The Straps Gap Report

This report outlines the results of the discussions at the Womens & Non-Binary Straps Symposium 2024. Group discussions were held to address two key questions: Firstly, what are the current gender-related issues in circus and secondly, what actions could be taken to tackle these issues. Gender-related struggles were identified across almost every subsection of circus, from recreational to professional and individual actions to systemic problematic beliefs.  The actions and solutions proposed by participants were equally diverse and ranged from addressing gaps in academic research to creation of spotting demonstration videos and alternative straps technique dictionaries. The discussions were transcribed and analysed thematically, with the full results shown in Table 1 at the end of the report and in an interactive diagram here.