Nice soap in the lavatory will get girls into sport, says FA chief
NICE-SMELLING soap should be put in changing rooms to encourage girls to play sport, the head of women’s football at the FA has said.
Baroness Campbell said that girls as young as eight are now dropping out of sports lessons because they fear exercise is not feminine.
“We used to believe that most girls stayed in sport until about age 14 or 15 and then dropped out because they didn’t want to look muscley,” said Lady Campbell, the former chairman of UK Sport who oversaw Team GB’S success at the London and Beijing Olympics.
“Now I am afraid it has got much younger. I think we are seeing earlier maturation, so we are realising girls are dropping out of activities at age eight and nine.”
Lady Campbell, who began her career as a PE teacher in Manchester, told The Daily Telegraph: “We’ve got a lot to think through if we want to keep girls involved: the kit they wear, what showers they use. Even simple things like is there a decent smelling soap in the toilets? Boys don’t give a toss about any of that, but girls do.”
Last August the Government set out its childhood obesity plan, which found that the percentage of girls aged eight to 10 who exercise the recommended 60 minutes per day fell from 22 per cent in 2008 to 16 per cent in 2012.
Public Health England commissioned Loughborough University and the Youth Sport Trust – a charity which Lady Campbell helped to set up and now leads – to research ways to increase physical activity in girls.
This September the Youth Sport Trust will roll out its new strategy for promoting PE at primary schools with a focus on a greater range of sports and the emphasis on “fun and enjoyment” rather than competition.
Lady Campbell said that sports lessons must not be confined to netball and hockey, but should include more “feminine” options such as dance, trampolining and zumba.
She added that another major challenge with girls was emotional illness and self-harm. “We’ve got obesity and we’ve got this growing emotional stuff and my view is that physical activity is a counterbalance for both physical fitness and emotional wellness,” she said.