Game On: The Unstoppable Rise of Women's Sport (2023) Movie Script
[Sue] Gender inequality
is a global issue which affects women
throughout their lives.
And sport can be a powerful tool
to drive positive change in this area.
Throughout history,
women have been denied the opportunity
to fully enjoy sport like men.
And having been held back
for so long, it has been hard
for women's sport to grow.
[motivational music]
[inaudible boxing commentator]
[commentator]
And Chloe Kelly scores for England!
[commentator] Harrison to Scarratt,
what a start for the Red Roses!
[Sue] But sport has a unique capacity
to challenge culture and women's sport
and the profile of female athletes,
can have a huge impact
on how women are viewed in society.
[slow piano music]
[soft water sounds]
[Sue]
I've spent my working life wondering
if we'll ever achieve
gender equality in sport.
["On/Off" by Fjodor playing]
[laughter]
[Sue] Gender inequality
is a huge global issue.
And equality in sport is
a powerful tool that could help us
change things across society.
[motivational epic music playing]
I'm Sue Anstiss
and I've dedicated much of my career
to fighting for equality
in women's sport.
[indistinct chatter]
[Sue] For over 100 years,
women's sports has been seen
as the poor relation to men's.
Receiving little funding,
resources or media coverage.
[Sue] If we look back to the beginning
of the modern Olympic Games,
Pierre de Coubertin, he felt
it was impractical, uninteresting,
unaesthetic, and incorrect for women
to take part in any sports.
So right from the start there,
no woman have taken part
in the Olympic Games.
It won't be until 2024
that we'll finally see equality in
terms of women competing
in the same number of events.
So I do feel quite depressed sometimes
with where we are.
But we've moved on massively,
and we've moved on massively
even in the last five years.
So I've seen a shift, I've worked in
women's sport for 30 years
and I really have seen a shift.
But I've seen the biggest fight
in the last two, three years or so?
Women's sport is really
taking off, and the time is now.
So I'm really kind of
excited for where you are
at the beginnings of your careers.
[emotional music]
[Sue] I went to Loughborough University
and studied sports.
I had an amazing experience there,
but didn't really clock the gender
inequality that was going on at the time.
[background laughter]
Like many in my generation,
it was just something that I accepted.
Not really thinking
the situation could be changed.
During the pandemic,
I had time to finally research
and write a book about women's sport.
With women's sport being on
the cusp of momentous change,
and finally starting to gain
mainstream attention,
there seemed to be no better way to tell
the story of these changes
and why it matters more
broadly for all women.
I am lucky to know and work with
so many incredible women in sport,
who have opened my eyes
to a subject I thought I knew so well.
-Is that one running?
-[Sue coughs]
Take two.
It's very exciting to do that.
-Breathe.
-[laughing]
Needs one of those, just in case.
Habit.
My name is Denise Lewis
I'm a former Olympic Champion
in the women's heptathlon.
My name's Laura Woods.
I presented Breakfast Show and Talk Sport,
I work in football as well
and then I do boxing too.
My name is Kelly Smith, I used to play
football for Arsenal in England.
I'm Tanni Grey-Thompson,
I'm a paralympian.
I used to do wheelchair racing,
and I'm now a parliamentarian.
I'm Pamela Cookey,
former England Netball Captain.
My name is Clare Balding.
I've been a broadcaster in sports
for 30 years, I would guess?
And an author of seven books.
-It's quite nice to be interviewed by you.
-Aw.
It's quite cool.
I'm very privileged to be taking to you.
I'm privileged,
you're the one with the MBE.
I've barely got any GCSEs.
[both laugh]
[Tanni] Nelson Mandela said that sport
has the power to change the world.
But the challenges for girls,
haven't really changed
as long as I've been involved.
In terms of how we treat sporty girls,
we still value sporty boys
more than sporty girls.
Girls have less opportunities to compete.
There's less opportunities for
media coverage and for sponsorship.
Although I think we are at a time
when there are lots of positives,
there's still a lot of challenges
for true equality.
We are not where
I think I'd hoped we'd be
by this point in my life.
[Sue] During research for my book,
I came across the work of Dr. Ali Bowes.
An academic who has extensively
researched the world of women's sport.
I was keen to meet her in person
as she truly understands
and is able to articulate
the challenges that women's sport faces.
Initially, I probably wasn't that aware of
a gender imbalance in sport.
So I loved doing sport at school,
and just took sport, really,
for what it was at that time.
It was during my time at university where
we started to look at
social issues in sport,
and in my own involvement in sport
at university that I started to notice
women's sport was at such a kind of
disadvantage to men's sport.
Which then prompted me
to do research in it,
so did my PhD at
Loughborough University.
And that very much centered on
League Women's Sport and inequality
and starting to investigate
some of those issues, I guess.
[Sue] In terms of that
bigger picture then, can you give us
a little of the history as to how we got
to find that gender imbalance?
Sport, in its very first instance,
was something that was really
dominated by men.
If we are going back
to the 19th century,
we've got industrialization,
and we've got men working in factories
and sport became a way
for factory earners to make sure
that the men were fit and healthy,
so they had factory teams.
Sport has always been
kind of developed for men.
There's a hangover effect to this day
so people that have dominated sport,
that are in charge of sport,
that made the rules of sport,
have always been men,
and that's been really hard to
kind of break down and challenge, I think.
As I researched my book,
I discovered there were two main reasons
that people have struggled with
the concept of women playing sport.
The first, was the female frailty myth.
I think the female frailty myth
has a really big piece of the puzzle
of understanding
gender imbalance of sport.
We had these pockets of ideas
from doctors, from scientists of that era,
that fundamentally rendered it impossible
for women to take part in sport.
[Sue] We were these vessels
that needed to have children,
it was all about having children,
that was our purpose on this earth.
Lots of these ideas around
issues with women's body
that centered on reproductive ability...
There was genuine belief
that if we ran and we jumped,
our uteruses would fall out.
All these concerns that women
were gonna pass out or collapse
or bleed, or whatever that might be...
It was okay for women to work
in the fields and the factories,
and all that hard work.
but it wasn't okay for them to play sport.
[Clare] So women's football is
starting to grow through the late 1800s
and into the early 1900s.
And it's really building up,
particularly leading up to and during
the First World War and directly after.
Where all the munition's factories
had women's football teams
because the men had all gone off to war.
The women are treated
completely differently
because suddenly they are given
equal value, because they are necessary.
And Dick, Kerr Ladies is the example,
the best of the women's teams
that grew out of that era.
[Sue] And the Dick, Kerr Ladies played
in front of these massive, massive crowds.
They had 53,000 people
who came to watch them play
at Goodison Park.
And there were 14,000 people
waiting outside who couldn't get in.
I know that many people
don't realize how women's football
was banned in England for 50 years.
I was surprised at just
how much interest there was in this
when I mentioned it in a podcast.
When something's banned and
your grandmother wasn't allowed to play
and your mother
wasn't rewarded for playing,
it takes a while for that
to work on through
where the best athletes
are choosing football.
If you're not allowed
to play at Wembley at all,
or any stadium, and most clubs
don't have a women's team,
why would you choose football?
[Sue] Clearly social media
has had a huge role to play
in spreading the word
about women's sport.
But it's actually mainstream media,
so the print media and broadcast media,
where we are really
gonna reach a huge audience
and begin to bring people over
to see how amazing women's sport can be.
It is always fantastic
to have the opportunity
to talk on the media about women's sport.
It's a passion for me,
but to come and talk to someone like
Stacey on her show means so much to me.
Because I know all that
she's done for women's sport,
and all that she's
still doing now to drive change.
Action!
[uplifting music playing]
-Hi. Too aggressive?
-[laughter from crew]
My name's Stacey Copeland and
I've represented my country in two sports.
Football and boxing.
Started boxings a child, so at age 6, 7.
My influences were fairly obvious.
My dad was a boxer,
my grandad ran our boxing gym.
To be honest, I wasn't aware
that I was a young woman,
I was just a kid
in the boxing gym with all my mates.
And I did everything that
all my little lad mates did.
I lived and breathed the sport, really,
I loved it and everything about it
from the first time going to the gym.
The sound of the skipping ropes,
the gloves hitting the bag,
the smell, which is horrible.
[laughing]
But I just loved it and
I got to the age of 11,
when you can usually
start using skill bouts,
and that's when my grandad said, you know,
"You can't box".
Sport is undoubtedly,
I know I'm biased, we both are,
but definitely one of the
most powerful things on the planet.
How does that manifest in society
in the way we perceive men and women,
masculinity and femininity?
[Sue] Because sport is something
that is so much a part of our culture,
not just in Britain but across the world.
It is something that impacts us
in so many ways.
Sport, you know, reflects and magnifies
what's happening in society
but I think also enables us to have
some of those conversations
we wouldn't otherwise have within society.
[Stacey] When I found out
that it was illegal
for girls and women to compete,
I remember feeling mostly confused.
The thought that that thing
I loved could be illegal was just bizarre.
It wasn't really until then that I became
acutely aware that being a girl
was gonna be a major problem.
The second issue I found was the role
femininity plays in women's sport.
In terms of gender stereotypes,
I don't think there is any reason why
male or female genitalia or body parts
makes you better or worse
at any sport in the world.
It's the masculine and feminine attributes
that tend to cause a problem.
When you get women
doing sports as I did, like boxing,
that challenge society's definition
of what's feminine...
I think there's a number of things which
people find unsettling about women boxing.
For the majority, it's about femininity.
It challenges femininity in such
an obvious, brutal, visceral way.
I think people really struggle with it.
For many female athletes,
it's been said there's a balance in that
between being seen as a feminine woman
and being seen as a legitimate athlete.
Because it doesn't make sense
to be able to be both.
Lots of researchers have kind of talked
about this disconnect, really,
and framed it as
the female athlete paradox.
And very much is
around how female athletes
balance those competing demands
of society expecting them to be
a certain type of woman.
and society expecting
sport to look a certain way.
[Laura] The perception of women
is that we don't fight,
and that we shouldn't be involved
in combat sports
because it's not ladylike
and it's not feminine.
But they are amazing athletes,
and if you can appreciate that,
that will start to change
people's perception of things.
[motivational music]
We're getting ready for the World Cup,
we really wanna go out there
and do our best at trying to win it.
We're going to New Zealand,
the Reigning Champs,
I don't think you'll see
anyone holding back.
[motivational electronic music]
[Sue] I think because it is obviously
the selection for the World Cup,
you just can feel the energy.
[women shouting]
I wanted to include rugby
in the documentary.
I think for me, of all the team sports,
women's team sports that are there,
it is probably the one
that most challenges
what society feels
is traditionally feminine.
The power and strength and you know,
the aggression around rugby.
So for me, it almost is the sport that
can probably have
the most impact in that space too.
And I'm a massive
rugby fan as well, so that helps.
I started playing when I was 6 years old.
My mom messaged the local rugby club
and said, "Hey, can we bring down
my two children?" And he went, "Yeah,
of course, we always need more boys."
And mom was like,
"No, they're two girls",
and he was like, "oh",
and really taken back by it.
Luckily my sister was in the same
age group, we were the only two girls
in the mini section, and that was
the story growing up.
There were never many other girls,
it was always a novelty.
"Look, there's a team!
Oh, they've got girls on their team."
[Captain] How we start is so important
and that's [unintelligible]
[Poppy] When I go back to clubs and speak
about it, that's not an issue anymore,
there's so many there,
these clubs are thriving.
There's three teams, there's under 13's,
under 15's, under 18's,
and there's just so many more playing.
And do you think attitudes are changing
in society towards women's rugby as well?
I do, yeah, 100 percent do,
just not very quickly.
We still get, like 10 years ago,
if you interviewed the girls,
and still get the comments that we do
right now, it's exactly the same.
-[Sue] On social media?
-[Poppy] Yeah, it's just boring, so boring
like, "Oh, didn't know women played".
Yeah, okay, cool, like,
where have you been living, sort of thing?
Everything that goes with just
being a woman that plays rugby.
Sometimes it can get a bit draining,
and just constantly get you down.
You know, the stigmas, the nasty
perception we have of women
just trying to play sports
and enjoy themselves.
Why do you think that-- I spend my life
thinking why that is, why do you think,
where do you think that stems from, that
negativity around women playing sports?
[Poppy] I do think it is learnt,
the sayings, the expressions,
"Oh, you play rugby,
you must be a lesbian",
"Oh, you play rugby, that's really manly".
People don't challenge it, people just
stick with the majority, they laugh along.
You're essentially bullying someone,
you're degrading them
to achieve what at the end of the day?
