Woman's Hour - Late Night Woman's Hour: Sport

Episode Date: August 25, 2016

Following the massive success of female athletes on Team GB in the Rio Olympics, Lauren Laverne discusses women in sport with: Maggie Alphonsi, World Cup-winning rugby player and sports commentator and pundit Cherrelle Brown, champion boxer and personal trainer Anna Kessel, sports writer and author of Eat Sweat Play Jean Williams, Professor of the History and Culture of Sport at DeMontfort UniversityProducer: Luke Mulhall.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello and welcome. This Olympic month, we're talking about what else sport. What a month it's been for female athletes. Of the 67 medals won by Team GB in Rio, 26 were won by women. But away from track, field and podium and a little closer to the boardroom, the statistics look rather different. Research by Sport England tells us that more and more women are playing sports regularly. On the programme tonight, we'll be finding out how far those sporting women have come, how far they have to go and what they stand to gain by getting involved. Joining me, Anna Kessel, sports writer and author of Eat, Sweat, Play. Welcome.

Thank you. Sounds like an instruction manual come memoir, come manifesto. Well, yeah, and I've already started eating and sweating. So hopefully we'll play tonight. It's been warm this week. We also have Jean Williams, Professor of Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University. Welcome. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us. Sherelle Brown, Championship boxer, personal trainer and boxing coach. Hello to you. Hello. You sound like a busy woman. Very busy. Very, very busy. Well, thanks for making the time. And we've also got Maggie Alfonsi,

MBE rugby union player, former flanker for the Saracens and England and former Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year. Thank you for joining us. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. Yeah, great TV. I'm more intimidated. I know, exactly.

Wikipedia out the Submit Right down. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. I guess we should start by talking about the Olympics. How is your post-Olympics come down progressing, Anna? What about your highlights from the Games? Simone Biles. I loved watching Simone Biles. I loved watching a lot of my sports journalist colleagues

who normally would never have been seen dead in the gymnastics hall go in there and get really excited about gymnastics my sports journalist colleagues who would normally, would never been seen dead in the gymnastics hall, go in there and get really excited about gymnastics and sort of admitting that even though they didn't know much about gymnastics, you couldn't possibly not notice how amazing Simone Biles is because she's just streets away of anyone else. Maggie, how about you watching some of the Olympics? What will steer with you? Who performed best? Yeah, I think the big thing for me is rugby was introduced into the Olympics? What will stay with you? Who performed best? Yeah, I think the big thing for me

is rugby was introduced into the Olympics. So the first six days for me had to be the best six days of the Olympics to see the women compete in rugby sevens on the world stage alongside Jessica Ennis-Hills, you know, Usain Bolt. I think that was very special.

And it really has changed the way women's rugby is, I guess, viewed. Because I think people now can see that they're athletes, that they're capable of doing the same thing as to our male counterparts. You know, it's now got a different perception, which is great. Because we hadn't had that previously before. Because now it's obviously been shown on terrestrial TV and everyone can see it. So that's been the biggest highlight to me and also seeing the uh the women's hockey team um get gold as well was brilliant absolutely brilliant everybody was talking about that even people

who knew nothing about that sport were like we want to go out with those girls afterwards they looked they were they were just so on a high and to see kate richard you know richard walsh you know do the flag on the closing ceremony. Another special thing as well. So I think I was more impressed by seeing how well the team sports had done. So seeing the women's rugby be introduced into the Olympics and seeing how well the women's hockey team did. Jean, give me some of your Olympic highlights. You know, accentuate the positive here.

What will you remember from Rio? I think Jessica Ennis-Hill, her performance and the way, you know, in that final race, she tried to win it from the front and she wasn't going to go out anything other than from the front, you know, and the other girl had to catch her. So I thought that that was completely brilliant. Cheryl, tell me about your Olympic highlights. What really caught your eye?

The American boxer, the middleweight, Clarissa Shields. The fact that she won, obviously, two golds back-to-back, along with our own Nick and Adam, I thought that was awesome. I mean, for me, when I was kind of growing up and stuff, I didn't really have a lot of strong females to look up to, role models to look up to, and to have that now is just awesome, you know? Like, it's just nice.

