Tessa Towell speech to 'Taking Action – Realising the Opportunities from Equality in Sport' conference: 9 November 2004
I am really pleased to be here today and delighted to see and hear from so many of you who are so deeply committed to this important area of fairness in sport.
I would like to thank our hosts, The English Federation of Disability Sport, The Women's Sports Foundation and Sporting Equals for providing us with this opportunity to compare our different perspectives and generate new ideas.
There is so much enthusiasm and so many good ideas that we can all leave this conference with a renewed sense of hope and enthusiasm.
I particularly want to say how pleased I am about the adoption of the equality standards and the improvements to the professionalism of our sports bodies that these will deliver.
The adoption of these standards is a welcome recognition by UK Sport and all the Home Country sport councils that it is time to build a commitment to equality into all their programmes.
Let me explain for a moment what equality means in this context.
It doesn't mean sport in which everyone wins prizes. It means a commitment to reaching out to all sectors of society to give them equal chances to be the best they can be.
It means reaching out to all those who can benefit from sport regardless of their talent.
Sport is good for health, good for self-esteem, good for teamwork and good for social skills. Sport is an uplifting part of our lives.
Everyone deserves an equal chance to find out what sport can be for them – the pleasure of competition, the pleasure of taking part, and the discovery of all those social and other benefits in their own right that participation in sport can bring.
This conference is taking place at such an exciting time.
In less than a week London 2012 will submit the London bid file to the IOC.
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We want the Olympics to come to London because this is a nation that loves sport.
We want the Games in Britain because it will galvanise the regeneration of the East End and because it will galvanise how we see sport in our society.
Our bid is not just about staging a wonderful competition in fantastic facilities, it is also about using the magic of the Olympics to boost participation.
Ours will be a legacy Olympics – a sport city in east London, for the community as well as the elite, training camps throughout the UK, and a legacy of enthusiasm for sport built up over the 7 years between the bid and Games, to live on after the closing ceremony.
The Athens Olympics showed how passionate we are as a nation about sport.
Our athletes in Athens in both the Olympics and Paralympics, have been an inspiration to all of us.
Most importantly, they inspired the next generation of aspiring young athletes who watched their sporting heroes and heroines collecting their medals while thinking to themselves "one day that will be me…"
Our fans in Athens were wonderful. No other country took as many fans to the Games, no other set of fans were as knowledgeable or as good-natured.
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So we have the passion. As a nation we certainly know how to talk the talk when it comes to sport.
But as a nation only a few know how to walk the walk – and even fewer ever break into a run!
How do we get all the people who are interested in sport to take part? Especially girls and women, people with disability, and people from social and ethnic backgrounds with little sporting tradition.
Let us just reflect for a moment on the scale of the problem:
- Girls as young as seven already showing a disdain for sport and physical activity;
- By age 18, 40% of girls will have dropped out of sport altogether;
- Nearly half of adult women do no regular exercise.
That's why the announcement from the Women's Sports Foundation of their new Sport and Physical Activity campaign is so welcome.
We know the scale of the problem, but we don't yet know the answers.
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The research that forms part of this campaign will, hopefully, provide us with answers to these key questions:
- Why don't many women and girls undertake even the most simple, low cost and convenient forms of activity let alone formal sport?
- How can we change what we offer by way of physical activity to suit the reality of women's lives as they really live them rather than as glossy magazines think they should live them?
These are complex questions and getting the answers right is a challenge to us all.
There is no point in clinging sentimentally to the view that team sports played on boggy pitches in winter, followed by bracing communal showers is somehow a model that will bring the millions back to sport.
We have to accept that in modern times people want quality and they want choice.
But I'm glad to see that change is happening.
The growth in women's football shows what can be done. Making the sport welcoming, making it easy to get involved, offering decent pitches and decent changing rooms has made it easy for thousands of women to get involved.