[all] Red Roses!
[Sue] 1950s, so the
All American Girls baseball leagues,
So again, Second World War,
men have gone off to war.
Wrigley, the chewing gum magnet,
didn't want to lose out
on all that audience and the sponsors
he'd got for baseball,
so he created a female league.
They were almost the first professional
female athletes of their time.
Women came from
all over the country to trial
but they were judged on how they looked.
Helena Rubinstein came in
and would give them make up lessons,
they had to have their hair a certain way,
they weren't allowed to wear
shorts or trousers at any point.
They had to play in skirts!
So they're sliding into the bases
but they had to do it in skirts.
They only felt people would be
attracted to women playing sport
if it was seen as really feminine.
Our understanding of what we think
masculine and feminine means,
is so limited and so damaging
to men and to women.
We just need a broader mind about this.
Women can be strong
and ambitious and competitive.
Men can be kind
and compassionate and vulnerable.
All of these things are allowable,
and to not let them be, is, I think,
the cause of a lot of issues.
I think a challenge for women sport
going forward, is that--
it's still a lot based on how you look.
You know the way you look
has played a big part
in your sponsorship opportunities
and your marketing opportunities.
The question is, will that ever change?
[Tanni] You know, women
get judged differently,
you're meant to not
just be a brilliant sportsperson,
but you're meant to look
beautiful and not sweaty
and have your hair
and makeup done as well.
Where men don't get judged
in the same way,
and I think that's one of the things
that sometimes makes it really hard
for girls to come in because they still
are judged in a different way.
[Denise] Femininity, that whole
conversation around femininity and sport,
I think it's still an issue.
If you don't feel that
your beauty is being valued
when you've got fantastic muscles
and you're strong,
it affects your decision making.
Competitive girls are talked
about in a different way,
as if it's kind of
not as good, or less than
or you're a bit of an oddity because
you want to be competitive in sports.
It's hard to untie those ideas
of women being frail,
us expecting women to be feminine,
and then accepting women
as kind of strong, aggressive sportswomen.
It's really hard to pull
those ideas apart.
Women that are extremely strong,
there is still a bit of a stereotype
for the girls that don't have that sort of
svelte like body shape.
And that, we still need to work on,
because we don't see it,
we don't see those
type of women on front covers,
we don't see them being championed
as fantastically strong, beautiful women
that exude power.
We still have a problem with that.
[Sue] It's really important
that women can be all things
and that women don't have to fit
that mold of what is feminine and tiny
and all the stuff that social media
and the media might tell you.
Women can be all kinds of things.
And actually sport, when we see
and celebrate these amazing women in sport
what does that tell us about else
we can be in our lives?
It really excites me to see more
female athletes being shown,
because usually it was just the big
and strong male athletes that you'd see
and everyone would think
that they're the best of the best.
It's just nice to see women doing sport
where usually
they aren't shown off as much.
Never showed off as much as the men,
where you always see
what the men are doing,
and you always know what they're doing.
But now,
you see more of how the women
are performing and how well they're doing.
Having more coverage of it,
and making it easier to watch,
so we can just go downstairs
and find the Netball to watch,
it makes me really happy,
because it used to be
you had to find it online
and then put it on the TV somehow,
but now it's really easy to watch
and it's exciting
to have more coverage
of women's sport.
So more people are watching it,
and more people are understanding
why we enjoy it so much.
[fantastical music]
[Ali] The origin of Netball actually
gives a really good indication
as to the kind of history
of men and women's sports.
Netball was derived from basketball
but pulled in all those ideas about
the acceptability of women's bodies.
We had this sport of basketball,
competitive, in your face contact,
so netball, we removed the contact.
Put women in little zones
so that they couldn't move.
All these rules to make the sport
much less vigorous.
And therefore acceptable
for women to take part in.
I think the history of netball
then is really interesting
in starting to understand
why women do certain sports
and why we have certain expectations.
[crowd cheering]
[Pamela] Netball has changed
massively throughout my career.
Back then, it was just
what you did in school
and people have that preconception
of school girl netball, you know,
the slow stop, start, pivot,
that kind of thing.
But so different to what we see now on TV,
and I think we can now see
these amazing athletes on court
doing such wonderful things.
I think that's the massive change
that I've seen in netball.
It's not just a sport in school,
it's a sport that you can take
throughout your life.
[Clare] Hello! You all right?
-[Sue] Yeah!
-[Clare] Good, good.
[Clare] Good to see you too, mate.
-[Woman] Hello!
-[Clare] Hello, hello!
How are you?
[Clare] I mean our connection through
netball and team sport has been years.
-[Sue] Yeah, yeah.
-[Clare] Years and years, hasn't it?
Something that connected us
in the beginning keeps us together now.
That's pretty scary isn't it?
How many years, 40 years on.
Goal keeper, goal defence,
we played together, didn't we?
All those years ago.
-[Clare] And played against each other...
-[Sue] Yeah.
...so a little bit of together
and then a little bit of competition.
[Sue] Yeah, you were always
quite competitive, were you?
-[Clare] That lives on!
-No, that hasn't changed!
[Clare] And then some high knees,
hop them right up.
[Clare] Over the years, we've watched
our girls come through and play netball,
and I know that Daisy's coach for the club
but she's also done the coaching
and she's here tonight coaching as well.
Hopefully, we've giving them something
for life in the way that we have had.
[Clare] I think it will always be
with them.
I think they've all played at uni and post
school and things like that.
There will always be a sport wherever
they go they can get involved with,
having played netball over the years.
-Yay, go us!
-Yeah!
So, blue shoe that way,
yellow shoe that way.
[whistle blow]
[shouting and laughter]
[Sue] It's easy to forget the importance
of sport for women throughout their lives.
[Player] Can I get a high five?
I've personally enjoyed
the positive impact
of walking netball sessions for women.
It's more than just getting out
and having fun with friends each week,
although that is important.
Foul play going on over here!
It's all the mental and physical
health benefits women get
from being physically active.
This can have a huge impact on
a woman's health as she ages.
[Clare] One nill for blue!
I'm so pleased that my daughters
still love sport,
but sadly that's not the case
for many girls and young women.
Research in 2022 shows that
more than a million British teenage girls
who once considered themselves as sporty,
disengage from sport
after primary school.
Couple of girls from our team,
they don't wanna play anymore.
A lot of them didn't feel comfortable
wearing the short dress when playing.
It doesn't really help you play
because it would be easier
if you played in trousers or shorts.
It's easier to run in,
it's easier to do jumps.
With the dresses,
you're always pulling it down
to make sure everything is covered
or you're self conscious
about wearing a dress.
Women wearing dresses to play sport,
it makes absolutely no sense
to put women in dresses and say, okay--
The logic there is because it helps
performance, because it obviously doesn't.
Some women want to wear dresses
and they're very comfortable like that,
as the outfit that you wear
to play sport, and that's fine I guess,
but I think to have, like,
uniform restrictions
or to make it so that women
have to wear dresses,
that's really problematic.
I think especially if someone might
feel a different way about their body
and they don't want to wear
a small tight dress,
then I feel angry for them
if they don't wanna wear it.
Because it's just harder to, I don't know,
feel confident in yourself while
you're playing if you're wearing
something that's tiny and not something
you usually wear anywhere else.
I would love to know who sits
on the various committees
that say, you know, girls have
to wear absolute bare minimum for clothing
and boys can be covered up.
[Sue] This is the Norwegian
beach handball team.
This is last year, this is 2021.
It's practical for the guys
to wear baggy shorts and t-shirts
but for the girls to be in tiny bikinis?
The girls said they wanted to play
in shorts, not in these tiny bikinis,
they actually had a limit of how tiny
it had to be at the side.
They didn't want to play in that,
so they played in shorts
and they were fined 1,500 euros
by the International Federation
because they broke the law
and wore shorts rather than these bikinis.
You can kind of see that impact
from being overly feminine
that then becomes to
objectifying women too.
[upbeat music]
[crowd cheering]
[Clare] Good evening and welcome to
the BT Sport Action Woman Awards!
It was back in 2013, this epic
celebration of women in sport began.
The appetite for women's sport
has never been greater.
She may be the youngest of our contenders,
but my goodness she is mighty.
It's diving sensation
Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix.
[crowd applauding]
I think sports and this year especially
have shown that...
...women are strong.
and nothing can stop you
from doing what you want to do.
Your age doesn't stop you,
gender doesn't stop you,
sexuality doesn't stop you.
And what's so great about
all of the women in this room,
all of the athletes in this room,
is we don't let what society's saying--
it doesn't limit us,
and won't limit us in the future.
[crowd cheering and applauding]
We need to move with the times.
Sportswomen are asking for change,
they want to still do their sport
but not have to be revealing
their bodies in ways
that don't make them feel comfortable.
I think sport, it definitely mirrors
and magnifies what we see in society
so I think it can playback what we see
and that may be around gender inequality,
around racism and other issues.
But it also has the opportunity to have
some of those conversations
to be a lens and to drive change.
And then we talk about it,
we see it in sport, and then perhaps
we go and talk about it elsewhere.
So people get really uncomfortable
talking about periods,
but it's something that happens to half
of the population, half the world,
and yet we still feel
uncomfortable talking about it.
But if we can have
that conversation around.
"Is it appropriate for women
to be playing in white shorts?"
Can we have that conversation
in sport, and then come back
and have that conversation in society?
I've read a third of girls say
their periods stopped them
from getting active in schools this year.
That's an increase of 10%
from previous years
according to the EEAST board trust.
Dr. Emma Ross was the head of physiology
at The English Institute of Sport
and led research into
the challenges faced by elite sportswomen.
She now shares those learnings more widely
to help all women and girls
through her company The Well HQ.
-[Emma] Hello!
-[Sue] Hello! How are you?
[Sue] Very nice to see you!
[Emma] When I first started
going around to elite sports and saying,
"I really want to bring up periods,
menstrual cycles,
as a really important
topic of conversation",
one of the first things that the athletes
would say is, "Emma we have spent so long
pretending there isn't anything
female about us,
because we want equality here in sport,
we want the same coaching as men,
we want the same facilities,
we want the same media coverage,
we want the same pay
so to do that, we've had to sort of
shut off what is female about us."
And they were worried that it
would be seen as fragile,
if there's lots of males
it could be embarrassing,
and so we have had to break down
some of that and actually say,
"No, this is your right, to belong
in sport and have sport designed for you."
We're all adults and we're all women
who experience the same things,
and this can be absolutely carnage.
It's carnage for me in my workplace,
and I don't have to physically perform
in front of people, and reach for a ball
that's gonna make me
straddle meters and meters.
Girls and women don't tend to want to wear
white when they're on their period.
Mostly because of the fear of leaking,
not many girls will actually leak
through their period products,
but the fear that it might happen
particularly if you're on a sports field
in front of your family and friends.
For me it's about removing
these things that cause anxiety.
When you're trying to be an athlete
and you're trying to perform at your best
whether you're trying to crack
a PB at parkrun
or you're The Lionesses at Wembley,
you want the headspace
to be able to focus on your sport.
You don't want to be thinking,
"Am I leaking? Am I leaking?"
And so it just seems common sense to me
that you wouldn't put
girls and women in white kit.
I mean, tradition is one thing,
and there's a lot of conversation
in around Wimbledon whether
about "Why do we still wear
whites to play?"
Wimbledon's decision
to adjust its "all whites" rule
and allow women to wear
colored undershorts from 2023
is a step in the right direction.
We can't be locked on tradition
in a time and a world
where everything is changing.
We just got to be listening and be open.
It's not about one answer being right
and one answer being wrong
but it's about having open conversations
with the people who are wearing this kit
and saying, "Does it work for you?"
So we're seeing those conversations
and things that maybe
we're a little uncomfortable
to have a conversation about.
But sport, having it in the lens of sport
enables us to have those conversations
and for me, that can be
really, really powerful.
[Sue] The gender pay gap is another
global concern
where women's sport
has the potential to highlight the issue,
start conversations
and drive important change.
The U.S Women's National Soccer fought a very public battle for equal pay.
Finally, in 2022 the Federation agreed
to a landmark equal pay agreement.
There's these tens of millions of dollars
in back pay owed to female players
and means equal pay
for male and female soccer players
at all tournaments
including the World Cup.
It was a pleasure
to talk to Becca Roux
who played a crucial role
in the equal pay settlement
for The U.S National Women's Soccer Team.
[Becca] I mean, even in 2017
when I first started negotiating,
equal pay was not on the table.
It just was not an option.
