A survey of 2,000 adults from across the United Kingdom has found that 53 per cent believe there is not enough coverage of women’s sport, while 60 per cent believe sports coverage should combine both men’s and women’s sport.

The research also found that 48 per cent of adults saw female athletes as role models, and believed they should use their status to speak out about social issues and call for change.

This finding comes six months after UK Sport launched its Powered by Purpose programme, which was designed to offer athletes the chance to use the power of sport and their platform to inspire positive change.

"The power and reach of high-performance women’s sport provides a vital and powerful platform to open up conversations about wider societal issues and contribute to positive change," said Dame Katherine Grainger, the chair of UK Sport.

"It is fantastic to see the British public behind our inspiring athletes who want to make an impact and inspire change both on and off the field of play.

"Athletes should feel able to stand up and champion issues and causes that they care passionately about, confident that the British public and UK Sport - as well as other organisations across sport - will support them.

"We are living in exciting times and it’s encouraging to see female athletes smashing so many of the barriers that have previously denied them the recognition they have deserved.

"Our sportswomen are incredible, inspirational athletes, just like their male counterparts.

"The suggestion of women’s sport being somehow less impressive or less newsworthy must end, and that means equal coverage in the media as a prerequisite instead of female athletes being expected to show gratitude for piecemeal changes or glacial progress."

One event widely seen as leading to an increased demand for coverage of women’s sport was the UEFA EURO 2022 football tournament, hosted and won by England.

The final attracted a tournament record attendance of 87,192 and a month after the climax of the event the number of new participants in girls and women’s football was in the tens of thousands.

The survey has been released to coincide with International Women’s Day, a global holiday marked to highlight and promote the women’s rights movement.