Walk into almost any padel club in Britain on a weekday evening and you’ll notice something. The courts are busy – pairs of mates, colleagues on a team night out, the occasional couple. But look closer at who’s playing, and the picture becomes familiar in the worst way: mostly men.
The numbers confirm it. According to the Lawn Tennis Association, the national governing body for padel in England, just 30% of padel players in the UK are female. In padel’s most established markets – Spain and Argentina – the figure for top competitive players is even lower, at 28%. The sport is not young enough to be excused this, and experienced enough to know better.
Now a growing coalition of voices, from grassroots organisers to the LTA itself, is arguing that the window to fix it is narrowing fast.
The cancellation problem
The most visible symptom isn’t at the top of the sport – it’s at the bottom. Junior girls’ competitions across the UK are being cancelled due to insufficient female participation. Not postponed. Cancelled.
That matters more than any statistic. When a girl signs up to a tournament and it doesn’t run, she doesn’t just go home disappointed. She gets the message that padel isn’t really for her. That assumption, formed at 12 or 14, is extraordinarily hard to reverse later.
The problem compounds itself. Fewer girls playing means fewer women playing. Fewer women playing means fewer role models for girls. You end up with the same self-reinforcing gap that football, cricket, and rugby spent decades trying to undo – except padel hasn’t even finished establishing itself yet.
Why padel should have got this right
The frustrating part is that padel, structurally, is better suited to gender balance than almost any other racket sport.
It’s doubles. It rewards positioning and anticipation over brute power. The glass walls and enclosed court neutralise physical advantages that would matter more on an open court. It’s sociable, it’s relatively easy to start, and – crucially – it’s new enough in Britain that no entrenched culture exists to push back against change.
Pepita Stonor, who founded Empower Padel in September 2024 after spotting the problem first-hand, puts it plainly: padel is “easy to take up – difficult to master.” That accessibility is exactly what makes it compelling for older women coming back to sport, or women who’ve never felt comfortable in a tennis or golf setting where baseline technical ability is assumed from day one.
Empower Padel has built a database of 2,500 women and runs regular tournaments and social events aimed specifically at growing female participation. Stonor’s ambition is straightforward: make it the world’s biggest community of female padel players. That’s not a modest target, but given where the sport is globally, it’s not an absurd one either.
What the LTA is doing
The LTA has not ignored the issue. Its “She Rallies” plan – which covers both tennis and padel – includes dedicated women and girls-only sessions at venues across the country, designed to create spaces where confidence can be built without the implicit pressure of mixed play.
Tom Murray, the LTA’s head of padel, has said the governing body is “committed to opening up padel, breaking down barriers to create meaningful opportunities for women and girls to discover, play, and thrive in the sport.”
The language is right. The question is whether the infrastructure will match it. Women-only sessions are a start, but they work best when the venue already has a critical mass of female players to make them feel like a regular part of the programme rather than an afterthought tacked onto a Thursday afternoon slot that no one else wants.
That’s where the real work happens: club by club, court by court.
The role model gap
One thing Stonor and other advocates have identified is that the problem isn’t only about access. It’s about visibility.
Women aren’t being introduced to padel by family members – the aunts, mothers, older sisters who might see the sport and pass it on. That’s partly because the sport is still new, so the first generation of female fans and players is still being created. But it’s also because the media coverage of the women’s professional game, while improving, is still a fraction of what the men receive – even on platforms dedicated to padel.
At Premier Padel level, women and men compete at the same tournaments. Gemma Triay and Delfi Brea – who won the women’s title at Gijón this weekend – are elite athletes competing at the highest level of a demanding sport. But the casual UK player is far more likely to know who Galán and Chingotto are than to know Triay’s name, let alone her game.
That’s not unusual in sport, but it is fixable – particularly while padel is still building its audience in Britain. The habits of what people watch and follow are still being formed.
What clubs can do now
The most effective changes don’t require a governing body directive. Several things work.
Women-only sessions that run consistently. Not a one-off, not a trial – a slot that appears on the schedule every week, is properly promoted, and doesn’t disappear if turnout is modest at first. Trust takes time to build.
Beginner pathways aimed at women. Most club coaching is marketed generically. Beginner programmes that explicitly welcome women who’ve never picked up a racket, and that acknowledge the social dimension of getting started, tend to convert better.
Female representation in coaching. If the only coaches at a venue are men, women who are new to the sport are less likely to book lessons. This is a pipeline problem that takes time to solve, but clubs that actively recruit and develop female coaches are already ahead.
Visible role models on-site. Posters, social media posts, club newsletters – showing women playing at the club, not just at Wimbledon, makes a difference.
The window is short
Padel is growing fast. New venues are opening every week across the country. Courts are being built at tennis clubs, leisure centres, and standalone facilities from Glasgow to Chelmsford. The sport’s community is being shaped right now, and the assumptions it forms in this period will be sticky.
That’s the argument for urgency. Once a culture calcifies – once padel becomes, in the public imagination, a sport that men play – reversing it becomes a campaign rather than a conversation. The LTA knows this. Empower Padel knows this. The clubs that have made women’s participation a genuine priority are already seeing results.
Britain has a rare chance to build a racket sport with genuine gender balance from the start. Whether it takes it is mostly down to what happens at club level in the next 18 months. If you’re looking for women-friendly clubs or sessions near you, the how to choose a padel club guide includes what to look for in a club’s community and coaching culture before you commit.
The data says the gap exists. The opportunity is to make sure it doesn’t last. Aimee Gibson – Britain’s world No. 89 and the most prominent female player the country has produced – is profiled in the CMG signing piece, which gives some context for where the professional women’s game in Britain is heading.