It was not something that
was fathomable to the men
that we were negotiating with
on the other side.
They did not think we deserved it.
In the case of the American Women,
the U.S Soccer has overachieved for decades.
There should never have been
any argument or fight.
But you kind of
have to make it law really,
for them, there's no argument,
someone else
has has done the fight for you.
There's been lots of occasions
where I've thought, "This is it.
This is the moment. Everything
is gonna be different from now."
[chuckles] And then it isn't.
It just all goes back
to so called normal.
I would hope that big moments like
the U.S Women's getting equal pay will impact things.
But I know better
than to assume it will be inevitable.
[soft emotional music]
I loved football as well,
and I was a very competitive kid.
So I went into football,
got my first ever England call up
which, at that point, as a youngster,
when you get that first call up,
you don't know if that's
ever gonna happen again.
So at that point,
it is the best thing ever in your life.
And you used to get a letter then,
with the three lions on,
and it was just
the most exciting thing ever.
And I worked in a factory at the time,
I was 16 and I went to my boss.
And I said, "I need a week off".
And I gave him this letter
and I just stood there.
He said, "You want me to give you
a week off to play
for a woman's football team?"
I said, "Yeah", and he made
all these jokes and comments
and I said, "Look, it really means
a lot to me, can I just take it unpaid?"
to which he agreed,
and I walked out of the office
feeling ashamed to begin,
silly for thinking it was a big deal.
Not to play for England's football team,
but the England Women's football team.
And I learned there was a big difference.
[Denise] Despite all of the progress
we've made in women's sport,
at a league level,
there are still too many barriers
that limit young girls
actually choosing a life in sport,
and being comfortable
wanting to pursue that
and taking it into their later life.
[Clare] It would be wrong
for any of us to think that this is solved
because it's not.
How we go about
making change is really important
and it has to change
at grassroots level.
Research shows the main reason
women and girls don't take part in sport
is fear of judgment.
Sport England's This Girl Can campaign
took these findings
and turned them on their head.
Reshaping the way women
think about exercise.
Celebrating and normalizing
women being sweaty and having fun.
Access to sport and physical activity
is important for all women
throughout the entirety of their lives.
This isn't just about elite sport.
We need more women to be involved
in the highest levels
of management in sport.
As we know this helps
ensure decisions about access,
opportunity, and funding
catered to the needs of everyone.
Including women and girls.
[Tanni] At its worse,
there are a lot of senior men
making big decisions about women's sport
without actually talking to women.
It's so important
to have women in these roles
because I think it changes
the conversation.
We still have to go,
"Okay, what about women and girls?"
But that is getting less,
and I can't wait for the day
when it's just accepted as
"we look after everybody"
rather than having to kind of go
"what about the people we've forgotten?"
-Which side do you want me on?
-Come and grab a chair.
-Don't know, you happy there?
-Yeah.
[Sue] Now this will be the 100th episode,
and this is also the first time
I've ever come back to return
and talk to a guest for a second time.
And what a guest, Sally Munday,
CEO of U.K Sport.
We've obviously seen enormous progress
for Women's Sport in the past decade,
but there is still much more to do.
What do you feel are
the real priority areas
for accelerating
that change moving forward?
We gotta stop saying "Thank you"
to people for being interested
in women's sport.
We've got to stop saying "Thank you"
to the media
and the broadcasters for showing it.
"Oh, thank you for the crumbs,
thank you for giving us
a little bit of airtime".
Or "Thank you for giving us
a little bit of sponsorship".
These are incredible athletes
who are playing incredible sport.
And who can't help
but get wrapped up in it all.
And I think that we,
and I know I have a responsibility
in the job that I have,
to just stop apologizing,
stop taking "Thank you"
for the tidbits that we get.
And I genuinely believe that
we are on the cusp with women's sport.
[applause]
I think there still needs
to be more work done
on coverage of women's sport.
Seems to be a lot of
lazy journalism out there.
That media plays a big part
in the print media
where it is so focused on men.
The print media has been controlled
by a certain type of white male
for probably 200 years.
And the sports that they think matter,
men's football,
men's rugby union, men's cricket,
are promoted and constantly written about.
Women's sport
really struggles to get that profile.
Traditionally, most newspapers
have overlooked women's sport,
and we're yet to see
much change in that area.
The situation is really improving
in broadcast though,
with women's sport receiving
a lot more coverage in recent years.
And the quality
of that coverage is improving too.
I don't know why there's an animosity
to perhaps feeling
slightly threatened by it.
I know that some people feel it's being
shoved down their throat.
But I think there is
media attention for a reason,
it is a product that actually can sell.
It's an environment now where broadcasters
see it can bring a big audience.
It's proven it can bring a big audience.
Things look better with more cameras,
with better quality cameras,
with really good studios.
[fast upbeat music]
[applause]
Welcome back to
The BT Sport Action Woman Awards 2022!
What a year it's been for our teams.
Invest properly in women's sport
and thou shalt receive.
[Sue] In recent years,
the England Red Roses
have been one of the leading examples
of increased investments in women's teams
resulting in on field success.
We're here at Sandy Park
ready to watch England play the U.S.A.
in the first of the test games
ahead of the World Cup.
Whoo!
[Sue] Very exciting.
Especially lots of players that don't know
whether they're gonna be on that squad
that's gonna be announced
in a couple of weeks.
[fast decisive music]
[Sue] I'm hoping it should be
a big scoring,
and I think there might be some questions
to be answered if it isn't.
But we'll see how it goes!
[crowd cheering]
[fast decisive music buildup]
[crowd cheering continues]
[Sue] Pretty amazing,
an hour or so after the game,
they're still all here
and taking photographs with their fans.
It's just incredible.
[fast decisive music]
[crowd cheering]
[Poppy] We got the two wins,
got a good send out from the crowd.
Just really excited to get going in
on the plane and into New Zealand.
[Sue] It's amazing to think that tonight,
we've had almost 12,000 people
in the crowd watching
an England women's game.
And it's mid week, you know,
it's a busy week too.
But a few years ago,
we would've been really lucky
just to have a couple thousand
come and support.
The fact that these numbers are coming out
for a tournament through the World Cup
is just extraordinary.
And it must mean so much to the players.
You just see the young fans
are so excited to meet the players.
Get their autographs and selfies.
It's just amazing to see.
-This is my favorite player.
-Who is?
-You.
-Me?!
Yeah.
-[woman's laughter]
-[Man] Thank you so much.
[Sue] To me, the Red Roses
are a fantastic example of the power
of women's sport
to inspire the next generation.
And in the last few years,
I've really noticed their impact
rippling throughout the rugby community
and beyond.
[Molly] I think it's really exciting
and it shows what can happen when
women's sport is taken seriously,
and given the respect
and resources that it deserves to have.
[laughter]
[Molly] We here have
a really lovely community
of like, really... really feminist club.
You come in and you feel
very like, supported and empowered.
[coach] What do I want to see
you guys doing with each other?
-[player] Communicate.
-Communicating.
-[players] Energy.
-[coach] Supporting.
Yeah, and some really good celebration
of each other's good work.
[players cheering]
We're a higher rank team,
than our boy's first team.
We're in the league--
technically in the league above them.
And they come and watch us
and they support us,
and that's really nice,
we're really appreciative.
But it's really hard in a way,
because then you have a conversation
with some of them after
who come and watch and it's like,
"Why can no one kick a conversion?"
That's been the big thing recently, it's
that we don't have a conversion kicker.
The reason we don't have
a conversion kicker,
or the reason that we don't do things
as slickly as they do,
is because they picked rugby
for the first time at 18, or 19.
We get people who join
in their final year of uni,
they're 21, they picked up
a ball of rugby for the first time.
In terms of affording
women's sport that equal status,
it's a men's sport,
and it's not resting on
whether the men support
or the women support or not,
but when they do,
it just adds that extra authority
to the fact that this is an equal sport.
Especially because society
is so male orientated anyway,
men's voices are afforded
a bit more power than women's voices.
-How does that make you feel?
-[laughing] So unfair, I hate it so much.
It's like, actually, it shouldn't need
that for the support to be there.
But like, kind of,
if that's the way the system is
maybe we need to like--
that does need to happen.
[Stacey] At the grassroots level,
I find that
dads of daughters are really powerful
when it comes to wanting more.
Quite often, they've gone through life
with no sport being a barrier to them,
and then they've had this little girl
who they love more than anything,
and suddenly come across
all this inequality and unfairness
and go, "Oh, my God, this isn't right!",
because they've known how it should be.
My grandad taught me on the boxing
gym trip to New York when I was 10,
and we went into
a very, very well known gym,
and I went on the bag and started training
and some guy came over and said you know,
"We don't have woman in here",
and my grandad said,
"well, that's my granddaughter
and she'll be training
or we're all leaving".
And of course they had fights
lined up and everything,
and there was kind of a moment,
and I thought, "What's he doing?
[laughter] He's gonna wreck
the whole trip", and this guy just said,
"Well, all right, just make sure
she stays on that bag" or whatever.
He, not only believed
in opportunities for me,
but stood up to another man.
In a very male dominated environment.
I'm just someone that's a fan
of female sport, that's all it is.
But I sit under the banner
of being a male ally.
And I do think the tag "male ally"
puts people off.
I think it does put people off.
When a female comes watch to male's sport,
whether it's football, rugby,
whatever it might be,
they're not waving a flag saying
"Hey, I'm a female ally!"
They're not, they're
just a fan of the sport.
But there seems to be this--
and I don't know what it is,
maybe it's just this perception,
like you're stepping out,
and look at you all self-righteous
and trying to do the right thing.
[crowd cheering]
It's not us all of a sudden,
just decided we all wanna do it,
we're doing it because it's unignorable.
The quality of it and the brilliance of it
is making more men step up and step out
and showing their support.
And I do hope
and I would encourage
any bloke to step out
and show your love and support.
I think because we live
in such a male dominated society,
until there is equality,
you can never be too much of a male ally.
[Stacey] I think 2022 is such
a massive year
for sport in general in this country.
But certainly for women's sport.
If we just go back
a very short time to 2020,
I remember being interviewed
on television a few times,
and every single time
being asked the question,
"What's gonna happen to women's sport?
Is it gonna disappear?
Is this the end?"
And me thinking, "Are these people crazy?"
like, what-- [laughs]
As if all of us who've dedicated
our whole lives to sport were gonna go,
"Oh... well, that's it now."
[laughs]
"Let's just all go home because
we haven't had a few games for a season!"
Absolutely not.
And I think the one thing
that made women sport
perfectly adaptable for this is we've had
a gazillion barriers to overcome anyway.
We've always had to overcome barriers
just to set foot in the ring,
on the pitch, on the court, wherever.
So we're actually
quite suited to adversity I think.
And certainly in the case
of women's boxing,
COVID helped us know no end,
because the argument has always been
that we couldn't sell tickets,
and tickets were no longer an issue,
because they just had to get shows on
for the TV deals, and they ended up
putting women on them
and they've become, you know,
mega in the sport of boxing now.
[crowd cheering]
The case of Taylor and
Amanda Serrano fight,
personally I feel that whenever there's
a massive moment in women's sport,
we all kind of feel it.
It resonates.
They've had the same struggle
that we've had as a female athlete.
[commentator] How many years has
Amanda Serrano
toiled for this opportunity?
[Laura] I've been to some
amazing sporting events in my lifetime
and honestly, the atmosphere
for Katie Taylor's walk on
was the best I've ever experienced.
-Katie Taylor!
-[crowd cheering]
And it was something about
her walk on that was almost spiritual.
She walked so slowly,
and she really took everything in.
[epic emotional music]
Two females headlining at
Madison Square Garden,
it's never been done before.
[commentator] Ten rounds for history!
Boxing is my sport, it was my first love.
I was really pleased for her
to have that opportunity.
But then there's something
about New York for me.
Having been there as a 10-year-old
told that I couldn't even go on the bag
at a gym not very far away,
all I could imagine was
that 10-year-old girl,
stood outside Madison Square Garden
looking at these massive posters
of these icons and heroes
of women's boxing.
[nostalgic emotional music]
A feeling as a little girl, was again
one that I was to become familiar with
again, and again, and again
through childhood,
my formative years, my adult years.
It has a massive impact in how you feel
about yourself, how you perceive yourself.
Your place in the world,
your identity, your self worth.
And it's much bigger than sport,
and then the fact that
they put on one of the best fights,
that was the important bit.
[Laura] It just didn't become
anything about females,
it became about the most amazing fight,
the amazing combat
within that fight as well.