Hopefully we see a lot more women stepping into the sport because of Nicola Adams, Clarissa Shields and all the rest of them. It seems like she's a personality, especially Nicola is a personality and a sports person that seems to have stepped outside of the sport to become a kind of public figure in a bigger way, in a broader way. I mean, that's obviously an experience that you've had, Maggie. What is that like to go through that?

You're an athlete and then suddenly you find yourself as a spokesperson and a public figure. I think it's funny because a lot of athletes don't necessarily go out of their way to be a spokesperson. I guess a lot of them just try to be the best athlete they can be. And understandably, their performances, their achievements put them in the spotlight. And you feel like you have to become a spokesperson. Nicola Adams does incredibly well.

I think she doesn't necessarily have to talk about what she does. She shows us what she does. And that's what is very inspiring. For people like myself, I play a sport which is perceived to be very male-orientated. And then when I retired, I think what's great is that I now go and talk about how great the sport is and that women can do it

and it's a genderless sport, really. So that's what I try and do. But like I said, a lot of athletes try and just stand up for good morals, really. It's not necessarily about being the best spokesperson that they can be. It's just being the best athlete they can be and when they become in the spotlight they have to really stand up for their values and their beliefs. I mean the Olympics is this great kind of window

for us to to look at not just women in sport but attitudes to women in general and it feels like that is front and centre in 2016. What did Rio tell us about the status of women in sport and where the conversation is and where it needs to go next? Anna? I mean, I'm kind of caught between this high of, oh, we've done so amazing, Team GB, and some of the incredible performances that we've seen, but also some of the intense lows of, you know,

the most sexist Olympics ever. I don't think it was, but I think we're more aware than ever of the sexism and other issues. So you think the conversation around it, I mean, it was pretty evident to me, certainly, that people seem to be calling out a lot of sexism. I mean, that was one of the hot talking points of the Olympics this year, wasn't it?

Everybody was talking about commentary, and not just the commentary, but more broadly about sexism and inequality in sport. Did anybody else feel that, Jean? You're nodding. Yeah, I think some of the stuff that disturbed me most was the commentary around Jessica Ennis and the way that people talked about her coming back after having a baby and then, you know, trying to regain her title and I mean there was some appalling commentary from some really quite senior

BBC female commentators you know Hazel Irving said for example that new mothers don't come out of the house for sort of three years so it was incredible that this professional sports woman can actually be all four months in to be fair

so you're allowed out at this point but seriously what's the problem with that because some people might A professional sportswoman can actually... You're four months in, to be fair, so you're allowed out at this point. I mean, but seriously, you know, what's the problem with that? Because some people might say, mightn't they, that, you know, it is a huge toll on your body having a baby. It's a huge kind of experience for your body to go through. So perhaps it's reasonable to, you know, look at her performance in those terms. I don't know. I would encourage anybody who has that view

to read Paula Radcliffe's autobiography because one of the things that Paula shows in her work is that she really uses medical science to the best of her advantage as a professional athlete. She trains at altitude, she uses the best medical advice that she can get. And therefore her pregnancies will be totally planned, totally prepared for and totally monitored. So she won't be like any other young mother. You know, these are professional

sportswomen and this is what they do. It's their job. Sherelle? I'm just going to touch on the point of jessica ennis hill i've had the privilege of watching her train she is awesome like she's a beast she's she's seriously she's if you've seen her train and you see it's not the fact that she's a mum it's the fact that she's not she's an athlete yeah and she trains like the best in the world i've seen her and i was like hiding i got a picture eventually but i mean absolutely awesome and then speaking on touching on you know mothers

who train or athletes and stuff i train a mum's boxing class solely for mums like i wake up on a monday to train them and they are the hardest working people i've ever worked with mentally as well i think it probably helps females to be mothers in sports as well. It just takes them to a different level of competing to go through that. It's interesting as well, because Sherelle, you were saying, you know, that you saw Jessica Ennis train and that, you know, she's a beast and that gives her all. And that's part of what helps people who aren't sporty

and don't consider themselves sporty or perhaps don't know much about the individual disciplines, that's what helps people connect and that's what captures people's imagination, I think. She is. It's her andropathy as well, you know. When people talk about her, they think about the age as opposed to, you know, she's got a couple of kids as well.

