Among sports participants age seven and older, females constitute a majority of participants in four of six fitness activities surveyed for 2006 by the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA), according to data in the new NSGA Sports Participation reports. After aerobic exercising (71%), females represented 50% or more of participants in exercise walking, working out at a club and exercising with equipment, where they represent 60%, 56% and 51% of participants, respectively.
In the other primary fitness activity, running/jogging, women represent 48% of the participants. Only in weightlifting did females fall far behind males in participation, with just 35% of those who lifted weights being female.
Other activities in which women were a majority of the female participants were cheerleading (94%), volleyball (56%), swimming (55%), tennis (53%), softball (55%) and inline skating (53%).
There were nine other sports and activities in which females represent 45%-49% of participants. They are: cross-country skiing (49%), bowling (49%), hiking (49%), tennis (49%), camping (49%), bicycle riding (45%). soccer (45%) and canoeing (45%).
Exercise walking drew the greatest number of female participants, 52.4 million, followed by swimming, 28.6 million, and exercising with equipment, 28.0 million.
For the study, a participant is defined as someone seven or older who participates in a sport more than once within the year. For swimming, exercise walking, bicycling, exercising with equipment, running/jogging, weightlifting and aerobics, a participant is defined as one who is active in a sport six times or more within the year.