[commentator] Never count out
Katie Taylor!
They more than delivered.
And it was a sense of relief,
as much as excitement,
that they really seized that moment.
-[presenter] And still, the undisputed...
-[crowd cheers]
...Heavyweight Champion of the World,
-Katie Taylor!
-[crowd cheering]
[Laura] There was no gender relevance,
it was just two incredible sports people,
it felt like a real game changer.
[commentator] The greatest
female fighter of all time!
[Stacey] When the power of sport
is used in the right way,
what a difference that would've made,
and it didn't happen for me,
you know what? That's okay.
Because some of us have to do
the ground work to make sure
that that happens for others.
And that is now happening
for those little girls.
And that's just
an amazing thing for our society.
[soft piano music]
[Sue] The changing situation
in the world because of COVID,
led me to set up Fearless Women,
an agency whose sole aim
is to drive change in women's sport.
One of my favorite activities
is talking to trail blazing women in sport
for my podcast "The Game Changers".
Hello, welcome! Thank you.
Sarah, firstly,
huge congratulations on your selection!
Thank you, it has been
quite challenging the last few years,
with of COVID and injury
and things like that.
So yeah, to finally know
you've made the squad
and you're gonna be
on that plane to New Zealand,
and compete at the pinnacle
of women's rugby, it's like,
it's huge.
As I've got older,
I've learned to recognize that
and realize that
it's more than just myself,
and more than just having
an internal motivation
and especially
an external motivation of what I can do
as an athlete,
as an international Red Rose.
I think the investment
that we've seen in the Red Roses,
it's allowed, for the first time,
Red Roses to be
the best versions of themselves.
Not having to wrestle
between going to work nine to five,
and then fitting in training
at the back of it.
The consequence of that, furthermore,
is it's put pressure on everyone else
to be able to level up
and give the women exactly what they need.
I feel like, and it shouldn't be this way,
but it feels like
the women's game needs to go further.
Or the proof needs to be further
in a case for investment,
it's not just success,
because if it was success,
they'd be getting
better funding than the men.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-It's just not as simple as that.
[emotional uplifting music]
[Clare] When I think about
the European championships,
I just smile because it was so wonderful
to have the whole country
locked into the progress of a team
growing and blossoming before our eyes.
[Kelly] Playing in front of home crowds
and sold out stadiums,
a lot of them have
probably never done that before.
[commentator] The biggest ever
woman's Euro tournament gets underway!
With the largest ever crowd
for the competition!
[Sue] On the pitch, England got better
and better with each game.
And arrived at the finals
as unbeaten favorites.
What's more, with each game,
support for The Lionesses
was growing across the nation
and in the media.
Come on, England!
[Clare] You still feel that tension
when it comes to a final,
and you know anything could happen.
We get to see England beat Germany,
and we beat bitter rivals...
Whoo! Party!
...and just looking around
and seeing lots of red and white
and you couldn't see an empty seat.
And I was pinching myself thinking
"Is this really happening in this country,
a woman's game sold out like this?"
[Sue] It did feel like this was
the final that Euro'22 deserved.
[Kelly] And for me, England and Germany
had played the best,
most attractive football all tournament.
And the finish by Toone was outstanding,
and you just think,
"Wow, I'm gonna pinch myself,
we're gonna do this,
we're gonna win a gold medal finally."
And then obviously they went down
the other end and scored.
[crowd cheering]
And then, extra time.
And you're thinking, "we gotta push
for this, we gotta believe, keep going".
Then obviously, Chloe Kelly popped up,
and with that little toe poke.
[crowd cheering]
[Kelly] We were crying
even before the final whistle,
because we knew we'd won the game
and we were hugging each other,
jumping up and down,
singing "Sweet Caroline"
and we were just bawling,
we were like, "What are we doing?"
We are about to see
England winning and lifting the trophy!
[crowd cheering]
Thought we'd never ever see it!
And it's happening pretty good, yeah!
Because football is
the biggest global sport,
and England's win was watched
by such a huge audience,
it really helped shift the public
perceptions about women's sport.
[Stacey] Kids will now be growing up,
and those early memories
that really grip them
and make them excited about sport,
will be of female athletes,
female teams,
and there's a lot,
males and females, after that will say,
"We" rather than "They",
when they talk about
the women's football team.
Sabrina you're the one
Football's coming home again
[Kelly] I think these Lionesses
from this summer,
what they done
for the country, for the nation,
for all those young girls
and boys out there,
have really made women's sport,
not just football, acceptable.
And that you can be strong,
fit, and muscular, and be out there,
sweating and fighting
for your country to win a tournament.
You know I didn't have that growing up
and these young kids can look up
to these players and think,
"Wow, this is something special,
I want to be like them."
[emotional music]
[Sue] That final at Wembley
was record breaking
in terms of a final for the Euros,
but not only for the women's Euros,
that was record breaking
for men's or women's Euros.
So the proof points now at last
are there
for those people that have always said
that there's no audience.
The Lionesses were incredible
in terms of this moment in time.
The moments in time shift the dialogue.
There was a discussion two years ago,
women's sport was over,
and now it's kind of taken over.
The Distinguished Alumni
is a category of awards
that we can give within
Loughborough University.
And it's to recognize colleagues
that show now standing inspiration,
merit achievement and sustained commitment
in a particular role.
I am really delighted to honor
Sue Anstiss MBE
with our Distinguished Alumni Award
for outstanding contributions
to grassroot and women's sport.
It does mean so much
to be back here at Loughborough.
I was passionate about sport,
but it was very much the university
that ignited a passion and made me realize
the impact that I could have through sport
and the impact that sport can have.
[Laura] Women's sport, I think,
has a vast amount of potential.
It will only grow.
[Clare] Now there are so many more
women working in sport,
so many of them are paying it forward,
and that's really exciting.
[Sue] It's been almost 35 years
I now reflect,
since I last left Loughborough.
And across that time,
the transformation in women's sport
has been quite extraordinary.
Vast increases in terms
of profile and visibility,
crowds coming in to watch
what are now professional athletes
that weren't paid in the past.
It's such a good time to be involved
in women's sport right now.
It's getting better,
there's still a lot of work to be done
but the participation,
and particularly in women's football
and some of the team games
has risen tenfold.
And that makes me very happy.
[Tanni] I think a lot of young girls now
have role models to look up to
and think "I can do that".
[Clare] Girls in schools expect now
to be treated the way
the boys are treated,
to be taken seriously,
to be coached professionally,
to be given the opportunity.
Progress isn't an inevitable thing,
it's people coming together
that make it happen.
I hope that I can encourage
everyone to join me
as we keep on striving
for those changes
that will eventually result in equality
for all women and girls in sports.
So thank you so much.
[crowd applauds]
[Sally] I really hope
that in 10 years' time,
we're not even having these conversations.
We, I think all, have a responsibility,
whatever our role,
to keep talking about how diversity
leads to better decision making,
it leads to better outcomes.
We all have a responsibility
to challenge misogyny when it happens.
We're not yet over the hump,
we've still got a long way to go,
and that is encumbered on all of us
who have leadership roles
to make the change.
We need to continue driving on, right,
we can't let people sit down and say,
"Well, we've done that,
that's equality sorted".
You know? "That'll do".
The big thing is,
what do you want it to be?
What is women's professional sport?
And how does that differ
from men's professional sport?
And there are many ways
in which it should differ,
and they're all good ways.
One problem with talking about
the development of women's sport,
especially in a professional capacity,
is expecting it to mirror the men's game.
It's not going to,
and do we want it to anyway?
I'd love women's sport to emulate
some of what's happening in men's sport.
We want to try and emulate
all the really good things,
and try and stay away
from some of the negative things.
Women's sport can show us
how sport should be,
when you're looking at professionalism,
and you're looking at
the business structure,
what could it be?
How do you make those improvements?
And do it with the women's game
because you're not dealing with
a whole lot of baggage,
and people saying,
"It's always been like this",
because it hasn't.
It's never been like anything.
So start again.
The men's games have been professional
in this country 22 years,
we've made so many mistakes.
The women's game doesn't have
to go through the pain the men's game did.
It doesn't have to all be how it's been
for the last hundred years.
I think women's sport has an opportunity
to do things a little bit differently
and think outside the box in how, maybe
to have sustainable professional sport?
We can build women's sport differently
as a more inclusive positive place.
Creating a more sustainable model
for a league sport
that can also drive
powerful societal change in the world.
With investment in the women's game,
that's when you'll see a change.
And that's when
you'll see the skill level increase.
And it takes time,
and it takes interest and investment.
It's how you grow something,
you can't just overnight say, "It's here".
[Sue] I think it's really important
that we don't just measure
women's sport in terms of eyeballs
and numbers and the traditional metrics
that we've used for men's sport.
Women's sport has so much more to offer.
And one of the key elements
is that association
with all of the values
that come with women's sport.
Companies who understand
what women's sport can bring them,
are actively looking
at sponsoring clubs and individuals
and events for women.
They know it brings a different audience.
They know it brings a more positive
and warm and lovely atmosphere.
They know that they will get
more interaction with the players.
We need to have a game
that can foster the women of today
whilst nourishing and nurturing
and fostering the women of tomorrow.
If we can get that in place, then
I think it will be the men's game
looking at the women's game, saying,
"We should be doing this".
[Sue] So the plan is, 2025
to fill Twickenham for the women's
World Cup final.
It's an amazing notion,
to feel that by 2025,
that this place could be full.
Being able to sell out stadiums like this,
domestically and on
an international stage.
I think once we can get to that level,
then hopefully they get the investment
which has been long overdue.
["God Save The Queen" playing]
[crowd chattering]
[cheering]
[commentator] Standing on the shoulders
of giants that have come before them,
two teams of incredible women.
Harrison out to Scarratt
who's got Kildunne at wide...
And Ellie Kildunne scores
in the opening two minutes for England!
What a start for the Red Roses!
[cheering]
[commentator] Pressure building here,
and Marlie Packer powers over!
England looking dominant
in the battle!
[indistinct chatter]
I don't know, I'm a bit nervous.
[commentator] New Zealand is on the
short side, they've got numbers,
and Krystal Murray scores in the corner!
The Black Ferns coming back strong!
It might sit up with Stacey Fluhler,
just short,
but Leti-l'iga is there to finish it!
New Zealand go back in front!
[dramatic epic music]
[whistle blowing]
[commentator] From the depths of despair,
the World Cup winners again!
New Zealand are the champions!
[mild applause]
[Sue] It wasn't the fairy tale ending
we were all hoping for
for the Red Roses.
But, on reflection,
there were so many positives to take away.
Only a few years ago,
you wouldn't have believed
that hundreds of people would wake up
at 6 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday
to come together in a pub
to watch women's sport.
And then another two million were watching
at home over their breakfasts.
To see the pub full of such a wide range
of men, women, and children,
gives me great hope
for the future of women's sport.
[emotional epic music]
Throughout this incredible year,
I've seen the enormous potential
of women's sport to drive positive change.
I've also seen that women's sport
doesn't need to replicate
what men sport has done to be successful.
[Molly] If women get equality in sport,
I think that is a really powerful place
to then begin to have equality
more widely in society.
People care so deeply about sport,
that power to care about it
is the really important part about it,
and if people really care
about women's sport,
the same way they care about men's sport,
and give it the same respect
they give men's sport,
that respect would
hopefully translate a bit more widely.
If they're seeing them
as equals playfield,
they see them as whole human beings.
I'm filled with hope seeing
the next generation of young women
so determined to create
positive change in gender equality.
[Molly] I think when
you humanize people on the playing field,
you then humanize them in society as well.
And a really foundational
and important part
of fighting for equality is
recognizing that these people
are as deserving of quality and respect.
As you, because they are equal to you.
[Tanni] In the next five years,
we are going to see the biggest change
in women's sport,
that we've probably seen in the last 30.
And that's the thing that keeps me going,
that's the thing
that makes me really excited.
Because we can almost see
the light at the end of the tunnel.
["Take Me Away"
by Dj Brown Meister playing]
[laughter]
It's about what is an ally,
what is a man ally?
You're playing all over!
Jesus Christ, we just had to do this
outside Twickenham.
Why are we not in a nice quiet room?
[Sue coughing]
I was holding that!
The pain gives you parity
and it gives you power.
Ooh, that was quite good.
That's a good slogan!
I feel so much more posi-
[babbles]
-[Sue] Oh, my God.
-[Ali] Should we do it again?
Sue already had her hand in the till
three times.
-[woman] And you've got a TV show.
