A DIFFERENT GAME - Equality in Women's Sport - Sports Series Episode 1

Cathy Devine, expert in sport policy at elite and participatory levels with a special interest in equality for girls and women.
Corinne Kielty, cycling coach, ex Breeze Champion for British Cycling and cyclist.
Tess McInnes, cycling club Welfare Officer and member of British Cycling.
We discuss the UK history of women’s exclusion from sport going back to the stated principle of Pierre De Coubetin: “this feminine semi-Olympiad is impractical, uninteresting, ungainly and improper; it is not in keeping with my concept of the Olympic Games: the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism with the applause of women as a reward”. It is extraordinary how widely this attitude prevailed into the 21st century.
Excluding women from sport is part and parcel of women’s designated roles in the public sphere as handmaidens, not participants; and how sport was and still is perceived as ‘unfeminine’ and not for girls or women.
Football was one of the first games that welcomed women, was popular with crowds but that ultimately women were banned due to the perception that men were losing out. Cycling symbolised independence for women. Gradually from the 1960s, women began to enter the professional and amateur arenas and successfully created both their own Olympic governing body and in the UK, a Women’s Sports Council separate from their male counterparts. Up to the 1990s almost all women’s sports were administered separately until the Sports Councils recommended mergers and men’s sport still dominates today.
This takeover and deprioritising of women’s sport has resulted in the stunting of girls and women’s sports and how as a result, we have very little by way of a legacy to build on. The lack of a longstanding popular culture of women’s sport continues to discourage the visibility of women coaches and policy makers, which contributes to the lack of thought given to encouraging girls into sport.
We discuss exclusion in schools, where non-traditional sports that might inspire girls are underinvested. Traditional team sports are cheaper to run and teachers hesitant to teach PE. Some girls enjoy traditional sports such as football, rugby and hockey, but are deterred by the lack of initiatives taken to make these spaces inclusive for girls, who experience a very different social conditioning to boys.
We discuss sport culture in general; certain sports seem hostile to atypical males as much as females. The macho culture of sport is as problematic for some men as for women; women’s sport is not the remedy or the refuge for men fleeing ‘toxic masculinity’. There is the absurd and intolerable situation that trans men, trans women and women are all competing in the women’s category. Men’s sport meanwhile continues unaffected. Why is it not problematic for trans men to compete in women’s sport, but it’s problematic for trans women to compete in men’s sport? The culture of National Governing Bodies and men’s sport in general has much work to do to address this.
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