So it's amazing the words that we use to describe some of those athletes. But at the same time, I find it so inspiring because I just think, wow, she has done that and actually I think I'm capable of doing that even though retired but I do think you know you look at them as a level of you just think wow if they can do it

so I do look at Jessica Ennis-Hill, Jo Pave and many others of such a high level of wow I think that's amazing but it's amazing that we also still look at them as being mothers as opposed to being athletes. We see them in that context Jean? The narratives are so, in many ways, old-fashioned.

Most famously, when Fanny Blankers-Cohen won four gold medals in 1948 at the Olympics. She was 30 years old. She already had two children. And she was pregnant with her third when she won her gold medal. Was much made of that at the time? Enormously. She was called the flying housewife. Just going to write that down for a future possible kids' book. The headlines in the newspapers were the fastest woman in the world is an excellent cook.

You know, all of these kinds of things. So you would think that that's 1948. Why are we still talking about this? You know, other than it is part of people's story, as you say, and it is it is inspiring. But it's not that unusual. OK. I mean, Jean, you've you've talked about this a little bit already, you know, the idea that actually the conversation hasn't moved on as much as you would like.

Did you feel like there was evidence of progress as well? I don't like the use of the word progress. And I particularly don't like this narrative that women are making progress. Actually, when you look at some of the structural forces, and I think Sherelle could speak to this a little bit more with her example, when you look at the structural forces that are preventing women from entering into the Olympics,

because it's such a male-dominated administration, then it means that very talented women like cheryl don't have their opportunity and what so tell me about that so um obviously in the olympics they uh 2012 was the first time women were allowed to compete uh in boxing um of the 10 categories that there are there were only three weights for women so i failed an assessment at gb not because i wasn't talented enough it was because i couldn't make the weight and make it safely where is the equality and that we talk about equality nowadays but five weights for women ten for men you know some people are never going to get the chance to even qualify for the olympics never get the chance to be an

olympian you know and that makes people pretty bitter and pretty upset you put in a lot of work for boxing i train five to six days a week i'm up at five o'clock in the morning running and i'm working around it and then having to fit in a second training session and a third training session and like i've hit the point in my career where i've gone as far as i can go i can't go any further because i don't have my weight and i think it's very unfair. So the Olympics is a kind of window into the culture but it's also presumably a catalyst for change and an opportunity to make that change you know does anybody see that happening Maggie what do you think? Yeah I think one of the things which I have to say what's been good about the Olympics Rio Olympics has actually the awareness of the use of language used by commentators

and within the media to describe women, how women are potentially being compared to men. I think that's been good, that it's been picked up. I guess four, eight years ago it wouldn't have been discussed, it wouldn't have been brought up. Now it's becoming a discussion point and there's been various articles and pieces about it and I think it's now becoming a discussion point and there's been various articles and pieces about it. And I think it's now becoming a talking point that actually when we look forward to four years ahead,

how do we want our commentators, how do we want women to be perceived or interpreted to the public? Yeah, they've got four years to prepare, haven't they? That's the thing. There was a study around language, actually. The University of Cambridge released something last week. It was fascinating. It was fascinating, and they went through millions of articles about men and women in sport, and the types of words were so different. The adjectives were completely gendered. She participated

instead of, you know, he absolutely nailed it, or whatever it was. It's very different, weren't they? But it's funny how we also accepted it. So I would read a paper and I'd go, yes, mother, participating. And I'd be like, yes, I agree with that. Where I would probably go, yes, Usain Bolt, the greatest, the legendary, strong athlete.

I think now, especially with that study, it really has highlighted it. And I'm now a bit more aware when I read and see the words that have been used to describe females and males. I guess it's funny. It's one of those funny things where it's quite hard to notice something when it's just everywhere and the way that things are. And of course, it's that kind of shift that we're talking about making. So let's go back on this a bit.