-[Sue laughs]
Ready to watch England, New Zealand--
No, that's complete... [bleep]
[laughter]
is a global issue which affects women
throughout their lives.
And sport can be a powerful tool
to drive positive change in this area.
Throughout history,
women have been denied the opportunity
to fully enjoy sport like men.
And having been held back
for so long, it has been hard
for women's sport to grow.
[motivational music]
[inaudible boxing commentator]
[commentator]
And Chloe Kelly scores for England!
[commentator] Harrison to Scarratt,
what a start for the Red Roses!
[Sue] But sport has a unique capacity
to challenge culture and women's sport
and the profile of female athletes,
can have a huge impact
on how women are viewed in society.
[slow piano music]
[soft water sounds]
[Sue]
I've spent my working life wondering
if we'll ever achieve
gender equality in sport.
["On/Off" by Fjodor playing]
[laughter]
[Sue] Gender inequality
is a huge global issue.
And equality in sport is
a powerful tool that could help us
change things across society.
[motivational epic music playing]
I'm Sue Anstiss
and I've dedicated much of my career
to fighting for equality
in women's sport.
[indistinct chatter]
[Sue] For over 100 years,
women's sports has been seen
as the poor relation to men's.
Receiving little funding,
resources or media coverage.
[Sue] If we look back to the beginning
of the modern Olympic Games,
Pierre de Coubertin, he felt
it was impractical, uninteresting,
unaesthetic, and incorrect for women
to take part in any sports.
So right from the start there,
no woman have taken part
in the Olympic Games.
It won't be until 2024
that we'll finally see equality in
terms of women competing
in the same number of events.
So I do feel quite depressed sometimes
with where we are.
But we've moved on massively,
and we've moved on massively
even in the last five years.
So I've seen a shift, I've worked in
women's sport for 30 years
and I really have seen a shift.
But I've seen the biggest fight
in the last two, three years or so?
Women's sport is really
taking off, and the time is now.
So I'm really kind of
excited for where you are
at the beginnings of your careers.
[emotional music]
[Sue] I went to Loughborough University
and studied sports.
I had an amazing experience there,
but didn't really clock the gender
inequality that was going on at the time.
[background laughter]
Like many in my generation,
it was just something that I accepted.
Not really thinking
the situation could be changed.
During the pandemic,
I had time to finally research
and write a book about women's sport.
With women's sport being on
the cusp of momentous change,
and finally starting to gain
mainstream attention,
there seemed to be no better way to tell
the story of these changes
and why it matters more
broadly for all women.
I am lucky to know and work with
so many incredible women in sport,
who have opened my eyes
to a subject I thought I knew so well.
-Is that one running?
-[Sue coughs]
Take two.
It's very exciting to do that.
-Breathe.
-[laughing]
Needs one of those, just in case.
Habit.
My name is Denise Lewis
I'm a former Olympic Champion
in the women's heptathlon.
My name's Laura Woods.
I presented Breakfast Show and Talk Sport,
I work in football as well
and then I do boxing too.
My name is Kelly Smith, I used to play
football for Arsenal in England.
I'm Tanni Grey-Thompson,
I'm a paralympian.
I used to do wheelchair racing,
and I'm now a parliamentarian.
I'm Pamela Cookey,
former England Netball Captain.
My name is Clare Balding.
I've been a broadcaster in sports
for 30 years, I would guess?
And an author of seven books.
-It's quite nice to be interviewed by you.
-Aw.
It's quite cool.
I'm very privileged to be taking to you.
I'm privileged,
you're the one with the MBE.
I've barely got any GCSEs.
[both laugh]
[Tanni] Nelson Mandela said that sport
has the power to change the world.
But the challenges for girls,
haven't really changed
as long as I've been involved.
In terms of how we treat sporty girls,
we still value sporty boys
more than sporty girls.
Girls have less opportunities to compete.
There's less opportunities for
media coverage and for sponsorship.
Although I think we are at a time
when there are lots of positives,
there's still a lot of challenges
for true equality.
We are not where
I think I'd hoped we'd be
by this point in my life.
[Sue] During research for my book,
I came across the work of Dr. Ali Bowes.
An academic who has extensively
researched the world of women's sport.
I was keen to meet her in person
as she truly understands
and is able to articulate
the challenges that women's sport faces.
Initially, I probably wasn't that aware of
a gender imbalance in sport.
So I loved doing sport at school,
and just took sport, really,
for what it was at that time.
It was during my time at university where
we started to look at
social issues in sport,
and in my own involvement in sport
at university that I started to notice
women's sport was at such a kind of
disadvantage to men's sport.
Which then prompted me
to do research in it,
so did my PhD at
Loughborough University.
And that very much centered on
League Women's Sport and inequality
and starting to investigate
some of those issues, I guess.
[Sue] In terms of that
bigger picture then, can you give us
a little of the history as to how we got
to find that gender imbalance?
Sport, in its very first instance,
was something that was really
dominated by men.
If we are going back
to the 19th century,
we've got industrialization,
and we've got men working in factories
and sport became a way
for factory earners to make sure
that the men were fit and healthy,
so they had factory teams.
Sport has always been
kind of developed for men.
There's a hangover effect to this day
so people that have dominated sport,
that are in charge of sport,
that made the rules of sport,
have always been men,
and that's been really hard to
kind of break down and challenge, I think.
As I researched my book,
I discovered there were two main reasons
that people have struggled with
the concept of women playing sport.
The first, was the female frailty myth.
I think the female frailty myth
has a really big piece of the puzzle
of understanding
gender imbalance of sport.
We had these pockets of ideas
from doctors, from scientists of that era,
that fundamentally rendered it impossible
for women to take part in sport.
[Sue] We were these vessels
that needed to have children,
it was all about having children,
that was our purpose on this earth.
Lots of these ideas around
issues with women's body
that centered on reproductive ability...
There was genuine belief
that if we ran and we jumped,
our uteruses would fall out.
All these concerns that women
were gonna pass out or collapse
or bleed, or whatever that might be...
It was okay for women to work
in the fields and the factories,
and all that hard work.
but it wasn't okay for them to play sport.
[Clare] So women's football is
starting to grow through the late 1800s
and into the early 1900s.
And it's really building up,
particularly leading up to and during
the First World War and directly after.
Where all the munition's factories
had women's football teams
because the men had all gone off to war.
The women are treated
completely differently
because suddenly they are given
equal value, because they are necessary.
And Dick, Kerr Ladies is the example,
the best of the women's teams
that grew out of that era.
[Sue] And the Dick, Kerr Ladies played
in front of these massive, massive crowds.
They had 53,000 people
who came to watch them play
at Goodison Park.
And there were 14,000 people
waiting outside who couldn't get in.
I know that many people
don't realize how women's football
was banned in England for 50 years.
I was surprised at just
how much interest there was in this
when I mentioned it in a podcast.
When something's banned and
your grandmother wasn't allowed to play
and your mother
wasn't rewarded for playing,
it takes a while for that
to work on through
where the best athletes
are choosing football.
If you're not allowed
to play at Wembley at all,
or any stadium, and most clubs
don't have a women's team,
why would you choose football?
[Sue] Clearly social media
has had a huge role to play
in spreading the word
about women's sport.
But it's actually mainstream media,
so the print media and broadcast media,
where we are really
gonna reach a huge audience
and begin to bring people over
to see how amazing women's sport can be.
It is always fantastic
to have the opportunity
to talk on the media about women's sport.
It's a passion for me,
but to come and talk to someone like
Stacey on her show means so much to me.
Because I know all that
she's done for women's sport,
and all that she's
still doing now to drive change.
Action!
[uplifting music playing]
-Hi. Too aggressive?
-[laughter from crew]
My name's Stacey Copeland and
I've represented my country in two sports.
Football and boxing.
Started boxings a child, so at age 6, 7.
My influences were fairly obvious.
My dad was a boxer,
my grandad ran our boxing gym.
To be honest, I wasn't aware
that I was a young woman,
I was just a kid
in the boxing gym with all my mates.
And I did everything that
all my little lad mates did.
I lived and breathed the sport, really,
I loved it and everything about it
from the first time going to the gym.
The sound of the skipping ropes,
the gloves hitting the bag,
the smell, which is horrible.
[laughing]
But I just loved it and
I got to the age of 11,
when you can usually
start using skill bouts,
and that's when my grandad said, you know,
"You can't box".
Sport is undoubtedly,
I know I'm biased, we both are,
but definitely one of the
most powerful things on the planet.
How does that manifest in society
in the way we perceive men and women,
masculinity and femininity?
[Sue] Because sport is something
that is so much a part of our culture,
not just in Britain but across the world.
It is something that impacts us
in so many ways.
Sport, you know, reflects and magnifies
what's happening in society
but I think also enables us to have
some of those conversations
we wouldn't otherwise have within society.
[Stacey] When I found out
that it was illegal
for girls and women to compete,
I remember feeling mostly confused.
The thought that that thing
I loved could be illegal was just bizarre.
It wasn't really until then that I became
acutely aware that being a girl
was gonna be a major problem.
The second issue I found was the role
femininity plays in women's sport.
In terms of gender stereotypes,
I don't think there is any reason why
male or female genitalia or body parts
makes you better or worse
at any sport in the world.
It's the masculine and feminine attributes
that tend to cause a problem.
When you get women
doing sports as I did, like boxing,
that challenge society's definition
of what's feminine...
I think there's a number of things which
people find unsettling about women boxing.
For the majority, it's about femininity.
It challenges femininity in such
an obvious, brutal, visceral way.
I think people really struggle with it.
For many female athletes,
it's been said there's a balance in that
between being seen as a feminine woman
and being seen as a legitimate athlete.
Because it doesn't make sense
to be able to be both.
Lots of researchers have kind of talked
about this disconnect, really,
and framed it as
the female athlete paradox.
And very much is
around how female athletes
balance those competing demands
of society expecting them to be
a certain type of woman.
and society expecting
sport to look a certain way.
[Laura] The perception of women
is that we don't fight,
and that we shouldn't be involved
in combat sports
because it's not ladylike
and it's not feminine.
But they are amazing athletes,
and if you can appreciate that,
that will start to change
people's perception of things.
[motivational music]
We're getting ready for the World Cup,
we really wanna go out there
and do our best at trying to win it.
We're going to New Zealand,
the Reigning Champs,
I don't think you'll see
anyone holding back.
[motivational electronic music]
[Sue] I think because it is obviously
the selection for the World Cup,
you just can feel the energy.
[women shouting]
I wanted to include rugby
in the documentary.
I think for me, of all the team sports,
women's team sports that are there,
it is probably the one
that most challenges
what society feels
is traditionally feminine.
The power and strength and you know,
the aggression around rugby.
So for me, it almost is the sport that
can probably have
the most impact in that space too.
And I'm a massive
rugby fan as well, so that helps.
I started playing when I was 6 years old.
My mom messaged the local rugby club
and said, "Hey, can we bring down
my two children?" And he went, "Yeah,
of course, we always need more boys."
And mom was like,
"No, they're two girls",
and he was like, "oh",
and really taken back by it.
Luckily my sister was in the same
age group, we were the only two girls
in the mini section, and that was
the story growing up.
There were never many other girls,
it was always a novelty.
"Look, there's a team!
Oh, they've got girls on their team."
[Captain] How we start is so important
and that's [unintelligible]
[Poppy] When I go back to clubs and speak
about it, that's not an issue anymore,
there's so many there,
these clubs are thriving.
There's three teams, there's under 13's,
under 15's, under 18's,
and there's just so many more playing.
And do you think attitudes are changing
in society towards women's rugby as well?
I do, yeah, 100 percent do,
just not very quickly.
We still get, like 10 years ago,
if you interviewed the girls,
and still get the comments that we do
right now, it's exactly the same.
-[Sue] On social media?
-[Poppy] Yeah, it's just boring, so boring
like, "Oh, didn't know women played".
Yeah, okay, cool, like,
where have you been living, sort of thing?
Everything that goes with just
being a woman that plays rugby.
Sometimes it can get a bit draining,
and just constantly get you down.
You know, the stigmas, the nasty
perception we have of women
just trying to play sports
and enjoy themselves.
Why do you think that-- I spend my life
thinking why that is, why do you think,
where do you think that stems from, that
negativity around women playing sports?
[Poppy] I do think it is learnt,
the sayings, the expressions,
"Oh, you play rugby,
you must be a lesbian",
"Oh, you play rugby, that's really manly".
People don't challenge it, people just
stick with the majority, they laugh along.
You're essentially bullying someone,
you're degrading them
to achieve what at the end of the day?
[all] Red Roses!
