Taking strides for girls and women in sports

THROUGH my work in Parliament I am asked to speak at a number of conferences throughout the year about Duty of Care in Sport. I wrote a report for the Government which was published in 2017 and some of the main recommendations pop up every couple of years. I recommended that sport needed an Ombudsman, and just as the discussion is happening about whether football needs a regulator, there are lots of people with strong opinions.

This conference was about women in sport, and there was a large range of discussion points including things like menstruation and peri menopause, which are only now starting to be considered. Sport is amazing but there are challenges which we all need to do more to address. Sometimes I feel a little like a broken record, but every conference I attend I meet new people who join the discussion and then try and work towards finding a solution.

I met someone who is working in what is considered a ‘new’ and therefore less regulated sport, but they are trying to build in lots of protections to ensure that the sport grows quickly and safely.

There was also an interesting presentation which fed in to a later meeting which was talking about how girls and women engage in sport and what sort of sports they want to do. Hockey is one sport that is being describe as going through a revolution because women and girls are now allowed to wear shorts instead of a skort. It wasn’t that long ago that many womens sports said that you have to wear a skirt, not even with the built in pants underneath. I remember a time in school sport where we had to wear gym knickers, a horrible skirt that if you got too close to a naked flame I am not sure you would survive, and a top with little holes in them.

No wonder so many women my age did not enjoy playing sport. Luckily through my time in sport then there were a lot more options on what you could wear, but the fact that we are still having conversations about what is ‘acceptable’ should be way in the past. Now that this change has happened we will see a lot of movement.

It is time to be more inclusive and this is a good step forward.

The fact that we are

still having conversations about what is ‘acceptable’ should be way in

the past