Written by Stephanie Hilborne OBE, Chief Executive of Women in Sport.
As we finally have time to step back and reflect on a milestone year for our charity – and like all good birthdays we are making it last as long as possible – I believe we can feel extremely proud of all we have achieved. And fired up for the work ahead.
What did the sporting world look like when we were founded?
In 1984, there was very little societal recognition of the cruelty, let’s call it what it is, of excluding women and girls from so much of sport. No-one noticed that girls like me who loved team sport could never dream of reaching the top because there was no women’s team sport in the national media. Women were only allowed that year to run the Olympic marathon for the first time. This was seen as the cutting edge of gender equality in sport (it would of course take another 28 years before we were allowed to take part in all Olympic sports and until this year for participation to reach rough gender parity).
Nor was there much empathy for our founders when they challenged the system to ask why their sporting successes, their work, their achievements were not deemed worthy of celebration. It is hardly surprising that, in the early years, Women in Sport was seen by the men who were organising sport to be an irritant to the safe, comfortable, male-dominated world they had built.
We owe so much to those amazing women and the men who supported them. We know that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Far from being deterred by the oppression, ridicule and disdain they faced, they were spurred on by it. It has been a particular joy of this special year to meet and spend some time with our surviving founders and the friends and family of those who are sadly no longer with us. We aim to connect more with these great people as we go into 2025.
Things have changed in forty years and there is much to celebrate as we reach our milestone. Women who, like our organisation, are over the age of 40 are finally visible in the mainstream media. Their influence and their voices have begun national conversations missing for far too long, such as around the menopause, reproductive healthcare and knee injuries in female footballers. Women’s team sport has finally reached our screens and we can celebrate record attendances at women’s matches; what a change it is to see the Lionesses regularly playing at Wembley just as the Three Lions do. We know from our research that young women are beginning to dream about reaching the top of sport in larger numbers, especially the sporty few.
Both Women in Sport and women in sport have come a long way. But the job is not done. There is much still to do, and we must do it faster.
In November we marked the high point of our anniversary year: a landmark conference entitled Joining Forces for the Future. Almost half the 150 guests were men, and they were addressed from the stage not just by brilliant women but by brilliant men. Men from the law and the police who have dealt with the most extreme and violent manifestations of misogyny. Men from business who are utterly committed to women’s sport not just because it is good business but because they know in their bones it is, simply, good. Men from across sport, who have taken action on misogyny and committed to transform their sports and their organisations so that they are better places for women and girls. Men who are committed to change, who know that allyship is a verb not a noun.
This 40th Anniversary conference – and the Parliamentary reception that preceded it – had an atmosphere of extraordinary togetherness, and it was clear we are at a turning point in our history. At the beginning of our story, the brilliant women involved needed to define their own purpose and decide upon their own tactics to ensure true agency. They needed to resist the real or perceived tendency of men to take over and talk over them. They were fighting simply to be in the room, to be included.
In 2024, we are ready to link arms in joint endeavour with the men who truly believe in our cause, the men who know in their hearts that it is wrong to deny women and girls of the joy of sport. Now we are all in the room together, fighting for real equality.
And the world has never needed this more, as we enter a new era of polarisation, face a new wave of backlash, a new kind of oppression, a new division between the sexes on a global scale. Left unchanged sport has the potential to fuel further misogyny and division. But sport also has the potential to bring us together and act as an immense uniting force.
With our allies across sport, business, politics and beyond, I have no doubt that we can unlock this potential. Women in Sport has shown that we have big ideas that help sport to deliver change; to make sure that no woman or girl is excluded from the joy of sport. Our 40th anniversary year has shown that the appetite for this change is there, and not just amongst a few fearless women.
This is why we go into 2025 with renewed determination.