[Sue] 1950s, so the
All American Girls baseball leagues,
So again, Second World War,
men have gone off to war.
Wrigley, the chewing gum magnet,
didn't want to lose out
on all that audience and the sponsors
he'd got for baseball,
so he created a female league.
They were almost the first professional
female athletes of their time.
Women came from
all over the country to trial
but they were judged on how they looked.
Helena Rubinstein came in
and would give them make up lessons,
they had to have their hair a certain way,
they weren't allowed to wear
shorts or trousers at any point.
They had to play in skirts!
So they're sliding into the bases
but they had to do it in skirts.
They only felt people would be
attracted to women playing sport
if it was seen as really feminine.
Our understanding of what we think
masculine and feminine means,
is so limited and so damaging
to men and to women.
We just need a broader mind about this.
Women can be strong
and ambitious and competitive.
Men can be kind
and compassionate and vulnerable.
All of these things are allowable,
and to not let them be, is, I think,
the cause of a lot of issues.
I think a challenge for women sport
going forward, is that--
it's still a lot based on how you look.
You know the way you look
has played a big part
in your sponsorship opportunities
and your marketing opportunities.
The question is, will that ever change?
[Tanni] You know, women
get judged differently,
you're meant to not
just be a brilliant sportsperson,
but you're meant to look
beautiful and not sweaty
and have your hair
and makeup done as well.
Where men don't get judged
in the same way,
and I think that's one of the things
that sometimes makes it really hard
for girls to come in because they still
are judged in a different way.
[Denise] Femininity, that whole
conversation around femininity and sport,
I think it's still an issue.
If you don't feel that
your beauty is being valued
when you've got fantastic muscles
and you're strong,
it affects your decision making.
Competitive girls are talked
about in a different way,
as if it's kind of
not as good, or less than
or you're a bit of an oddity because
you want to be competitive in sports.
It's hard to untie those ideas
of women being frail,
us expecting women to be feminine,
and then accepting women
as kind of strong, aggressive sportswomen.
It's really hard to pull
those ideas apart.
Women that are extremely strong,
there is still a bit of a stereotype
for the girls that don't have that sort of
svelte like body shape.
And that, we still need to work on,
because we don't see it,
we don't see those
type of women on front covers,
we don't see them being championed
as fantastically strong, beautiful women
that exude power.
We still have a problem with that.
[Sue] It's really important
that women can be all things
and that women don't have to fit
that mold of what is feminine and tiny
and all the stuff that social media
and the media might tell you.
Women can be all kinds of things.
And actually sport, when we see
and celebrate these amazing women in sport
what does that tell us about else
we can be in our lives?
It really excites me to see more
female athletes being shown,
because usually it was just the big
and strong male athletes that you'd see
and everyone would think
that they're the best of the best.
It's just nice to see women doing sport
where usually
they aren't shown off as much.
Never showed off as much as the men,
where you always see
what the men are doing,
and you always know what they're doing.
But now,
you see more of how the women
are performing and how well they're doing.
Having more coverage of it,
and making it easier to watch,
so we can just go downstairs
and find the Netball to watch,
it makes me really happy,
because it used to be
you had to find it online
and then put it on the TV somehow,
but now it's really easy to watch
and it's exciting
to have more coverage
of women's sport.
So more people are watching it,
and more people are understanding
why we enjoy it so much.
[fantastical music]
[Ali] The origin of Netball actually
gives a really good indication
as to the kind of history
of men and women's sports.
Netball was derived from basketball
but pulled in all those ideas about
the acceptability of women's bodies.
We had this sport of basketball,
competitive, in your face contact,
so netball, we removed the contact.
Put women in little zones
so that they couldn't move.
All these rules to make the sport
much less vigorous.
And therefore acceptable
for women to take part in.
I think the history of netball
then is really interesting
in starting to understand
why women do certain sports
and why we have certain expectations.
[crowd cheering]
[Pamela] Netball has changed
massively throughout my career.
Back then, it was just
what you did in school
and people have that preconception
of school girl netball, you know,
the slow stop, start, pivot,
that kind of thing.
But so different to what we see now on TV,
and I think we can now see
these amazing athletes on court
doing such wonderful things.
I think that's the massive change
that I've seen in netball.
It's not just a sport in school,
it's a sport that you can take
throughout your life.
[Clare] Hello! You all right?
-[Sue] Yeah!
-[Clare] Good, good.
[Clare] Good to see you too, mate.
-[Woman] Hello!
-[Clare] Hello, hello!
How are you?
[Clare] I mean our connection through
netball and team sport has been years.
-[Sue] Yeah, yeah.
-[Clare] Years and years, hasn't it?
Something that connected us
in the beginning keeps us together now.
That's pretty scary isn't it?
How many years, 40 years on.
Goal keeper, goal defence,
we played together, didn't we?
All those years ago.
-[Clare] And played against each other...
-[Sue] Yeah.
...so a little bit of together
and then a little bit of competition.
[Sue] Yeah, you were always
quite competitive, were you?
-[Clare] That lives on!
-No, that hasn't changed!
[Clare] And then some high knees,
hop them right up.
[Clare] Over the years, we've watched
our girls come through and play netball,
and I know that Daisy's coach for the club
but she's also done the coaching
and she's here tonight coaching as well.
Hopefully, we've giving them something
for life in the way that we have had.
[Clare] I think it will always be
with them.
I think they've all played at uni and post
school and things like that.
There will always be a sport wherever
they go they can get involved with,
having played netball over the years.
-Yay, go us!
-Yeah!
So, blue shoe that way,
yellow shoe that way.
[whistle blow]
[shouting and laughter]
[Sue] It's easy to forget the importance
of sport for women throughout their lives.
[Player] Can I get a high five?
I've personally enjoyed
the positive impact
of walking netball sessions for women.
It's more than just getting out
and having fun with friends each week,
although that is important.
Foul play going on over here!
It's all the mental and physical
health benefits women get
from being physically active.
This can have a huge impact on
a woman's health as she ages.
[Clare] One nill for blue!
I'm so pleased that my daughters
still love sport,
but sadly that's not the case
for many girls and young women.
Research in 2022 shows that
more than a million British teenage girls
who once considered themselves as sporty,
disengage from sport
after primary school.
Couple of girls from our team,
they don't wanna play anymore.
A lot of them didn't feel comfortable
wearing the short dress when playing.
It doesn't really help you play
because it would be easier
if you played in trousers or shorts.
It's easier to run in,
it's easier to do jumps.
With the dresses,
you're always pulling it down
to make sure everything is covered
or you're self conscious
about wearing a dress.
Women wearing dresses to play sport,
it makes absolutely no sense
to put women in dresses and say, okay--
The logic there is because it helps
performance, because it obviously doesn't.
Some women want to wear dresses
and they're very comfortable like that,
as the outfit that you wear
to play sport, and that's fine I guess,
but I think to have, like,
uniform restrictions
or to make it so that women
have to wear dresses,
that's really problematic.
I think especially if someone might
feel a different way about their body
and they don't want to wear
a small tight dress,
then I feel angry for them
if they don't wanna wear it.
Because it's just harder to, I don't know,
feel confident in yourself while
you're playing if you're wearing
something that's tiny and not something
you usually wear anywhere else.
I would love to know who sits
on the various committees
that say, you know, girls have
to wear absolute bare minimum for clothing
and boys can be covered up.
[Sue] This is the Norwegian
beach handball team.
This is last year, this is 2021.
It's practical for the guys
to wear baggy shorts and t-shirts
but for the girls to be in tiny bikinis?
The girls said they wanted to play
in shorts, not in these tiny bikinis,
they actually had a limit of how tiny
it had to be at the side.
They didn't want to play in that,
so they played in shorts
and they were fined 1,500 euros
by the International Federation
because they broke the law
and wore shorts rather than these bikinis.
You can kind of see that impact
from being overly feminine
that then becomes to
objectifying women too.
[upbeat music]
[crowd cheering]
[Clare] Good evening and welcome to
the BT Sport Action Woman Awards!
It was back in 2013, this epic
celebration of women in sport began.
The appetite for women's sport
has never been greater.
She may be the youngest of our contenders,
but my goodness she is mighty.
It's diving sensation
Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix.
[crowd applauding]
I think sports and this year especially
have shown that...
...women are strong.
and nothing can stop you
from doing what you want to do.
Your age doesn't stop you,
gender doesn't stop you,
sexuality doesn't stop you.
And what's so great about
all of the women in this room,
all of the athletes in this room,
is we don't let what society's saying--
it doesn't limit us,
and won't limit us in the future.
[crowd cheering and applauding]
We need to move with the times.
Sportswomen are asking for change,
they want to still do their sport
but not have to be revealing
their bodies in ways
that don't make them feel comfortable.
I think sport, it definitely mirrors
and magnifies what we see in society
so I think it can playback what we see
and that may be around gender inequality,
around racism and other issues.
But it also has the opportunity to have
some of those conversations
to be a lens and to drive change.
And then we talk about it,
we see it in sport, and then perhaps
we go and talk about it elsewhere.
So people get really uncomfortable
talking about periods,
but it's something that happens to half
of the population, half the world,
and yet we still feel
uncomfortable talking about it.
But if we can have
that conversation around.
"Is it appropriate for women
to be playing in white shorts?"
Can we have that conversation
in sport, and then come back
and have that conversation in society?
I've read a third of girls say
their periods stopped them
from getting active in schools this year.
That's an increase of 10%
from previous years
according to the EEAST board trust.
Dr. Emma Ross was the head of physiology
at The English Institute of Sport
and led research into
the challenges faced by elite sportswomen.
She now shares those learnings more widely
to help all women and girls
through her company The Well HQ.
-[Emma] Hello!
-[Sue] Hello! How are you?
[Sue] Very nice to see you!
[Emma] When I first started
going around to elite sports and saying,
"I really want to bring up periods,
menstrual cycles,
as a really important
topic of conversation",
one of the first things that the athletes
would say is, "Emma we have spent so long
pretending there isn't anything
female about us,
because we want equality here in sport,
we want the same coaching as men,
we want the same facilities,
we want the same media coverage,
we want the same pay
so to do that, we've had to sort of
shut off what is female about us."
And they were worried that it
would be seen as fragile,
if there's lots of males
it could be embarrassing,
and so we have had to break down
some of that and actually say,
"No, this is your right, to belong
in sport and have sport designed for you."
We're all adults and we're all women
who experience the same things,
and this can be absolutely carnage.
It's carnage for me in my workplace,
and I don't have to physically perform
in front of people, and reach for a ball
that's gonna make me
straddle meters and meters.
Girls and women don't tend to want to wear
white when they're on their period.
Mostly because of the fear of leaking,
not many girls will actually leak
through their period products,
but the fear that it might happen
particularly if you're on a sports field
in front of your family and friends.
For me it's about removing
these things that cause anxiety.
When you're trying to be an athlete
and you're trying to perform at your best
whether you're trying to crack
a PB at parkrun
or you're The Lionesses at Wembley,
you want the headspace
to be able to focus on your sport.
You don't want to be thinking,
"Am I leaking? Am I leaking?"
And so it just seems common sense to me
that you wouldn't put
girls and women in white kit.
I mean, tradition is one thing,
and there's a lot of conversation
in around Wimbledon whether
about "Why do we still wear
whites to play?"
Wimbledon's decision
to adjust its "all whites" rule
and allow women to wear
colored undershorts from 2023
is a step in the right direction.
We can't be locked on tradition
in a time and a world
where everything is changing.
We just got to be listening and be open.
It's not about one answer being right
and one answer being wrong
but it's about having open conversations
with the people who are wearing this kit
and saying, "Does it work for you?"
So we're seeing those conversations
and things that maybe
we're a little uncomfortable
to have a conversation about.
But sport, having it in the lens of sport
enables us to have those conversations
and for me, that can be
really, really powerful.
[Sue] The gender pay gap is another
global concern
where women's sport
has the potential to highlight the issue,
start conversations
and drive important change.
The U.S Women's National Soccer fought a very public battle for equal pay.
Finally, in 2022 the Federation agreed
to a landmark equal pay agreement.
There's these tens of millions of dollars
in back pay owed to female players
and means equal pay
for male and female soccer players
at all tournaments
including the World Cup.
It was a pleasure
to talk to Becca Roux
who played a crucial role
in the equal pay settlement
for The U.S National Women's Soccer Team.
[Becca] I mean, even in 2017
when I first started negotiating,
equal pay was not on the table.
It just was not an option.
It was not something that
was fathomable to the men
that we were negotiating with
on the other side.
