Female footballers are set to benefit from a significant overhaul of insurance cover for pregnancy, contraception, menopause and other women's health conditions, in a development that could reshape how insurers underwrite elite women's sport.
The Women's Football Taskforce has commissioned Loughborough University to work with insurance providers and brokers to redesign products and remove long-standing gaps in protection for female athletes.
The work specifically targets blind spots around pregnancy, fertility and reproductive health, menopause, and conditions that disproportionately affect women such as relative energy deficiency in sport (Red‑S). Red‑S, caused by low energy availability when an athlete’s intake does not match training demands, can lead to metabolic, hormonal and physiological changes, including stress fractures and menstrual disruption.
Karen Carney’s (pictured) independent review of women’s football, published in July 2023, highlighted inconsistent medical, maternity and long‑term health support across the professional game and called for better protection for players. The government accepted the review’s recommendations and pledged a “decade of change” for women’s sport, including a specific focus on welfare and employment conditions.
“Seeing the recommendations being taken seriously and resulting in tangible improvements is always amazing,” said Carney. “This development coming to fruition justifies why the report was important and I’d like to thank all the people involved that helped make this happen.”
Stephanie Peacock, minister for sport and chair of the Women’s Football Taskforce, described the insurance reforms as “incredibly welcome” and paid tribute to insurers and to Prof Jo Maher, Loughborough’s pro vice‑chancellor for sport, for helping deliver “a tangible difference to the products offered to sportswomen”.
The insurance work sits alongside other measures flowing from the review, including the introduction of a minimum salary in the Women’s Super League (WSL) and formal representation of WSL and Championship players by the Professional Footballers’ Association – all of which feed into insurers’ evaluation of contractual stability, earnings protection needs and long‑term disability risk.
The British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA), which has made a public commitment to supporting women in sport, is co‑ordinating efforts by major brokers including Aon, Willis, Miller, Howden and Marsh to review existing policy wordings and identify exclusions that can be removed or reshaped.
Aon has already extended its personal accident policies to include miscarriage as a result of a sporting accident as standard. That change addresses a notable gap which, in the past, could leave players facing both medical and income shocks without dedicated cover.
Specialist insurer AXIS has begun reviewing its professional sports personal accident portfolio, while the Association of British Insurers (ABI) is working with carriers such as Vitality to examine how far current products and terms reflect the needs and risk profiles of female athletes across sport, not just football.
Prof Maher said: “Developing products for female athletes marks an important step in ensuring we drive world class and equitable standards in women’s sport. I would like to thank all of the partners from the insurance industry for listening to colleagues from across the sports sector and responding so positively. Together we can level the playing field and continue to build on the brilliant performances of our national teams and athletes.”
The initiative reinforces a wider move towards gender‑specific design and pricing in sport and accident covers.
Women's elite sport is now a high-growth commercial segment, with rising media rights, sponsorship and prize money increasing the earnings at stake if a player is sidelined. At the same time, research indicates that elite female footballers have distinct injury patterns and specific reproductive health, RED-S and bone-stress risks. Traditional generic personal accident and career‑ending injury wordings have not always captured these exposures or the financial consequences of pregnancy‑ and menopause‑related absence.
The push to include areas such as miscarriage, fertility‑related complications and menopause within mainstream products signals a shift from narrowly defined “accident‑only” covers towards broader, life‑cycle‑aware protection. That in turn raises underwriting questions around benefit design, waiting periods, exclusions, aggregation and pricing, particularly where clubs or governing bodies are buying cover on a team or league basis.
The initiative also carries a strong ESG and reputational dimension. As attendances and audiences for the WSL, UEFA Women’s Champions League and FIFA Women’s World Cup continue to grow, scrutiny of how well clubs, leagues and their insurance partners support sportswomen through pregnancy, maternity leave, fertility treatment and later‑life health is increasing. For insurers positioning themselves as long‑term partners to the women’s game, being able to demonstrate that products reflect female‑specific risks and needs is likely to become a competitive differentiator in tenders and sponsorship discussions.
More broadly, the collaborative work between the Women's Football Taskforce, Loughborough University, BIBA, the ABI and brokers and insurers is expected to create templates that can be adapted for other sports, helping to standardise minimum expectations for female athlete cover across the market.
