An increase in female participation on coaching courses is a sign of "massive progress", according to Sport Ireland's Director of Strategic NGB (National Governing Bodies) Programmes.
The 2025 WIS Week kicked off on Monday and will run all the way to this Sunday, featuring a host of webinars, as well as highlighting initiatives and stakeholders from across the country.
It also supports Sport Ireland's Policy on Women in Sport, including the crucial pillar of trying to keep girls and women involved in sport.
But Stapleton also spotlighted signs of increasing female involvement in coach education.
"At an intro level, we're seeing a high level of male and female coaches. It's not far off equal," said Stapleton whose role sees her serve as the Women in Sport Lead with Sport Ireland.
"As a base across the whole population and across our coaching database, it's made up of about 36% females.
"Unfortunately, as we go through the pathway that drops off. So when you get to high performance level, you're talking about 13%.
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"Now, we've a lot of initiatives in there. We do have a women in high performance coaching programme which we're running for those in that high performance space to give them some support and just help them progress and stay within that high performance space.
"And then a lot of funding we give out. Last year we got about €4 million from Government in terms of women in sport grant funding.
"We gave about €3 million of that out to national governing bodies and local sports partnerships and then they run a lot of the coaching networking days, coaching programmes etc, so we do have a bit of a way to go.
"But what I will say is that since the policy game in, there has been about a 10% increase in the number of women who are going on coaching courses and being certified so that's massive progress.
"So they are coming into the pathway but now we have to retain them and support them as they go through."
Stapleton also discussed webinars that will take place on Wednesday focused on teenage girls, including 'HER Moves' which has also seen many schools sign up.
"We kind of said it was an opportunity to bring the girls together in the schools, let them watch it together and that's going to be focusing on body image, menstrual cycle, sports bras - like how do you know if you've got the right sports bra.
"We're looking at about 80% of females are wearing the wrong sports bra and it's so important, so that's going to be a really nice webinar and then it's going to be repeated again in the evening."
