Women in the fitness business Australia have long been the backbone of an industry they have rarely been invited to lead. Despite representing more than half of gym members and a significant share of the fitness workforce, women remain underrepresented at ownership and senior leadership level across the country. That conversation is getting louder in 2026, and events like Fuel Summit are a clear signal that the industry is starting to build the infrastructure to back it up.
Women in Fitness Businesses: What the Data Shows
A survey conducted by the Women in Fitness Association (WIFA) and software company Sport Alliance found that 70% of men surveyed identified as self-employed gym owners, compared to just 29% of women. That disparity at ownership level flows down through every layer of the workforce, shaping hiring decisions, mentorship access and promotion opportunities along the way.
The IDEA Health and Fitness Association found that only 35% of female fitness professionals have access to a mentor, compared to 52% of men. In an industry where relationships and professional sponsorship carry as much weight as qualifications, that gap compounds over the course of a career.
These are not new findings. What has shifted is the growing recognition that the causes are structural rather than personal, and that structural problems require deliberate, structural responses.
Why the Leadership Gap in Australian Fitness Persists
The Lack of Female Role Models in Fitness Leadership
The principle that you cannot become what you cannot see is well established, and the fitness industry is no exception. When business ownership and senior leadership skew heavily male, it shapes the mental template aspiring leaders carry about who gets to reach those levels.
Women without visible role models at the tier they are working toward face a longer psychological climb, regardless of their skill or drive. Every year the leadership ratio stays imbalanced, another group of talented women makes quiet decisions about where to direct their ambition.
Mentorship and Networking Gaps for Women in Fitness
Mentorship forms through relationships, and historically those relationships have been easier for men to build in most industries. A shared sporting connection, a work social culture, a senior leader who recognises potential in someone who reflects their own experience. These patterns are not deliberate. Their effect is real regardless of intent.
Women in fitness also face practical barriers to networking. Industry events, conferences and seminars require time, travel and often overnight stays. Those logistics fall harder on anyone carrying a disproportionate share of domestic and caregiving responsibilities. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics consistently shows women spend significantly more time than men on unpaid domestic work and childcare, and those hours have a direct effect on professional availability that accumulates over a career.
Gender Bias in Fitness Business Hiring and Promotion
Women in fitness are more likely to be described as instructors rather than trainers, more likely to be associated with yoga and Pilates than with strength and conditioning, and more likely to have qualities like directness or assertiveness misread as something other than leadership.
These are deeply embedded perceptions. They shift when enough visible counterexamples exist to challenge them, which makes representation at senior level both a symptom of the problem and part of the solution.
Unconscious bias in hiring adds another layer. When senior decision-makers are predominantly male, organisations instinctively skew toward candidates who reflect the background and experience of the people doing the hiring. Changing this requires deliberate effort, not goodwill alone.
Career Breaks, the Gender Pay Gap and Female Fitness Business Owners
Women are more likely to take extended breaks for maternity leave and caregiving, and more likely to reduce working hours during periods of family demand. These interruptions carry real professional costs: lost promotion opportunities, widening pay gaps and a reduced financial runway for the risk involved in starting a business.
The gender pay gap in Australian fitness is not abstract. When a female partner earns less, stepping back during periods of family pressure becomes the economically rational decision, which limits career progression further, which widens the pay gap more. Breaking that cycle requires awareness at both the individual and industry level.
As Fuel Summit founder Deborah Goldberg puts it: “Some of the biggest breakthroughs happen when you’re still building.” Waiting for the perfect conditions such as financial security, the right staff, enough locations, is a pattern that holds back far too many women who are already more than ready.
How Women in the Australian Fitness Industry Are Closing the Gap
In 2026, the more productive question is not simply why the gap exists, but what is being done to close it.
One of the most significant initiatives in the Australian market is Fuel Summit, founded by Deborah Goldberg in 2019. Goldberg built Fuel around a clear observation: the fitness industry lacked a space where women could have direct, honest conversations about leadership, business growth and the realities of building careers in a sector that had not historically been designed with them in mind.
“I felt there was a gap in the industry,” Goldberg says. “A space where women could have honest conversations about leadership, business growth and the realities of building successful careers.”
What Goldberg did not anticipate was what would happen after that first event. The connections formed at Fuel continued long after the day ended. Attendees became business partners, mentors, collaborators and long-term supporters of each other’s careers. Women told her that attending had changed how they thought about themselves and their businesses.
“That was the moment I realised Fuel wasn’t an event. It was becoming a movement.”
Since then, Fuel has expanded across Australia, New Zealand and the United States, building a community of thousands of professionals from fitness, wellness, health and business. The format is deliberate: CEOs alongside first-time studio owners, speakers who stay on the floor long after leaving the stage, and a room dynamic that Goldberg describes simply.
“There is very little ego in the room. People come with a willingness to share openly.”
That collaborative culture is precisely what the industry’s informal networks have historically failed to provide for women, while providing it readily for men. Fuel has built a formal structure around something that should not have required formalising in the first place.