I mean, our subject tonight is women in sport. How long is that history? Anna, I read that apparently women in ancient Greece wouldn't have been watching the Olympics in one of your articles. By penalty of death, I think it was. Penalty of death. Jean will know much more about this than me. And I think it's really important what Jean was saying about,

you know, progress is actually an inadequate word because it's not women making progress, it's everybody else sort of catching up with where they should be. And women have been trying for millennia to take part in sport and literally, by pain of death been prevented. Yeah. I mean, Jean, sport is all about the female body. It's about physical freedom. It's about strength, empowerment. It's easy to see why women participating in sport is so often a political issue. Have women and men's sports always been separate and have women who play sport always been the subject of

inequality controversy no in the days before what we now think of as modern sport um roughly from the middle of the 17th century when it became codified we had sort of written rules um you had a lot of things like women's boxing um smock, a lot of very good women pedestrians and all of those kinds of things but particularly with things like the Football Association in 1863 as soon as the, it was basically old boys of university who all got together and sort of wrote down rules. So that kind of Victorian moment where we're going to make this into an organisation and it's going to mirror society. And it's based on male clubability.

And they kind of didn't even think of women. And right from the get-go, women were trying to join. And Women's Hockey Association is a very good example of this. 1894 asked to affiliate to the male hockey association and they wouldn't have them so they then developed an all female women's hockey association that was in place until the 1980s

when they combined so yeah it's about those kind of processes and structures of exclusion. And so how were those decided? I mean obviously as you say it kind of exclusion. And so how were those decided? I mean, obviously, as you say, kind of on societal lines, so this idea of male club ability,

but how did it get kind of divided? This is a sport that's going to be for men and this one's for women. How did that work? Well, very often it depended on class. And again, Shirelle and I have been talking about boxing as a working class sport. And if you think of tennis, for example,

the first big mixed sport was croquet because it was the sort of thing that could be done on lawns and you could have a bit of a flirt and you could kind of define your status by how nice your clubs were, you know. How is croquet as a workout? I don't really know. I'm starting to think that sounds all right.

And then lawn tennis kind of came off the back of that, strangely enough, because people wanted to be more athletic in front of whoever they were kind of flirting with. Right. And so tennis was the first big socially acceptable sport for women. And how quickly did the sports that became considered transgressive for women achieve that status? Was that pretty quick

as soon as everything started to kind of be organised? Sometimes with football, it's a very quick moment of the ban that comes in 1921. What happened then, Anna? Well, women's football got really popular, so they thought they'd ban it. Is that it?

But there was a lot going on around it. Well done, everyone. There was a lot going on around it, I mean, around the suffragettes' movement for suffrage. Oh, OK. And they very much used sport as a way of protest and they used to go and burn messages into golf greens and they set fire to Crystal Palace

and they tried to blow up Wimbledon. There was a bomb plot. So, yeah, women in sport became quite a sort of angsty thing. But there was, you know, something like 53,000 at Goodison Park went to watch women play, which we can't conceive of now. That's absolutely huge. I mean, yeah, well, this brings us to the sports women that we have here. Sherelle, championship boxer, personal trainer.

How did you get into it? And what was your perception about boxing? Did you think of it as a sport for men? To be honest, I got into boxing because I was trying to impress someone. Failed miserably. However, on the plus side, before I started boxing, I used to get into a lot of trouble. So I never,

it was never getting into boxing because I want, you know, I wanted to be a macho. It was just like, I want to be Nicol Adams. That's how I'll win the person's heart I'm going for. I'm going to box.

And then here I am four and a half years later. It always makes me smile when I think of that story. So how quickly did you fall in love with the sport then since it didn't work out with the person you had your eye on wiping tears um very quickly like it's the first sport i've actually actually just stuck at like normally i'd kind of play football for a little bit but never train outside never go the extra mile um because i used to get into trouble like

hanging around with gangs and stuff like that um coming into the gym i had discipline i had father roles i had motherly roles in the gym you know i mean so that kind of kept me stuck in the sport if you saw me four and a half years ago to now i'm a completely different person so training is is for you is a huge kind of undertaking. Yeah I mean it's great in the morning when my alarm clock goes off at 5am in the morning I'm having to like climb over my partner in the morning try not to make any noise to get up to go for a run and then get home quickly have a shower and then go to a client's house and then you know finish my clients for the day or for the morning and then go back into the gym and do a weight session and then have clients again and then go back and train in the evening and I do that like five times a

