Women in Sports Science: A Profile of Leading Irish Researchers, written by Cherianne Taim.
Cherianne Taim is a PhD student in female athlete physiology at the Technological University of the Shannon, Athlone and the SHE Research Centre.
My background: In 2020, I graduated from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore with a BSc (Hons) in Sport Science and Management. During my third year, I secured an internship at the National Youth Sports Institute (NYSI) in Singapore as a sport physiology intern and research assistant. After graduation, I transitioned into a full-time role as a sports physiologist at NYSI, supporting Singapore’s high-performance youth athletes across various sports. During this time, I became acutely aware of a significant gap in this field: the lack of sex-specific research and support for female athletes. Notably, only 6% of sport and exercise science research was conducted exclusively in females (Cowley at al., 2021). This shaped my research interest in female exercise physiology and a commitment to addressing the sex data gap in sport and exercise science. In 2021, I had the opportunity to move to Ireland to pursue a PhD focused on advancing the monitoring and support of menstrual health in elite female athletes.
The booklet publication, titled ‘Women in Sports Science: A Profile of Leading Irish Researchers’, is the outcome of a passion project that I embarked on during the final year of my PhD, supported by Dr Niamh Ní Chéilleachair, Dr Aoife Lane, and Dr Ciarán Ó Catháin. It features interviews with 22 leading female Irish and Ireland-based sport science researchers, spotlighting their remarkable achievements and career journeys. This project was primarily inspired by the work of Leabeater et al. (2023) and Cowley at al. (2023). In a commentary, Leabeater et al. (2023) highlighted that beyond female athletes or participants, other positions in sport such as coaches, officials, performance staff, operations, and business staff are also threatened by a sex data gap. Indeed, while the recently concluded Paris 2024 Olympic Games broke new ground by achieving full gender parity among athletes, women remain underrepresented in key roles such as Chef de Mission, technical officials, and coaching staff. For instance, at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, only 13 percent of coaches were women. Within academia, the study by Cowley et al. (2023) found that female-specific research with higher methodological quality was led by women (i.e., first author), although a large proportion of these studies were senior authored by men (i.e., last author). Further, the authors found an underrepresentation of female editorial board members across six sport and exercise medicine journals. We need to start building a more equitable future in sport and exercise science and raise the profile of women in sport. While this project may be straightforward, it hopefully represents an intentional and meaningful step toward these.
On a personal level, this project also stems from my experiences as an undergraduate student who was trying to find my footing in the sport science field and exploring potential career paths. Growing up and throughout my undergraduate studies, I was fortunate to benefit from the trailblazing efforts of women who came before me, which made me feel equally capable as my male counterparts. It was not until a pivotal moment during a panel interview for an academic award, when a male panelist asked, “How are you going to make yourself heard as a woman in a field dominated by men?”, that I first confronted the stark reality of the sex-gender gap and what it could mean. This personal encounter inspired me to interview these 22 featured women and gather their advice for young girls and women considering or navigating a career in this field today. Though my memory of that moment is somewhat hazy, I distinctly recall being momentarily speechless as I processed the question. In retrospect, if I had this booklet publication at that time, I might have quoted Dr Áine MacNamara, Associate Professor in Elite Performance at Dublin City University (DCU), who shared, “I may find myself as the only female in the room, but I will never find that to be a disadvantage. I will be confident in my ability and status and surround myself with colleagues who are both supportive and challenging.”
Finally, as Dr Lisa Ryan, Head of the School of Science and Computing at Atlantic Technological University (ATU), Galway, shared in her feature, “To young girls and women starting I would say if you don’t see a female in a position in a sport where you would like to be, why not become that female for someone else to look up to.” I am incredibly privileged to share the stories of these 22 exceptional women, hopeful that aspiring young girls and women will always have inspiring female figures in sports to look up to, be encouraged by, and confidently pursue meaningful careers in sport and exercise science. After all, as Billie Jean King powerfully said, “if you can see it, you can be it.”
‘Women in Sports Science: A Profile of Leading Irish Researchers’ is funded by the N-TUTORR Students as Partners in Innovation and Change Fellowships Programme 2023-2024 and is available for download at sheresearch.ie.
References
Cowley, E. S., Olenick, A. A., McNulty, K. L., & Ross, E. Z. (2021). “Invisible sportswomen”: the sex data gap in sport and exercise science research. Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 29(2), 146-151.
Leabeater, A. J., Clarke, A. C., Roberts, A. H., & MacMahon, C. (2023). The field includes the office: the six pillars of women in sport. Sport in Society, 26(9), 1602-1610.
Cowley, E. S., Moore, S. R., Olenick, A. A., & McNulty, K. L. (2023). “Invisible Sportswomen 2.0”—Digging Deeper Into Gender Bias in Sport and Exercise Science Research: Author Gender, Editorial Board Gender, and Research Quality. Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 1(aop), 1-8.