
World Athletics President, Sebastian Coe stated, “We are continually looking for ways to make our sport even more equitable, and the CARES project is the next step in ensuring athletes who experience pregnancy are protected, receive support, and do not face barriers when it comes to being able to make a return to elite athletics.
“It is important that our athletes are the driving force behind this. The responses generated by these surveys and the associated analysis of performance metrics is vital to this project, to inform future action.”
Further, the World Athletics Athletes’ Commission Chair Valerie Adams said, “I am really proud to see World Athletics taking a leading role in encouraging research and more open dialogue about what it means to be a mother and an athlete. When I started my career, you didn’t want to tell your sponsors if you got pregnant because you might get dropped.
By the time I retired – as a mother of two – we’re seeing more female athletes coming back from having kids and performing at an elite level. I hope that the work being done in this space will further inspire female athletes to not only plan their sporting career, but also plan their life.”
The surveys are open to all female athletes included in the World Athletics competition performance ranking. 30th September remains the deadline for submitting the responses.