They did not think we deserved it.
In the case of the American Women,
the U.S Soccer has overachieved for decades.
There should never have been
any argument or fight.
But you kind of
have to make it law really,
for them, there's no argument,
someone else
has has done the fight for you.
There's been lots of occasions
where I've thought, "This is it.
This is the moment. Everything
is gonna be different from now."
[chuckles] And then it isn't.
It just all goes back
to so called normal.
I would hope that big moments like
the U.S Women's getting equal pay will impact things.
But I know better
than to assume it will be inevitable.
[soft emotional music]
I loved football as well,
and I was a very competitive kid.
So I went into football,
got my first ever England call up
which, at that point, as a youngster,
when you get that first call up,
you don't know if that's
ever gonna happen again.
So at that point,
it is the best thing ever in your life.
And you used to get a letter then,
with the three lions on,
and it was just
the most exciting thing ever.
And I worked in a factory at the time,
I was 16 and I went to my boss.
And I said, "I need a week off".
And I gave him this letter
and I just stood there.
He said, "You want me to give you
a week off to play
for a woman's football team?"
I said, "Yeah", and he made
all these jokes and comments
and I said, "Look, it really means
a lot to me, can I just take it unpaid?"
to which he agreed,
and I walked out of the office
feeling ashamed to begin,
silly for thinking it was a big deal.
Not to play for England's football team,
but the England Women's football team.
And I learned there was a big difference.
[Denise] Despite all of the progress
we've made in women's sport,
at a league level,
there are still too many barriers
that limit young girls
actually choosing a life in sport,
and being comfortable
wanting to pursue that
and taking it into their later life.
[Clare] It would be wrong
for any of us to think that this is solved
because it's not.
How we go about
making change is really important
and it has to change
at grassroots level.
Research shows the main reason
women and girls don't take part in sport
is fear of judgment.
Sport England's This Girl Can campaign
took these findings
and turned them on their head.
Reshaping the way women
think about exercise.
Celebrating and normalizing
women being sweaty and having fun.
Access to sport and physical activity
is important for all women
throughout the entirety of their lives.
This isn't just about elite sport.
We need more women to be involved
in the highest levels
of management in sport.
As we know this helps
ensure decisions about access,
opportunity, and funding
catered to the needs of everyone.
Including women and girls.
[Tanni] At its worse,
there are a lot of senior men
making big decisions about women's sport
without actually talking to women.
It's so important
to have women in these roles
because I think it changes
the conversation.
We still have to go,
"Okay, what about women and girls?"
But that is getting less,
and I can't wait for the day
when it's just accepted as
"we look after everybody"
rather than having to kind of go
"what about the people we've forgotten?"
-Which side do you want me on?
-Come and grab a chair.
-Don't know, you happy there?
-Yeah.
[Sue] Now this will be the 100th episode,
and this is also the first time
I've ever come back to return
and talk to a guest for a second time.
And what a guest, Sally Munday,
CEO of U.K Sport.
We've obviously seen enormous progress
for Women's Sport in the past decade,
but there is still much more to do.
What do you feel are
the real priority areas
for accelerating
that change moving forward?
We gotta stop saying "Thank you"
to people for being interested
in women's sport.
We've got to stop saying "Thank you"
to the media
and the broadcasters for showing it.
"Oh, thank you for the crumbs,
thank you for giving us
a little bit of airtime".
Or "Thank you for giving us
a little bit of sponsorship".
These are incredible athletes
who are playing incredible sport.
And who can't help
but get wrapped up in it all.
And I think that we,
and I know I have a responsibility
in the job that I have,
to just stop apologizing,
stop taking "Thank you"
for the tidbits that we get.
And I genuinely believe that
we are on the cusp with women's sport.
[applause]
I think there still needs
to be more work done
on coverage of women's sport.
Seems to be a lot of
lazy journalism out there.
That media plays a big part
in the print media
where it is so focused on men.
The print media has been controlled
by a certain type of white male
for probably 200 years.
And the sports that they think matter,
men's football,
men's rugby union, men's cricket,
are promoted and constantly written about.
Women's sport
really struggles to get that profile.
Traditionally, most newspapers
have overlooked women's sport,
and we're yet to see
much change in that area.
The situation is really improving
in broadcast though,
with women's sport receiving
a lot more coverage in recent years.
And the quality
of that coverage is improving too.
I don't know why there's an animosity
to perhaps feeling
slightly threatened by it.
I know that some people feel it's being
shoved down their throat.
But I think there is
media attention for a reason,
it is a product that actually can sell.
It's an environment now where broadcasters
see it can bring a big audience.
It's proven it can bring a big audience.
Things look better with more cameras,
with better quality cameras,
with really good studios.
[fast upbeat music]
[applause]
Welcome back to
The BT Sport Action Woman Awards 2022!
What a year it's been for our teams.
Invest properly in women's sport
and thou shalt receive.
[Sue] In recent years,
the England Red Roses
have been one of the leading examples
of increased investments in women's teams
resulting in on field success.
We're here at Sandy Park
ready to watch England play the U.S.A.
in the first of the test games
ahead of the World Cup.
Whoo!
[Sue] Very exciting.
Especially lots of players that don't know
whether they're gonna be on that squad
that's gonna be announced
in a couple of weeks.
[fast decisive music]
[Sue] I'm hoping it should be
a big scoring,
and I think there might be some questions
to be answered if it isn't.
But we'll see how it goes!
[crowd cheering]
[fast decisive music buildup]
[crowd cheering continues]
[Sue] Pretty amazing,
an hour or so after the game,
they're still all here
and taking photographs with their fans.
It's just incredible.
[fast decisive music]
[crowd cheering]
[Poppy] We got the two wins,
got a good send out from the crowd.
Just really excited to get going in
on the plane and into New Zealand.
[Sue] It's amazing to think that tonight,
we've had almost 12,000 people
in the crowd watching
an England women's game.
And it's mid week, you know,
it's a busy week too.
But a few years ago,
we would've been really lucky
just to have a couple thousand
come and support.
The fact that these numbers are coming out
for a tournament through the World Cup
is just extraordinary.
And it must mean so much to the players.
You just see the young fans
are so excited to meet the players.
Get their autographs and selfies.
It's just amazing to see.
-This is my favorite player.
-Who is?
-You.
-Me?!
Yeah.
-[woman's laughter]
-[Man] Thank you so much.
[Sue] To me, the Red Roses
are a fantastic example of the power
of women's sport
to inspire the next generation.
And in the last few years,
I've really noticed their impact
rippling throughout the rugby community
and beyond.
[Molly] I think it's really exciting
and it shows what can happen when
women's sport is taken seriously,
and given the respect
and resources that it deserves to have.
[laughter]
[Molly] We here have
a really lovely community
of like, really... really feminist club.
You come in and you feel
very like, supported and empowered.
[coach] What do I want to see
you guys doing with each other?
-[player] Communicate.
-Communicating.
-[players] Energy.
-[coach] Supporting.
Yeah, and some really good celebration
of each other's good work.
[players cheering]
We're a higher rank team,
than our boy's first team.
We're in the league--
technically in the league above them.
And they come and watch us
and they support us,
and that's really nice,
we're really appreciative.
But it's really hard in a way,
because then you have a conversation
with some of them after
who come and watch and it's like,
"Why can no one kick a conversion?"
That's been the big thing recently, it's
that we don't have a conversion kicker.
The reason we don't have
a conversion kicker,
or the reason that we don't do things
as slickly as they do,
is because they picked rugby
for the first time at 18, or 19.
We get people who join
in their final year of uni,
they're 21, they picked up
a ball of rugby for the first time.
In terms of affording
women's sport that equal status,
it's a men's sport,
and it's not resting on
whether the men support
or the women support or not,
but when they do,
it just adds that extra authority
to the fact that this is an equal sport.
Especially because society
is so male orientated anyway,
men's voices are afforded
a bit more power than women's voices.
-How does that make you feel?
-[laughing] So unfair, I hate it so much.
It's like, actually, it shouldn't need
that for the support to be there.
But like, kind of,
if that's the way the system is
maybe we need to like--
that does need to happen.
[Stacey] At the grassroots level,
I find that
dads of daughters are really powerful
when it comes to wanting more.
Quite often, they've gone through life
with no sport being a barrier to them,
and then they've had this little girl
who they love more than anything,
and suddenly come across
all this inequality and unfairness
and go, "Oh, my God, this isn't right!",
because they've known how it should be.
My grandad taught me on the boxing
gym trip to New York when I was 10,
and we went into
a very, very well known gym,
and I went on the bag and started training
and some guy came over and said you know,
"We don't have woman in here",
and my grandad said,
"well, that's my granddaughter
and she'll be training
or we're all leaving".
And of course they had fights
lined up and everything,
and there was kind of a moment,
and I thought, "What's he doing?
[laughter] He's gonna wreck
the whole trip", and this guy just said,
"Well, all right, just make sure
she stays on that bag" or whatever.
He, not only believed
in opportunities for me,
but stood up to another man.
In a very male dominated environment.
I'm just someone that's a fan
of female sport, that's all it is.
But I sit under the banner
of being a male ally.
And I do think the tag "male ally"
puts people off.
I think it does put people off.
When a female comes watch to male's sport,
whether it's football, rugby,
whatever it might be,
they're not waving a flag saying
"Hey, I'm a female ally!"
They're not, they're
just a fan of the sport.
But there seems to be this--
and I don't know what it is,
maybe it's just this perception,
like you're stepping out,
and look at you all self-righteous
and trying to do the right thing.
[crowd cheering]
It's not us all of a sudden,
just decided we all wanna do it,
we're doing it because it's unignorable.
The quality of it and the brilliance of it
is making more men step up and step out
and showing their support.
And I do hope
and I would encourage
any bloke to step out
and show your love and support.
I think because we live
in such a male dominated society,
until there is equality,
you can never be too much of a male ally.
[Stacey] I think 2022 is such
a massive year
for sport in general in this country.
But certainly for women's sport.
If we just go back
a very short time to 2020,
I remember being interviewed
on television a few times,
and every single time
being asked the question,
"What's gonna happen to women's sport?
Is it gonna disappear?
Is this the end?"
And me thinking, "Are these people crazy?"
like, what-- [laughs]
As if all of us who've dedicated
our whole lives to sport were gonna go,
"Oh... well, that's it now."
[laughs]
"Let's just all go home because
we haven't had a few games for a season!"
Absolutely not.
And I think the one thing
that made women sport
perfectly adaptable for this is we've had
a gazillion barriers to overcome anyway.
We've always had to overcome barriers
just to set foot in the ring,
on the pitch, on the court, wherever.
So we're actually
quite suited to adversity I think.
And certainly in the case
of women's boxing,
COVID helped us know no end,
because the argument has always been
that we couldn't sell tickets,
and tickets were no longer an issue,
because they just had to get shows on
for the TV deals, and they ended up
putting women on them
and they've become, you know,
mega in the sport of boxing now.
[crowd cheering]
The case of Taylor and
Amanda Serrano fight,
personally I feel that whenever there's
a massive moment in women's sport,
we all kind of feel it.
It resonates.
They've had the same struggle
that we've had as a female athlete.
[commentator] How many years has
Amanda Serrano
toiled for this opportunity?
[Laura] I've been to some
amazing sporting events in my lifetime
and honestly, the atmosphere
for Katie Taylor's walk on
was the best I've ever experienced.
-Katie Taylor!
-[crowd cheering]
And it was something about
her walk on that was almost spiritual.
She walked so slowly,
and she really took everything in.
[epic emotional music]
Two females headlining at
Madison Square Garden,
it's never been done before.
[commentator] Ten rounds for history!
Boxing is my sport, it was my first love.
I was really pleased for her
to have that opportunity.
But then there's something
about New York for me.
Having been there as a 10-year-old
told that I couldn't even go on the bag
at a gym not very far away,
all I could imagine was
that 10-year-old girl,
stood outside Madison Square Garden
looking at these massive posters
of these icons and heroes
of women's boxing.
[nostalgic emotional music]
A feeling as a little girl, was again
one that I was to become familiar with
again, and again, and again
through childhood,
my formative years, my adult years.
It has a massive impact in how you feel
about yourself, how you perceive yourself.
Your place in the world,
your identity, your self worth.
And it's much bigger than sport,
and then the fact that
they put on one of the best fights,
that was the important bit.
[Laura] It just didn't become
anything about females,
it became about the most amazing fight,
the amazing combat
within that fight as well.
[commentator] Never count out
Katie Taylor!
They more than delivered.