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In the 2003-04 season the number of players hit the 100,000 mark. There are now 101,000 girls and women playing regular 11-a-side football in England.
Research conducted for the Football Association found that 85% of girls aged 7-15 in England took part in some form of footballing activity in 2002.
Now there are more women in Parliament we can sustain a women's football team. And if we can play – anyone can play!
So far the Football Foundation has provided £1.6 million for 30 specific women and girls' coaching projects.
The talent and enthusiasm is out there and when the money is targeted properly women respond in their thousands.
So the grass roots numbers are growing. The next challenge will be to get women into coaching and then into management.
Delia Smith and Karen Brady at Norwich and Birmingham prove that women can run premier league football clubs. But they are the exceptions that prove the rule. So let's get more women into management and into coaching.
And we need to face the fact that there are too few black people coaching and managing in football.
When you think of the black talent on the pitch it is a scandal that there are so few who break through off the pitch.
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It's time to break the barriers down. We need to see more women, more black people, more British Asians getting into sport, and getting on in sport.
We all celebrated Amir Khan's success at the Olympics, and at last Asian cricketers are breaking through into the first-class game.
But where are the Asian footballers or the black coaches? Something isn't working, and sport has to put its house in order if we are to get the best from the talent that is out there.
I am delighted that some parts of the media have made really good progress in this area with more women sports presenters on radio and television nowadays.
And it is a tribute of the work of women like Eleanor who have blazed a trail in a male-dominated area and demonstrated by their achievements that they bring as much knowledge and enthusiasm to their coverage of sporting events as their male colleagues do.
We must never underestimate what a difference it makes to have these positive role models that girls and women can identify with.
But there is still a way to go. We want to see greater representation of people with disabilities and people from minority ethnic communities in sports broadcasting, whether on radio, local and national press or on our television screens.
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We all cheered when Kelly Holmes struck gold, and held our breath as she crossed the finishing line again and took a second gold medal.
And we all marveled at Paula Radcliffe's determination to break away over the final few hundred metres to win the New York Marathon on Sunday.
What achievements and what inspiration to young women athletes!
I want to mention the success of our sportsmen and women who competed so successfully at the Paralympics in Athens by winning the second biggest tally of medals, after China.
They have done us proud and have demonstrated that they more than justified the £20 million of lottery investment in Paralympic sports over the four years between Sydney and Athens.
This is more than double the investment made in the run up to Sydney.
But we can't rest on our laurels regarding investment in disability sport. Far from it.
But I do think we are heading in the right direction and the success of our Paralympians is evidence of that.
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Moving away for a moment from elite sport, important though it is, and the wonderful feel-good factor that it creates for all of us when Team GB is successful at international competitions.
There are many other benefits to our nation from participation in sport.
Everyone here is well aware of the health problems that arise from physical inactivity.
Physical inactivity along with unhealthy diet has contributed to the growth of obesity in England.
22% of men and 23% of women are now obese, a trebling since the 1980s. This is a truly shocking statistic and it is even more worrying that there is such a gender imbalance in the figures:
- More women than men are failing to do adequate levels of physical activity,
- Fewer girls than boys are meeting the requirements for physical activity levels.
- The proportion of people engaging in physical activity declines with age, more steeply after the age of 35; and
- Socially disadvantaged people are those with some of the worst levels of physical activity with all the ill health consequences that follow.
This needs to be addressed as part of the equality agenda.
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We can take some encouragement from some fine examples of innovative good practice.
One such example is Horton Grange Women's Physical Activity and Health Project. Run by Bradford Sport Action Zone, the programme aims to increase participation in activity and sport, particularly for older Asian women.
Many of the women are isolated and there are substantial cultural and religious barriers.
The programme is aimed at women who are overweight, have complex health problems and raises awareness of healthy lifestyle options.
Many such initiatives are underpinned by the dedication of people who volunteer their time and energy to help their communities.
The current volunteering climate is an ideal time to increase efforts to boost participation.