Fuel Summit Sydney 2026: A Fitness Business Event Built for Women
The next Fuel event takes place in Sydney on 25 and 26 August 2026. The two-day format reflects how the event has matured since 2019.
Day 1: Firestarter Masterclass (25 August)
The first day is an intimate, 30-seat workshop led by Elaine Jobson at the 12-Micron Harbour Room in Barangaroo. Jobson is a former CEO of Jetts Fitness who led the brand’s management buyout, returning it to private ownership. With more than 30 years across the fitness industry in Australia, Africa, Asia and Europe, she is one of the sector’s most experienced culture and leadership strategists. Her book, High Performance Through Happy People, forms the foundation of the Firestarter session.
The workshop runs from 9am to 4pm and is designed to give leaders practical frameworks for building high-performance cultures through behaviours, energy and environment. Each participant receives a signed copy of Jobson’s book, a workbook, catering throughout the day and dedicated time for networking.
With only 30 seats available, Firestarter is built for depth rather than scale.
Day 2: Fuel Summit (26 August)
The main summit day runs from 9am to 5:30pm and brings together a speaker lineup that includes Olympic gold medallist Natalie Cook, Nat Grosvenor, Alexis Dean, Danielle Monroy, Mairi Thompson, Georgia May, Adriana Kalidis, Amanda Chan-Borell and Deborah Goldberg. Eight sessions across the day cover keynotes, panels and plenaries.
Goldberg describes the 2026 program as built around future-focused leadership, with speakers selected because they are shaping where the industry is heading rather than simply discussing where it has been.
“Rather than talking about trends, our speakers are creating them,” she says. “We want delegates to leave with practical ideas they can apply immediately while also thinking differently about what the future of their business could look like.”
The theme of leadership investment runs through both days. As Goldberg puts it: “For fitness businesses, where people are the product, investing in leadership is one of the strongest competitive advantages you can have.”
What Women Gain from Fuel Summit
The case for attending an event like Fuel Summit is sometimes framed around the speakers or the content. Goldberg argues the more durable value lies elsewhere.
“People often arrive expecting to hear great speakers. They leave talking about the conversations they had over coffee, the introductions they made and the friendships they built.”
Past Fuel attendees have gone on to launch businesses they had been deferring for years, step into leadership roles they had not felt ready for, and redirect their careers in ways they had not planned when they registered.
“It’s the combination of learning, community and seeing people who make success feel achievable,” Goldberg says. “That’s what creates the shift.”
And the value extends well beyond the event itself. “The connections you make could save you years of trial and error,” Goldberg says. It’s a point that carries particular weight for women in fitness who have been building largely without the peer networks their male counterparts take for granted.
Structural change in an industry does not come from a single event or policy. It builds through a critical mass of women who have consistent access to each other, who normalise ambitious leadership through visibility, and who invest in the careers of the women coming up behind them. That is the longer game Fuel is playing.
Career Progression Tips for Women in the Australian Fitness Industry
While industry-wide change takes time, there are concrete actions women in fitness can take now to accelerate their own progression.
Build your network outside your immediate workplace. The connections that change careers often come from industry events, online communities and cross-business relationships rather than from within the business where you already spend most of your time.
Pursue mentorship with intention. Men tend to build mentoring relationships more organically through existing networks. For women, a more deliberate approach is often needed: identify who you want to learn from and ask directly.
Document your commercial contribution. Women are consistently less likely than men to quantify and advocate for their own results. Keeping clear records of membership growth, retention rates, revenue impact and team outcomes builds the evidence base for promotion and pay conversations.
Invest in leadership development before you feel ready. Waiting until you feel fully qualified is a strategy that disproportionately holds women back. Getting into a room with experienced leaders before you think you have earned it is often where the most significant shifts happen.
Support the events and communities building what you want to see. Initiatives like Fuel Summit grow in influence as the community behind them does. Attending, referring colleagues and sharing the work of women-focused industry organisations is part of how the ecosystem strengthens.
Photo by Candice Epthorp
Fuel Summit Sydney 2026: Dates, Tickets and Registration
Building a Stronger Future for Women in Fitness Businesses
Women in Australia are not lacking in capability, ambition or ideas. The shortage has been in access: to networks, to mentorship, to visible role models, and to rooms where the conversations that shift careers are taking place.
That is changing. Slowly at the policy level, and faster through communities and events that are deliberately creating the infrastructure the industry’s informal networks never provided for women.
Deborah Goldberg puts it plainly: “Fuel isn’t about how many locations you own or how many staff you employ. It’s about surrounding yourself with people who will challenge your thinking and encourage your growth.”
The leadership gap will not close without effort. For the women already in the industry, the most effective thing you can do is invest in your own progression while actively supporting the progression of others. Both matter, and neither requires waiting for someone else to go first.
For more on career development and industry news, explore the Fitness Business Management section of What’s New in Fitness.
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