Newcastle-born dads-and-daughters program wins national award for challenging gender stereotypes through sport

newy.com.au – A University of Newcastle program that gets dads and daughters running, jumping and talking about equality has been recognised as one of the country’s top university outreach projects at the Engagement Australia 2025 Excellence Awards in Sydney on Wednesday night.

The Daughters and Dads Active and Empowered program, led by Professor Phil Morgan, was named a dual winner of the Outstanding Engagement for Research Impact category, a prize that recognises research that clearly changes lives beyond campus.

Developed in Newcastle in 2014, the program brings together fathers or father-figures and their primary school-aged daughters for an eight-week course that mixes games, sport skills and short chats about topics like confidence, screen time and gender stereotypes. The idea is simple: if you help dads see the influence they have, and give girls skills and self-belief early, you can shift patterns of low physical activity and narrow expectations that often follow girls into their teens and adulthood.

More than 7,000 people have now taken part in Daughters and Dads Active and Empowered in Australia alone. The NSW Government says research has consistently shown fathers play a “unique and powerful” role in shaping their daughters’ activity levels, confidence, body image and resilience, which is why the program deliberately treats dads as “change agents” rather than helpers on the sidelines.

A typical program starts with a dads-only workshop where fathers learn practical parenting strategies to encourage their daughters’ sport and physical activity and to call out gender bias. They then come back each week with their daughters for one-hour sessions that include a short “empowerment” chat followed by about 45 minutes of rough-and-tumble play, fitness games and practising core skills like throwing, catching, kicking and striking.

The program has been rigorously tested in a series of university trials. Randomised studies published in international journals have found girls who take part are more active, have better sport skills, healthier screen-time habits and improved social and emotional wellbeing compared with those who do not, with dads also reporting stronger relationships and more confident parenting. HMRI, the Hunter Medical Research Institute, says these benefits have been shown to last for years after the course finishes.

The concept has grown well beyond its original multi-sport version. There are now tailored programs for cricket, football, basketball and cycling, developed with national and state sporting bodies to give girls a gentler, skills-based entry into organised sport while their dad or father-figure acts as a one-on-one coach. The NSW Office of Sport partnered with the university to roll out the program across the state between 2019 and 2023, delivering 114 programs in more than 50 locations, training over 300 facilitators and reaching nearly 3,000 participants through that partnership alone.

Demand has also come from overseas. Versions of Daughters and Dads have been run in the United Kingdom, Austria and Northern Ireland, including digitally delivered sessions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization’s European office has highlighted the program as an “inspirational and effective” example of how to get families moving and tackle childhood obesity, and it has been highly commended in the international Green Gown Awards for initiatives that benefit society.

For families who have taken part, the impact is often described in very personal terms. One father quoted by HMRI said, “Put simply, for me it was life changing […] A fantastic program that every father should do.” A young participant said “the best part was spending time with my dad […] it was really nice to be able to have time put aside to spend with him”.

Engagement Australia’s Excellence Awards celebrate university partnerships that deliver clear social or economic benefits, with finalists selected from across Australia and New Zealand. For Morgan and his team, the national recognition adds to a long list of awards and is likely to strengthen their push to grow the program further through schools, councils and sporting clubs.

The next step will be securing more partners and funding so more communities, particularly regional and disadvantaged areas, can host programs, with Daughters and Dads already inviting sports bodies and local organisations to get in touch via its website.