The Russell Commission is now consulting on ways to increase volunteering amongst young people. The Commission's remit goes beyond sport but recognises that nothing comes close to sport as a recruiting sergeant for volunteers.
2005 has been designated the Year of Volunteering, a wonderful opportunity to bring even more volunteers into sport.
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Volunteer support strategies such as the Step into Sport programme are creating an increased steady supply of volunteers working in sport and ensuring the smooth running of sports clubs.
Encouraging young children to get involved with sport is vital. And the Government's strategy is about ALL children, whatever their background and ability.
If 85% of all 5-16 year olds in maintained schools are to take up 2 hours of high quality PE and school sport by 2008, then schools will have to address disengagement by many girls and young women.
But many schools in school sport partnerships are doing this already. They are widening the number of sports activities on offer. For example, each school in a School Sport Partnership provides an average of more than 14 sports.
Government is doing its bit too. Just over £459 million is being spent on the PE, school sport and club links strategy to transform the state of sport in our schools.
Our schools are where young talent can be identified and nourished and where good habits for life can be established.
Our athletes need to be supported at every step as they evolve from talented youngster to elite performer.
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There is a great deal of pressure on talented young sports people, but imagine how difficult it must be to handle when combined with the intense pressure of starting a career or course of study.
Perhaps it is no surprise that the drop out rate of our most talented 17 to 21 year olds is so high.
If we are fully to realize our sporting potential then we must have a system in place that supports our talented young athletes through this critical period.
This is where the Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme fits in - it bridges the gap between junior sport and world-class levels.
TASS will enable our athletes to maximise their sporting potential when they leave school, whether they are students or in work.
TASS will also ensure that outstanding talent that was previously lost, is now developed.
The Government is firmly behind TASS. £3 million a year of exchequer funding has been secured for the programme.
TASS scholarships are for our talented 18 to 25 year olds who are undertaking higher or further education and can be worth up to £3000.
TASS bursaries are for our talented 16 to 19 year olds in further education or employment and are worth a minimum of £1000.
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The scheme is open to disabled sports people aged up to 35.
TASS recipients get coaching, sports medicine, physiotherapy, conditioning, physiology and lifestyle management.
TASS will ensure that our talented youngsters now have the support they need to develop in their sport whilst continuing with their academic studies or employment.
All too often young people take part in sport at school, but then give it up soon after they leave. It can be really hard to combine a budding sporting career with college work, or a first job. The TASS scheme is intended to tackle this unnecessary loss of sporting talent.
In addition to the very obvious health benefits, participation in sport offers so much more.
It provides a wonderful opportunity to engage young people who have become or are in danger of becoming marginalised.
For example, the Positive Futures programme uses sport and other activities to establish relationships with young people who are often alienated from officialdom and authority figures such as teachers, probation officers and even parents.
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Once again, volunteers are the key - Positive Futures projects couldn't work without volunteers, many of whom began in the projects then stayed to help others.
Before I take questions and then pass you onto Eleanor to wind up, I would like to leave you with a final thought:
Eleanor, I'm sure understands the pressures of being a 'minority' in a landscape with no role model.
Eleanor started her career with Radio Shropshire in the Eighties at a time when women footballers were hardly allowed to make the tea, let alone present sports programmes on national radio.
It is a tribute to people like her, that we now accept that women can be excellent sports presenters, but that change of attitude has not happened overnight.
It has taken years to chip away at the old stereotype image of what a 'typical' sports presenter looked like.
But the transformation of public attitudes also demands passion and determination from those of us who seek change. That transformation is not yet complete.
This is where you come in.
You are the people that can bring about that change. You can make the dream become a reality for women and people with disabilities and those from minority ethnic groups.
I know you have the passion to put in place a landscape that helps everyone excel in their chosen sport, whether they be our next Olympians and Paralympians or are just trying to get fitter by undertaking regular exercise.
And I thank you for your continuing commitment.
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