Women’s Sport Week: Key figures discuss long battle to put women’s sport on same level as men – Telegraph.co.uk

HMOne of the most shocking things in the last six weeks was [when] we were invited on to a TV channel to talk about women in sport and had a great discussion with a female presenter before we went live on TV, and the male presenter kicked off with, ‘So, now there’s gender equality’ … I thought ‘Sorry?’ He absolutely ambushed it. Because the women’s hockey team made it on to the BBC News, that was it, ‘job done’, ‘success’. I was so angry, so angry. The female TV presenter grovelled and apologised afterwards. But I was just like, ‘This sums it up. Absolutely sums it up’. And that attitude there made me go, ‘Right, this battle is definitely up and running – even more so’ … Still really angry!

OC It’s good to get angry. There is clearly a groundswell of women in business who want to see this changing.

CT I fought hard during my career to try to make my gender irrelevant, that I was a good cricketer and it didn’t matter whether I was a woman or a man. And, yet, the experience that you have is bound by the fact that you play women’s cricket. It’s much easier now – there are many more clubs that play cricket – but there was one club in three counties when I first started playing, and that was the only club I could go to. Thank God it was quite close because, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been a cricketer.

What about how sportswomen are portrayed in the media? Is it ever acceptable to sexualise sport, male or female?

CT It’s all about the sport and your ability and it really should not matter what you look like.

SH The stigma that’s attached to that and the profiling that we do see of certain female athletes is enough to put an awful lot of girls off ever thinking that they could ever play to that level. Because, they’ll never look like that, they’ll never be that beautiful – if that’s what you want to call it. And I see that in my own daughter.

OC I think we’re much better than we ever used to be, aren’t we? The media don’t just select a very small number of women and present them to us as a fully packaged, polished example of beauty.

SH To be honest, we also have some sportswomen that don’t help themselves, either.

OC But isn’t that their choice?

SH It is their choice, but it doesn’t help the rest of us.

HM I think that if Serena Williams looked different … She’s a phenomenal, phenomenal athlete, hugely successful, yet doesn’t get nearly as much recognition as she should do. If you look at the 16 gold medallists from the women’s GB hockey team, which ones have got higher profiles? Not the ones that contributed the most, or scored the winning goal, or had been captain for 13 years. It’s the ones that looked prettiest, and you can see the opportunities that come for them. So, it’s blindingly obvious, still, there’s a way to go.