Active Careers has collaborated with OriGym, a training provider in fitness qualifications across the UK to find out if there has been a change in gender demographic over the past 9 years of the percentage of women vs men getting qualified as a Personal Trainer in the UK.
In 2014 Sport England found that 2 million fewer women participated in sport than men, with the main protagonist being “fear of being judged” as opposed to desire to participate.
More and more women however seem to be turning to a career as a fitness professional over other professions in what has traditionally been labelled a male dominated profession.
Active Careers wanted to find out if this was actually the case and understand the reasons for this shift.
The Graphs below show the percentage of personal training students enrolled divided by gender from 1st January 2016 through to 31st July 2024.
This review is based on the number of people that enrolled as a Personal Trainer with OriGym, consisting of over 40,000 students.
In less than a 9-year period the percentage of women becoming a personal trainer has risen by a huge 25% (25.13% exactly).
Active Careers has mirrored these findings on our jobs board with 46% of candidates applying for a personal training job being female vs 56% male.
Active Careers wanted to identify and understand some of the reasons as to why more and more women see personal training as a viable career option.
We surveyed 824 female personal trainers to find out what the main motivation was behind them pursuing this career path (they could only select one answer):
The top 3 reasons, were helping other women with almost 1 in 5 people electing this as an option, improved job satisfaction and flexibility which combined is 50% of all women surveyed.
Perhaps surprisingly income and running their own business was at the bottom for the women surveyed.
OriGym spoke with CIMSPA, the professional development body for the UK’s sport and physical activity sector CEO, Tara Dillion, who stated:
"It's fantastic to see more women choosing personal training as a career. It's also not surprising, because thanks to the professionalism of all of our members, fitness and physical activity is increasingly becoming recognised as a profession that offers brilliant career development and longevity.
"With successful campaigns like Sport England’s #ThisGirlCan getting more and more women interested in fitness (over 7m women regularly take part in fitness activities in the UK) there is a growing need for qualified female instructors who understand the specifics of women’s training needs and I can only see that continuing as we emerge from the shadow of Covid-19."
The average age of women getting qualified across OriGym's database of female students was 32.2 years.
This perhaps seems older than you might expect, however we interviewed a number of female personal trainers over 30 to understand their motives:
We spoke with OriGym graduate and qualified Personal Trainer Alison Eade who gave her reasons as to why she got qualified:
"'Id say turning 40 was my big motivation. I was suddenly scared that my health and body was changing. That then lead me to joining a gym. So in a nutshell, menopause was the main driving factor and continues to be in my role as a PT. I help women everyday train and navigate their life dealing with Menopause and during/after childbirth.
We also spoke to Kirsty Clark, who with her husband has started Get fit with the Clarks:
I worked in an office at the time and hated it, having always worked in roles where I was out and about helping the public and getting to know people (in the Police, Youth Service and Retail).
Wanting to get out of the office and back into a role where I could help people, becoming a Personal Trainer seemed like the ideal fit. I was now really into fitness and wanted to make a real difference to people's lives. Having worn those shoes of being overweight and being unfit I feel like I can help others in the same position I myself was in.
Parents are my ideal clients, knowing how hard it is to look after a family and work plus keep fit and healthy, I want to help parents achieve their fitness goals but also help them plan more effectively with meals and other aspects of their life. I guess it's a whole package, being a Personal Trainer. You're there to ultimately help someone get fitter but you're also there to help with other aspects of their life too.
Active Careers wanted to see what the most common professions women over 30 were leaving to pursue a career in Personal Training.
We asked the same population of over 30s women who became a personal trainer if they pursued a career in an employed role, freelance or combined the two to see which direction most female PTs elected to go after qualifying:
74% of women surveyed go straight into freelancing in some capacity, where they arguably have greater flexibility over their schedule, greater jobs satisfaction and can help other women realise their fitness goals.
This also prompted the question, do female clients prefer female trainees vs a male trainer?
We surveyed 2,018 gym members and this is what we found:
Over 4 in 5 women prefer a female personal trainer to a male personal trainer and with the client demographic being more female dominated, this could lead to female personal trainers dominating the industry in the near future.
According to Upfluence’s database of influencers, we found that there are actually over 23% less male fitness influencers on Instagram than female with accounts 10k or higher. Additionally, there is 43% more fitness female influencers with followings over 100k. 
Out of 1,312 women enrolled or qualified on a PT course that we surveyed, a whopping 93% of them said they actively follow another female fitness based influencer.
Additionally, according to a report by Razor Edge Media, 71% of women use social media compared to 62% of men.
One of the major reasons levelled at why previously more women were not participating in sport was due to the low number of female sporting role models and lack of media exposure with an average of just 4% coverage across major broadcasters by contrast to male sports.
A record audience of 22.6 million viewers watched three or more minutes of women’s sport in the UK between January and May 2024 compared with 22 million from 2023. Also, FTA viewership increased by 10% over the last year.
Active Careers partnered with OriGym to obtain data figures and conducted our surveys using census wide for both gym members and female personal trainers.
If you want to share our study, any findings or images from the study, you can do, but please credit with a link to this page.