week so wow I mean it's interesting that you kind of see two sides of this as well because obviously as a as a trainer I presume that you train all different kinds of people you know not just athletes yeah all types of people um like children to like you know slightly older people and stuff um I think it tends to be a bug when people walk in the boxing gym but i definitely saw a change in the amount of women that walked into the gym after 2012 and that was after did you think that's nicola adams definitely and and all the other females that are in the sport as well um before like when i first entered the gym it was like frowned upon like you kind of get just left on the bag on your own.

The girls were kind of just clustered together. And then as soon as they started winning things and the perception in the gym completely changed, I mean, like, my experience of joining the gym compared to some other people's. I don't really want to name the clubs on there, but, I mean, some women have walked into gyms and been turned away. Really?

It's a hole they can't train. Recently? It's still happening now. Walk into gyms, I want to box. No, you can't. Go to another club. Women are not meant to box. Still that kind of attitude around.

I'm lucky where I am. I'm in another gym and they're pretty cool. Maggie, what about you? Rugby. Why rugby? I don't know. I'm still trying to think. I'm honest.

Try and impress someone. That's what it is. I still try. I still try. Very similar to Sherelle. I was a difficult child when I was at school. And the only thing that kind of kept me on the straight and narrow was sport. And my PE teacher was a

was a female and she played rugby and she was the captain of the women's rugby side and she suggested that i should go and try a sport called rugby union um and where i grew up in north london rugby is not a popular sport so you know i'm like what was this sport you call rugby union and i was quite a i was quite a big strong girl and for the first time uh trying something like rugby union and made the you know big tackles and and made really great runs and breaks um for the first time I was being praised for being aggressive and strong where I guess in my other sporting attributes like being a netballer you know you get told don't don't cross the line or no contact and I and so it was a great sport for me to really excel in and I didn't really

necessarily think at the time there's boys and girls playing, I just thought wow what a great sport, how do I get into it joined my rugby club, there wasn't many girls full stop but luckily at my club there was the girls to create a team which was good and I kind of

didn't look back, at the age of 14 years old picked up the rugby ball and at the age of 14 years old picked up the rugby ball and at the age of 30 decided to retire and it's a great sport I love it and I still am trying to get people into the sport and so for me I want more people to get into it as a you know athlete but I also want more coaches volunteers referees and that's what's been a big I guess impact from winning in 2014 and also again in 2016 when the women went out to compete in Rio. I mean, we've mentioned a few role models as well already, whether it's, you know, a PE teacher who just gets you and sees something in you or, you know, watching someone compete on TV. Who are the kind of historical pioneers that we should give a mention to on this programme?

Because there are some absolutely amazing ones. Anna, I know that there are a few mentioned in your book, particularly the secret marathon runner. She's one of the all-time greats. Roberta Gibb. Tell me about Roberta Gibb. That story's just incredible. It was during the 1960s and women were not allowed to run marathons

at the time. They weren't allowed to run marathons in Olympic Games until 1984 because it was said to be bad for the womb like many things. Always with the bad for the womb, like many things. Always bad for the womb, isn't it? Ski jumping was apparently so bad for the womb that they only just let women do it in 2014 in the Olympics. It's where the word hysteria comes from, isn't it?

It's the same root. Same with pole bolting, isn't it? Tilting it upside down. Yeah, she'd never be upside down. Terrible idea. So womb problems, couldn't run the marathon, how did she tackle it? So she decided to hide at the start line behind a bush and jump out and join the race.