And it was a sense of relief,
as much as excitement,
that they really seized that moment.
-[presenter] And still, the undisputed...
-[crowd cheers]
...Heavyweight Champion of the World,
-Katie Taylor!
-[crowd cheering]
[Laura] There was no gender relevance,
it was just two incredible sports people,
it felt like a real game changer.
[commentator] The greatest
female fighter of all time!
[Stacey] When the power of sport
is used in the right way,
what a difference that would've made,
and it didn't happen for me,
you know what? That's okay.
Because some of us have to do
the ground work to make sure
that that happens for others.
And that is now happening
for those little girls.
And that's just
an amazing thing for our society.
[soft piano music]
[Sue] The changing situation
in the world because of COVID,
led me to set up Fearless Women,
an agency whose sole aim
is to drive change in women's sport.
One of my favorite activities
is talking to trail blazing women in sport
for my podcast "The Game Changers".
Hello, welcome! Thank you.
Sarah, firstly,
huge congratulations on your selection!
Thank you, it has been
quite challenging the last few years,
with of COVID and injury
and things like that.
So yeah, to finally know
you've made the squad
and you're gonna be
on that plane to New Zealand,
and compete at the pinnacle
of women's rugby, it's like,
it's huge.
As I've got older,
I've learned to recognize that
and realize that
it's more than just myself,
and more than just having
an internal motivation
and especially
an external motivation of what I can do
as an athlete,
as an international Red Rose.
I think the investment
that we've seen in the Red Roses,
it's allowed, for the first time,
Red Roses to be
the best versions of themselves.
Not having to wrestle
between going to work nine to five,
and then fitting in training
at the back of it.
The consequence of that, furthermore,
is it's put pressure on everyone else
to be able to level up
and give the women exactly what they need.
I feel like, and it shouldn't be this way,
but it feels like
the women's game needs to go further.
Or the proof needs to be further
in a case for investment,
it's not just success,
because if it was success,
they'd be getting
better funding than the men.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-It's just not as simple as that.
[emotional uplifting music]
[Clare] When I think about
the European championships,
I just smile because it was so wonderful
to have the whole country
locked into the progress of a team
growing and blossoming before our eyes.
[Kelly] Playing in front of home crowds
and sold out stadiums,
a lot of them have
probably never done that before.
[commentator] The biggest ever
woman's Euro tournament gets underway!
With the largest ever crowd
for the competition!
[Sue] On the pitch, England got better
and better with each game.
And arrived at the finals
as unbeaten favorites.
What's more, with each game,
support for The Lionesses
was growing across the nation
and in the media.
Come on, England!
[Clare] You still feel that tension
when it comes to a final,
and you know anything could happen.
We get to see England beat Germany,
and we beat bitter rivals...
Whoo! Party!
...and just looking around
and seeing lots of red and white
and you couldn't see an empty seat.
And I was pinching myself thinking
"Is this really happening in this country,
a woman's game sold out like this?"
[Sue] It did feel like this was
the final that Euro'22 deserved.
[Kelly] And for me, England and Germany
had played the best,
most attractive football all tournament.
And the finish by Toone was outstanding,
and you just think,
"Wow, I'm gonna pinch myself,
we're gonna do this,
we're gonna win a gold medal finally."
And then obviously they went down
the other end and scored.
[crowd cheering]
And then, extra time.
And you're thinking, "we gotta push
for this, we gotta believe, keep going".
Then obviously, Chloe Kelly popped up,
and with that little toe poke.
[crowd cheering]
[Kelly] We were crying
even before the final whistle,
because we knew we'd won the game
and we were hugging each other,
jumping up and down,
singing "Sweet Caroline"
and we were just bawling,
we were like, "What are we doing?"
We are about to see
England winning and lifting the trophy!
[crowd cheering]
Thought we'd never ever see it!
And it's happening pretty good, yeah!
Because football is
the biggest global sport,
and England's win was watched
by such a huge audience,
it really helped shift the public
perceptions about women's sport.
[Stacey] Kids will now be growing up,
and those early memories
that really grip them
and make them excited about sport,
will be of female athletes,
female teams,
and there's a lot,
males and females, after that will say,
"We" rather than "They",
when they talk about
the women's football team.
Sabrina you're the one
Football's coming home again
[Kelly] I think these Lionesses
from this summer,
what they done
for the country, for the nation,
for all those young girls
and boys out there,
have really made women's sport,
not just football, acceptable.
And that you can be strong,
fit, and muscular, and be out there,
sweating and fighting
for your country to win a tournament.
You know I didn't have that growing up
and these young kids can look up
to these players and think,
"Wow, this is something special,
I want to be like them."
[emotional music]
[Sue] That final at Wembley
was record breaking
in terms of a final for the Euros,
but not only for the women's Euros,
that was record breaking
for men's or women's Euros.
So the proof points now at last
are there
for those people that have always said
that there's no audience.
The Lionesses were incredible
in terms of this moment in time.
The moments in time shift the dialogue.
There was a discussion two years ago,
women's sport was over,
and now it's kind of taken over.
The Distinguished Alumni
is a category of awards
that we can give within
Loughborough University.
And it's to recognize colleagues
that show now standing inspiration,
merit achievement and sustained commitment
in a particular role.
I am really delighted to honor
Sue Anstiss MBE
with our Distinguished Alumni Award
for outstanding contributions
to grassroot and women's sport.
It does mean so much
to be back here at Loughborough.
I was passionate about sport,
but it was very much the university
that ignited a passion and made me realize
the impact that I could have through sport
and the impact that sport can have.
[Laura] Women's sport, I think,
has a vast amount of potential.
It will only grow.
[Clare] Now there are so many more
women working in sport,
so many of them are paying it forward,
and that's really exciting.
[Sue] It's been almost 35 years
I now reflect,
since I last left Loughborough.
And across that time,
the transformation in women's sport
has been quite extraordinary.
Vast increases in terms
of profile and visibility,
crowds coming in to watch
what are now professional athletes
that weren't paid in the past.
It's such a good time to be involved
in women's sport right now.
It's getting better,
there's still a lot of work to be done
but the participation,
and particularly in women's football
and some of the team games
has risen tenfold.
And that makes me very happy.
[Tanni] I think a lot of young girls now
have role models to look up to
and think "I can do that".
[Clare] Girls in schools expect now
to be treated the way
the boys are treated,
to be taken seriously,
to be coached professionally,
to be given the opportunity.
Progress isn't an inevitable thing,
it's people coming together
that make it happen.
I hope that I can encourage
everyone to join me
as we keep on striving
for those changes
that will eventually result in equality
for all women and girls in sports.
So thank you so much.
[crowd applauds]
[Sally] I really hope
that in 10 years' time,
we're not even having these conversations.
We, I think all, have a responsibility,
whatever our role,
to keep talking about how diversity
leads to better decision making,
it leads to better outcomes.
We all have a responsibility
to challenge misogyny when it happens.
We're not yet over the hump,
we've still got a long way to go,
and that is encumbered on all of us
who have leadership roles
to make the change.
We need to continue driving on, right,
we can't let people sit down and say,
"Well, we've done that,
that's equality sorted".
You know? "That'll do".
The big thing is,
what do you want it to be?
What is women's professional sport?
And how does that differ
from men's professional sport?
And there are many ways
in which it should differ,
and they're all good ways.
One problem with talking about
the development of women's sport,
especially in a professional capacity,
is expecting it to mirror the men's game.
It's not going to,
and do we want it to anyway?
I'd love women's sport to emulate
some of what's happening in men's sport.
We want to try and emulate
all the really good things,
and try and stay away
from some of the negative things.
Women's sport can show us
how sport should be,
when you're looking at professionalism,
and you're looking at
the business structure,
what could it be?
How do you make those improvements?
And do it with the women's game
because you're not dealing with
a whole lot of baggage,
and people saying,
"It's always been like this",
because it hasn't.
It's never been like anything.
So start again.
The men's games have been professional
in this country 22 years,
we've made so many mistakes.
The women's game doesn't have
to go through the pain the men's game did.
It doesn't have to all be how it's been
for the last hundred years.
I think women's sport has an opportunity
to do things a little bit differently
and think outside the box in how, maybe
to have sustainable professional sport?
We can build women's sport differently
as a more inclusive positive place.
Creating a more sustainable model
for a league sport
that can also drive
powerful societal change in the world.
With investment in the women's game,
that's when you'll see a change.
And that's when
you'll see the skill level increase.
And it takes time,
and it takes interest and investment.
It's how you grow something,
you can't just overnight say, "It's here".
[Sue] I think it's really important
that we don't just measure
women's sport in terms of eyeballs
and numbers and the traditional metrics
that we've used for men's sport.
Women's sport has so much more to offer.
And one of the key elements
is that association
with all of the values
that come with women's sport.
Companies who understand
what women's sport can bring them,
are actively looking
at sponsoring clubs and individuals
and events for women.
They know it brings a different audience.
They know it brings a more positive
and warm and lovely atmosphere.
They know that they will get
more interaction with the players.
We need to have a game
that can foster the women of today
whilst nourishing and nurturing
and fostering the women of tomorrow.
If we can get that in place, then
I think it will be the men's game
looking at the women's game, saying,
"We should be doing this".
[Sue] So the plan is, 2025
to fill Twickenham for the women's
World Cup final.
It's an amazing notion,
to feel that by 2025,
that this place could be full.
Being able to sell out stadiums like this,
domestically and on
an international stage.
I think once we can get to that level,
then hopefully they get the investment
which has been long overdue.
["God Save The Queen" playing]
[crowd chattering]
[cheering]
[commentator] Standing on the shoulders
of giants that have come before them,
two teams of incredible women.
Harrison out to Scarratt
who's got Kildunne at wide...
And Ellie Kildunne scores
in the opening two minutes for England!
What a start for the Red Roses!
[cheering]
[commentator] Pressure building here,
and Marlie Packer powers over!
England looking dominant
in the battle!
[indistinct chatter]
I don't know, I'm a bit nervous.
[commentator] New Zealand is on the
short side, they've got numbers,
and Krystal Murray scores in the corner!
The Black Ferns coming back strong!
It might sit up with Stacey Fluhler,
just short,
but Leti-l'iga is there to finish it!
New Zealand go back in front!
[dramatic epic music]
[whistle blowing]
[commentator] From the depths of despair,
the World Cup winners again!
New Zealand are the champions!
[mild applause]
[Sue] It wasn't the fairy tale ending
we were all hoping for
for the Red Roses.
But, on reflection,
there were so many positives to take away.
Only a few years ago,
you wouldn't have believed
that hundreds of people would wake up
at 6 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday
to come together in a pub
to watch women's sport.
And then another two million were watching
at home over their breakfasts.
To see the pub full of such a wide range
of men, women, and children,
gives me great hope
for the future of women's sport.
[emotional epic music]
Throughout this incredible year,
I've seen the enormous potential
of women's sport to drive positive change.
I've also seen that women's sport
doesn't need to replicate
what men sport has done to be successful.
[Molly] If women get equality in sport,
I think that is a really powerful place
to then begin to have equality
more widely in society.
People care so deeply about sport,
that power to care about it
is the really important part about it,
and if people really care
about women's sport,
the same way they care about men's sport,
and give it the same respect
they give men's sport,
that respect would
hopefully translate a bit more widely.
If they're seeing them
as equals playfield,
they see them as whole human beings.
I'm filled with hope seeing
the next generation of young women
so determined to create
positive change in gender equality.
[Molly] I think when
you humanize people on the playing field,
you then humanize them in society as well.
And a really foundational
and important part
of fighting for equality is
recognizing that these people
are as deserving of quality and respect.
As you, because they are equal to you.
[Tanni] In the next five years,
we are going to see the biggest change
in women's sport,
that we've probably seen in the last 30.
And that's the thing that keeps me going,
that's the thing
that makes me really excited.
Because we can almost see
the light at the end of the tunnel.
["Take Me Away"
by Dj Brown Meister playing]
[laughter]
It's about what is an ally,
what is a man ally?
You're playing all over!
Jesus Christ, we just had to do this
outside Twickenham.
Why are we not in a nice quiet room?
[Sue coughing]
I was holding that!
The pain gives you parity
and it gives you power.
Ooh, that was quite good.
That's a good slogan!
I feel so much more posi-
[babbles]
-[Sue] Oh, my God.
-[Ali] Should we do it again?
Sue already had her hand in the till
three times.
-[woman] And you've got a TV show.
-[Sue laughs]
Ready to watch England, New Zealand--
No, that's complete... [bleep]
[laughter]