Getting Back on Their Feet: Women in Sport and Exercise Academic Network Virtual Conference, Sept 7–8, 2020

The overall purpose of the Women in Sport and Exercise Academic Network (WiSEAN) is to grow, strengthen, and promote research on womeninsportandexercise,withtheultimategoalofoptimizingwomen’s athletic success and their sport participation. The catalyst for the development of the network was the underrepresentation of female participants in sport and exercise medicine research (Costello, Bieuzen, & Bleakley, 2014). Due to this underrepresentation, research evidence based on men is often inappropriately generalized and applied to women (Sims & Heather, 2018). Gender bias is also apparent in conference speakers and academic panel members (Bekker et al., 2018) as well as in leadership positions in sport (Pape, 2020), where males consistently outnumber females. The network, therefore, exists to help minimize gender inequalities in research and academia, through promoting female-focused research as part of the annual conference and by supporting female researchers through its mentoring scheme. Further activities of WiSEAN can be found on the website: https://www.wisean.net/.