This is the third of three articles about women and parkour competitions. The previous two looked at the positives of competing and what puts women off. This concluding piece focuses on practical actions that can be taken by event organisers to encourage more women to take part, as well as looking at opportunities to create more welcoming and inclusive events.
First Action: Inclusive Marketing
It is great to see more and more competitions being organised around the world, but if you are an event organiser of a parkour competition, jam or other community event, take a look at your recent marketing material and ask yourself the following question:
‘Who are you unintentionally excluding from your marketing content?’
Recently, without naming names, four event organisers posted reels to their social media about upcoming events and not one of them included a single image of a woman. This was very likely not intentional, but if the aim is to be inclusive and to encourage more women to attend, then the media posted online is crucial.
Women need to see other women taking part to know that it is a space where they will feel comfortable and welcome.
This means including images of women from previous events in reels, posts, posters, and any other form of advertising. It also means getting event photographers to pay attention to the women and girls participating and ensuring they are not just focused on the men sending big jumps.
Second Action: Female Representation
A second suggestion is to have at least one woman involved in the planning and organising of events. This is really important in mixed events and can be done in various ways, depending on the resources available.
Ideally, a woman or women should be involved in the organising group from the beginning. Bringing a female perspective to all decisions made about timings, location, content, marketing, etc,
If that isn’t possible due to budget constraints or lack of women in that specific community, then a more modest step would be to involve one or more external women in setting the courses at the event and providing some of the microphone commentary on the day.
Another option, not necessarily alternative to those, is to get a female coach, athlete or friend to look over the marketing content before an event to provide a female perspective before those are finalised and posted.
Third Action: Asking for Feedback
After every event, event organisers should ask for feedback from the athletes (men, women, trans and non-binary), ideally of all ages (adult and under16s). For example, send out a feedback form in the 24 hours after an event. Then sit down as an organisation to reflect on the feedback and make a plan to improve things next year.
Fourth Action: Women-Only Events
As we have seen over the past few months, women’s-only events can be an effective way of helping women build the confidence to attend mixed events. They provide opportunities to learn parkour in what feels like a more private space, meet other women who train, and build supportive friendships. These connections can then make it easier and more enjoyable to attend mixed events together.
It would also be great to see more women’s-only competitions being organised, as this is an opportunity for elite athletes to practise and for newer practitioners to experience them for the first time and understand if it is something they would enjoy.
There have already been instances such as Parkour Generation’s Women’s International Parkour Weekend (WIPW) in 2024, which had a women’s Skill comp organised by Bo Zuijderwijk, Lisa Schneider and Georgia Donati Clarke, which allowed women to experience competing in a less pressured environment. The same event also had a Style line building workshop run by Lisa Schneider.
The London-based female group FemGaps recently organised a women's only event in May 2026, which included a 2-hour outdoor takeover style Skill comp.
Finally, it would be great to see more of these warm up comps both open/mixed and women-only organised in indoor gyms with similar set-ups to the bigger competitions (such as SPL and Project Underground) as this allows athletes to practise in the off-season.
Conclusions
Many other sports (marathon running, climbing, snowboarding) have found that a commitment to equal involvement of women at all levels of competition, combined with effective and inclusive organising structures that pay attention to women’s needs, can be a game changer in promoting the sport as a whole among the wider public. If more women are involved and enthusiastic about what parkour offers, more children are introduced to the sport and more of them are likely to take it up into teenage years and adulthood.
This article was written following a series of conversations with athletes and parents from the UK, Holland, Sweden, Germany, Scotland, Italy, the US, Canada, Finland and Denmark. Thank you to all of them for their help and perspectives.
To summarise:
Finally, ask the athletes for feedback on your events and really take the time to read through this with your team. Don’t be afraid of negative feedback, because this is exactly what will make events so much better in the years to come.
Written by Georgia Donati Clarke
