Leadership Gender Balance in UK Dance Sector Report

The charity AWA DANCE in collaboration with Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) embarked on a research project exploring leadership in the UK dance sector, concentrating on gender balance in artistic, executive and board positions. In this medium-scale research, we focused on nationally funded dance organisations across the UK for the years 2021-2022. A second stage of the research gathered lived experiences of women in the UK dance sector. 176 responses were collected across the country, allowing us to gather subjective perspectives and real cases of the experience of leadership of women in dance. This research was born out of a need to understand if the subjective experiences of women in dance was matching the reality of the sector. Our approach was first to analyse (some of) the organisations that operate in the sector with regular funding and, second, to capture the voices of women in dance to understand their perspectives and hear their stories.