Tessa Jowell's speech to the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation's "Creating a Nation of Active Women" conference
I am delighted to be here.
Have been on WSFF ‘Women MP’s Fitness Scheme’. One of 12 MPs and MSPs.
My gym time is one of the cornerstones around which I build my day.
It also gave me the opportunity, when I visited British Cycling a few weeks ago, to tell Victoria Pendleton that I too sprint on my bike 3 mornings a week.
The fact that I do it on a stationary bike at a spinning class is beside the point!
I am delighted to welcome the new strategy on Creating a Nation of Active Women. I know there will be much detailed discussion on these issues throughout the day.
We know how big the challenge is.
British sport is predominantly run by men; sports media is dominated by men with a few outstanding exceptions; boys are still given more encouragement to play sport; as a result far fewer women and girls participate in sport.
Half as many women play organised sport as men.
And more than 80% of girls and women – 24 million in the UK - are not doing enough physical activity.
When we ask why, there are a thousand reasons – some complex, some sensitive, some societal - which we need to understand and challenge.
60% of women believe they do enough activity to benefit their health, but in 20 years it is predicted that seven out of every ten women will be overweight.
There is a discrepancy between the risk of inactivity and participation.
The message clearly isn’t getting through so we need to be talking to women in a different way – through their media, their workplace, their children’s schools – to get the health benefits across and to build an understanding of these benefits.
And how often do women get the chance to see other women playing sport? Why do we not see much more women’s sport outside the Olympics on broadcast or print media?
There is more than 50 times as much coverage in the media for men's sport than women's, with just 2 per cent of articles and 1 per cent of images devoted to elite female athletes and women's sport.
Let me challenge the broadcasters, print media, sponsors, the local sport centres and ask the question - why aren’t you doing more to focus on participation and competitive achievements?
Female lifestyles often leave little room for sport.
But we know that more than half of women would exercise more if local facilities were better quality and eight out of ten with dependent children say that being able to exercise with their children would encourage them to exercise more.
We need to challenge our local sports and activity providers to use this intelligence to create an environment that works and is comfortable for women and makes participation more likely.
The provision of a lazy ‘one size fits all’ approach to sports provision, ignoring the nuance and specificity of demand, is like throwing seeds into the air and hoping they’ll fall on fertile ground.
Unless we work hard to understand the growth dynamics in women’s sport and participation, we’ll never see real change.
And we must look at how money is spent.
The salary alone of Fabio Cappello, is three times larger than the £2million total annual budget for the entire England international women's team!
Finally, lack of sensitivity at school and in sport can put women off.
Do girls have to wear ugly and uncomfortable kit for PE? 23 per cent of women say that PE at school put them off for life.
Can women footballers wear the hijab if they want to?
West Ham United, with Sport England, are running a ground breaking project to encourage Asian people into football.
And girls-only football sessions are running in Tower Hamlets, Newham and Redbridge to get young women to become footballers and coaches.
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These good schemes are dotted around the country but should be the norm.
Our challenge is to change the face of sport so it is as much a place for women as men.
London 2012 is a unique opportunity to change this situation.
Far more women watch the Olympics than other sporting events.
Look at the faces of Beijing – many of them women – Nicole Cooke, Ellie Simmonds, Rebecca Adlington, Christine Ohorugu.
New heroines.
We must use them and 2012 to make sport something every girl grows up feeling able and motivated to do.
But every day we must stop, check and ensure that we are doing everything in our power to remove the glass ceiling for women in elite sport that some still perceive exists and is a barrier.
Sports federations and the IOC have done a great amount to promote women’s participation in the major events like the Olympic Games.
I would like to underline that the IOC and the Olympic movement take this very seriously.
Since 1996 much has been done to increase gender parity:
- 1996: inclusion of women’s 5,000m, triple-jump and football
- 2000: 20km walk, pole vault, hammer, water polo and modern pentathlon
- 2008: 3000m steeplechase and 10k open water swimming.
But I urge us all to keep in mind that, although much has been achieved, complacency is the enemy of change.
Victoria Pendleton has raised the issue of cycling disciplines where only one sprint event is contested by women as opposed to three for men.
Overall in Olympic track cycling, men contest seven events and women just three, although (at least in cycling) this disparity doesn’t exist at World Championship level.
This disparity is not restricted to track cycling.
Overall in the Olympic programme over a third of the 34 events across the 26 sports reflect some gender discrepancy. In Paralympic Sports this is nearer 50 per ecnt.
We must of course understand what we are dealing with.
I really want to underline that this is in no way a criticism of the Olympic movement because for some sports, there will be underlying societal and demand reasons for disparity.
But progress for women is never achieved by taking no for an answer – so lets hear from the girls – what do they want, what are their hopes and dreams and how can we – the sports world, the international sports federations, the IOC, the leisure and fitness world, politicians and public, help them achieve their goals?
And how can we shape our sporting world in a way that responds to them rather than creating barriers to their progress.
We know that sport is good for women not just for enjoyment but for health and wellbeing but we can’t just go on about this and expect women to listen.
It is for all of us to ask the awkward questions and to never simply accept the status quo.
We must do our utmost to ensure that there is no unreasoned and unjustifiable ceiling on the aspiration and ambition of those women who say “I want to be the best that I can be”.
[Ends]
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