And it was a really incredible thing. She had a hoodie on and then as she started to get a bit hot, she took it off and people started to notice that she was a woman and word spread along the big throng of runners and the media caught wind of it and there's this moment that she recalls um in a memoir she calls a run of one's own where she's running past this this all women's college in boston and all these women come out from the college and they sort of cheer and they say hallelujah and all this stuff and it's it's uh it's quite spine tingtingling reading that back,

that moment that, you know, essentially women and sport is such a feminist issue. Absolutely. I mean, in a history that is inextricably linked, I guess, Jean, that the most famous example is probably the bicycle, isn't it? One of the clearest examples of this sport is as emancipation. Yeah, and I guess to some extent that, again, is around class. I mean, if you think that women had been adventuring on horses for millennia, so you always had these kind of pioneering women. And Lady Florence Dixie,

who was the president of the British Ladies Football Club in 1895 she didn't play football but she was a feminist and she would think nothing of when she'd had her children of going off on horseback across Patagonia and just seeing what she could see so you had that you had that tradition and I guess what the bicycle did for more kind of middle class women and lower class women, is that they could go out in public at speed. And isn't part of the thing that you can't have a chaperone with you because you're on a bike. So they just kind of can't come. So you have to go on your own and you can go further. Yeah. And it created problems. You know, initially, as you say, people were pushed off their bikes or young boys would throw stones at women on bikes and all of those kinds of things. But also what you've got significantly, another fantastic pioneer that a lot of people don't know about are the swimmers of the 1880s.

I've got one here, Annette Kellerman. I've been reading about her. Annette Kellerman. I've been reading about. Annette Kellerman. Australian. She's amazing. She's the first woman in a famous one-piece bathing suit back in, I guess, the early 1900s, probably. Yeah, she was in the early 1900s.

And we also had the wonderful Agnes Beckwith, who thought nothing of swimming between six and twenty miles in the Thames wearing quite a lot of clothing and then she would swim in a decorative glass tank in music halls wearing much less clothing and she was a big fan sorry the Prince of Wales was a big fan of hers and she drew crowds and they actually would take the glass tank all around the country and each time put it in a music hall, fill it up with, you know, thousands of litres of water and she could do things like smoke underwater and drink.

How does one... I mean, I feel like on a sports show, it's probably not the right kind of question. I'm going to write that down for a future broadcast. She sounds amazing. And obviously, again, as with bicycles, you see the link between the kind of restrictive clothing that women were in and then having to adapt that and that helping move things on, Anna.

Yeah, absolutely. And the way that sports clothing actually became fashion under the lights of Coco Chanel and the way that she brought... She was very into her tennis, wasn't she? She was, yeah. And it all became about, as Jean said, showing off your physique and your athleticism in a new way. But I think it's so extraordinary how these stories that you mentioned about the swimming. There was another swimmer, an American, who was the fastest ever male or female to swim the English Channel. And she went back to New York and there was a massive ticker tape parade.

And all these women I'd never really heard about until I started doing a bit of research. And I think, well, you know, millions of people knew these women's name at the time, or thousands in some cases. And yet we talk about women's sport as a very poor history and, you know, there weren't many women there. And there's contradictions there. I mean, sport isn't just about professional athletes

and historical pioneers. What about the rest of us, you know, ordinary participants? What do we know about women's engagement with sport in the UK right now? Anna, you've written a lot about this. What are some of the figures? I mean, it seems like, according to the Sports England research, that more women are engaging, but what percentage is that? What does that mean?

Oh, there's a lot of arguments over just how accurate our percentages are. But it's millions less than men, certainly. And there was an interesting Sport England survey that said 75% of women would like to do sport, but they worry about how they'll be perceived, ultimately judged, whether that's about their body image or whether it's about their ability to play sport. So there's a massive issue around judgment there. OK, so that's one of the obstacles. What are the others? What do you think, Maggie?

I think, well, for me, for example, when getting into the sport, it was more about the opportunities. So it's first being exposed to sports I think that's growing so at schools I think there's much more opportunities for young people to get into certain sports to choose what sport they want to progress in yeah it also sounds like from what you were saying about you know your story is that you can have one sport that kind of does suit you one that doesn't and I guess if you're offered quite a limited range as you know sometimes kids are at school that's going to cut your options right down yeah i think um the biggest thing now is just giving kids or young people the opportunities try a variety of different sports to find out what they're good at you know for me i actually wasn't

