Shelley Kerr says more work needed to encourage girls into sport
This will be a big year for Scottish football, as the national side get ready to take their place at a major tournament for the first time since 1998.
Steve Clarke will rightly be proud - but he won’t be the first Scottishfootballcoachtotakea national squad to a major tournament this century.
That honour belongs to Shelley Kerr, who, in the giddy precovid days of 2019 took her squad of highly regarded players to France to compete in the Women’s World Cup.
That their campaign ended in a fashion crushingly familiar to followers of the national team is perhaps less importantthanawarm-upgameheld weeks before the tournament that will live long in the memory, and hopefully provide a lasting impact.
The3-2victoryoverjamaicais certainly what Shelley remembers most - the national stadium crowded with just over 18,500 spectators, including a huge number of families and young girls.
“That moment for me was something I never thought I would see and I’m thrilled to have been a part of that,” says Shelley.
“Getting more than 18,000 people at Hampden to watch thewomen’snationalteam-for me that was the biggest watershed moment, as historically our biggest crowd up to that had been against Switzerland, and that was under 5000. So yeah,itwasmassive,andihope it would have encouraged a lot of young girls out there.”
That Shelley was the woman to take charge of the game at Hampden provides a good indicator of just how far things haveshiftedintermsofsporting equality over her career.
When Shelley was born in 1969, women’s football was effectively banned in Scotland - shut down in 1921 at a professionallevelbythescottishfootballassociation(sfa),withany club interested in using their grounds for women's football denied permission.
Thatbanwasonlyoverturned
in 1970, but despite growing up at the tail-end of this almost aggressive policy of shutting down women’s football, it was all she wanted to do.
“My passion was always football, even though I grew up in an era when it wasn’t seen as a game for girls. I liked other sports, but football was always my thing. Back then there was a real stigma attached to girls in sport and we probably lost a lot of girls to that - if you wore a tracksuit back then you got the label of being a tomboy and it was quite off putting for a lot of girls.“i had a really supportive family. It was tough though - I was getting criticised for playing football, and I think it was the same for most sports - sport was deemed to be very much for boys and men.“i was able to train in the local community community sport was huge in
the area thankfully and I was allowed to play with the boys, as there were no girls teams.
"And for all the difficulties that raised, it helped me, playing boys football, and it’s probably been a big factor as I was developing that resilience and determination.”
It perhaps also goes a long way to explaining the mentality behind a Scottish central defender whose playing style has been described variously as “uncompromising” “tenacious”, “really British” or just “tough”.
That toughness on the pitch would be vital off-it as well, as she went on to manage the women’s teams at Kilmarnock, Hibernian, Spartans and then Arsenal, where she guided her team to a cup double.
She then hit the headlines by beingappointedtomanagestirling University in the Lowland Football League - the first time at that level in the United Kingdomawomanhadbeennamed manager of a men's club.
With so much experience there can be few people as able to highlight the issues involved in encouraging young girls to get active in all sports - and to call out the barriers still faced.
“It has come on so much, no question, since I was a kid, the barriers have been lifted to some degree - you only need to look at the stats in terms of the numbers of women playing,” she says.
“Wheniwasgrowingupthere were only a few hundred, now it’s over 15000. But there is still so much work to do. The girls
I managed at Arsenal were often from European or Scandinavian backgrounds and you learned that it was just much more accepted for girls to play football than it was in the UK.
"Thewomen’sgamewasmore integrated in the club environment,sonotasmaledominated, andgettingtothatplaceisabout changing perceptions.
“The lack of visibility is a big barrier. That is changing - once you see people in the public eye, you see more females get involved and that encourages more women. When I was growing up very rarely did you see women in a sporting perspectiveontv.thatischanging -it’sabouteducationandchanging attitude. ”
Getting girls involved in sport has perhaps never been more important. Over the last twenty years analysis has found that Scottish children drop-out of sportsandexerciseatanalarmingrate-anditisworseforgirls.
Shelley believes some of the societal stigma that would have stopped many of her peersfrompursuingsportsstill exist today, alongside a range of barriers that can affect all young children irrespective of gender.“for young girls, there is also the issue of perception. There is so much pressure on social media to look a certain way now, but body image has always been huge for females anditcanbeoffputtingforgirls to get involved in sport to constantlybeshowntheseeliteperformerswholookacertainway and to think if they don’t look like that they can’t take part. Sport should be for everyone.” And for Shelley, inspiring people to pursue sport needs to start as early as possible. “Itshouldalmoststartfrompreschoolyears,witheducationfor parents and grandparents and carers,” she says.
“We all need to be more aware of the benefits of what sport can bring, what it can do for us as a country. “Education is vital, but physical education has to be seen as just as important, as it has such an impact on the health and wellbeing of our country.”
Research reveals benefits of seeing sport through ‘a female lens’
The benefits of understanding sport activity through “the female lens” is becoming more widely understood in sport.
Jane Dennehy of the Gender Hub, in her research paper 'Gender Diversity in Sport', produced for the Observatory for Sport In Scotland (OSS) a year ago, reported: “Sport sits in a unique position in society and could contribute to addressing wider issues of safety and harassment which continue to target girls and women in public places.
“Gender lens investing is a deliberate approach to funding and investment which incorporates gender factors into analysis and decisionmaking. For example, work
Analysis By Gareth Edwards
ing with a council to ensure there is good lighting at public sports facilities could be critical to encouraging more girls and women to attend later classes or training sessions.
“Sport is unique in offering opportunities for physical activity, community building, employment and entertainment. In Scotland, social, cultural and economic inequalities exist which perpetuate divides between those who benefit from the opportunities sport offers and those who do not.
“Gender relations reveal inequalities which are widespread and experienced as limited access to playing space, coaching, competitions, funding, equal pay and prize-money, decision-making
roles and media coverage. The rhetoric and reality of gender equality present a mixed picture of participation and delivery of sport in Scotland.”
Dennehy concluded: “The impact of gender on sport is unquestionable, but how that impact is understood and explained is gaining more visibility in the Scottish context. Perpetuating gender stereotypes in sport are often dominated by narratives of masculinity which sustain barriers to participation at every level from the boardroom to the playing field.
"[Through the OSS] Scottish sport has an opportunity to draw on the fragmented networks of expertise in gender and sport to push for
research that asks different questions, new questions while continuing to collect data to enable comparisons.”
The OSS is currently analysing the number of women in leadership roles in sport in Scotland, working with Sportscotland to build on recent equality research. This seeks to identify trends in women being offered and taking on senior roles, and barriers, and understand how sports are embracing women’s talents to widen access to all kinds of activity.
This research is being conducted in partnership with Scottish Women in Sport (SWIS) and involves more than 60 sports governing bodies and organisations, including sport
and leisure trusts. It will report at the SWIS conference planned for September, but, while research suggests there remains a significant gulf between men and women in senior positions, it points to a trend of more women becoming leaders across sport at all levels.
Importantly, in her 2020 research paper for the OSS, Professor Tess Kay of the University of Stirling identified that while 'girls and women' is recognised as a sub-group requiring priority support to access sport activity, deprivation is not, and so girls and women experiencing poverty and inequality are likely to find even more barriers to sport activity lying in their path.