Female leadership celebrated ahead of the Uefa cup final
A celebration of female leadership took place last night ahead of the Women’s Champions League final.
During the event, dubbed Leadership, Teamwork, Empowerment: Inspiring Women in the Workplace, a number of inspirational speakers came together to share their stories.
The evening followed a string of successful business events to bring aspiring women leaders, primarily from the world of business, together.
The event was introduced by BBC Radio Wales presenter, Dot Davies, who thanked several women for attending the conference.
She described how it was great to see so many inspiring women in one room, who have so many interesting stories to tell.
“It’s exciting to have the Champions League final in Cardiff,” she said. “And it’s wonderful to see so many women here today to talk about leadership roles.
“It’s important to talk about ‘the struggle to juggle.’ The struggle to juggle work, the struggle to juggle sport and the struggle to juggle family life.
“There are lots of things that we have to balance every day.”
The sold-out event provided a great opportunity for people to hear from some of the most inspiring professionals from business, sport and public life.
Delegates were also able to hear from leaders who are passionate about developing and celebrating strong women leaders.
Professor Laura McAllister, Trustee of the FAW Trust, described how proud the FAW is to see Cardiff hosting the Champions League final.
But she went onto explain how it also wants to see many more girls playing football in the future.
“We hope to see up to 100,000 girls playing football in the next five to 10 years,” she said.
“If we keep doing what we do in sport we will get more girls playing football.
“Anyone in sport will tell you that they have learnt a lot more on the pitch than they have ever learnt in the classroom or in the lecture hall. Sport offers valuable life lessons and it’s very important.” Senior Marketing Manager at the Uefa, Adrian Wells, was also on hand to emphasise the importance of girls’ participation in the sport.
The organisation recently launched the #weplaystrong campaign to encourage more girls to take an interest in football.
He said focusing on re-branding the image of women’s football, and encouraging children to continue playing the sport into their adult years are some of the scheme’s main priorities.
“We hope this campaign will be a catalyst for developing the sport,” he said.
“We want to portray women’s football as something that’s cool, and that will appeal to young people.
“The problem we see is a lot of young girls play football as kids, but then they fail to see the sport through to adulthood.
“This may be because of a stereotyped image that’s associated with the sport, or simply, because they get attracted to other things.
“But we want to show that it’s something they can keep enjoying with their friends.”
To develop the campaign, the Uefa have put together a new advertising video, and are working on erasing the ‘tomboy’ image that’s commonly associated with women playing football.
The organisation is also working on developing a social media campaign targeted at younger people.