exposed to rugby what it was i had a p teacher who suggested for me to get into the sport so i guess the reason why i got into the sport was because i had a role model and that then created opportunities but i think if we limit our options for young people then if they don't fit those particular sports then they don't progress or don't want to progress i think after met for me university was great because there were so many different types of sports where actually why don't i try ultimate frisbee you know out because there's options cheryl what do you think about this you talked about some of the obstacles that women come up against getting into boxing i mean i think you're completely right about role models i think we need to get them more female role models out there we need to push that a lot more but for example we're talking about boxing being a working

class sport yeah and i've just got into road biking over the last uh say year and a half and. And I was in a shop the other day and I was, like, getting more gadgets because I'm becoming obsessed with it. But I've realised that... Micra. I was like, hold on. Apparently that happens. My husband's been testifying to that. It's like spending stuff on sports and stuff.

And I was saying to the guy in the shop, I was like, I don't know any black triathletes. I don't know any. He said there's so many sports.'ve been talking about how expensive it is so if you look at sports in terms of how in terms of how expensive it is i think that also limits it so it's also the being able to get to the funding so if you have a for example a talented athlete like i was on a small amount for uh funding of 250 pounds which if you look at the sport boxing it's very expensive that's you know a good pair of gloves is about 300 pounds a good head guard is about 300 pounds

you're looking at 600 pounds there and i mean that funding wasn't enough so how do you make it a wide range for everyone how do you make it wider so there's that barrier there and then there's also i guess kind of interlinked with that is perhaps a kind of an attitude and attitudinal but because you know you people often we often kind of internalize these things don't you we can kind of think well that's that's not for me because you know you don't see people in your peer group doing it and it's as you say kind of out of your reach yeah jean what about i mean this seems like a good point to talk about the institutions and and about the kind of broader culture that that underpins sport and how that represents and includes women yeah well it's its own kind of grass ceiling um is is the way of best classifying it in some senses sport reflects wider attitudes in society and that there are not that many women

on boards, generally. But what you get particularly within sport are large organisations like FIFA, who prove that they can't self-regulate. I mean, I think they've demonstrated that very well over the last couple of years. And yet they were formed in 1904 and it was only in 2012 that they had the first three women join their executive of 25. And there's no women on the ITF still, the International Tennis Federation? Yeah, boxing boards as well. I've just come on to the rfu council um i think i'm one of three and i think yeah i think there's been massive progression i know again without using the word but um gene's gonna get me there um i think it's positive to

see that there's been a real focus that we need you know needs to be changed and there needs to be diversity and i think it's still growing it's probably not going at the pace that we need you know needs to be changed and there needs to be diversity and i think it's still growing it's probably not going at the pace that we wanted to be going but i think i've started to see more of an awareness of it so if you look at uk sport the ceo is liz nichols um head of you know sport england jenny price so i'm starting to see some amazing women in those roles and i think it's because of sport so i see in the sporting arena and now I'm starting to see it in the corporate business world. So it's kind of trickling up to the boardroom. It's making it visible. That's the key thing.

And I think we have to make special mention of Sue Campbell. My old boss. Just a wonderful woman. When you talk about role models, began as a PE teacher and headed up UK Sport. And actually this idea that we get individual sports at an Olympic Games to target how many medals they're going to get

and then we fund them based on their own projections, she was the kind of architect of that. Because I think everybody's looking at the performance and from you know from a kind of layman's perspective we're going wow what's happened there you know I mean let's talk a little bit about what's at stake here because obviously I think there's a kind of interesting question to ask about imagine that we had a kind of equal participation and equal representation of women in sport what would that mean for sport and what would the kind of knock-on be for that because that's one of the things as you were just saying

anna sport isn't just sport it feeds into other things it feeds into other areas there's so much around that what would be the effect for sport well for one thing i think fifa is a really great example when you don't have diversity on boards and we've seen it at the banks as well um things collapse you know you need different opinions around the table, different perspectives to get the best performance out there. So sport does need women and sport does need diversity. Why do women need sport? Well, there's a lot of research that shows that it makes you,

you know, it zooms you up the career ladder, the likes of Hillary Clinton and Christine Lagarde, synchronised swimmer extraordinaire. When you're talking about that, there's a kind of link between people who've been sportswomen and excelled in sport at a kind of younger age and then the other things that they go on to do. Yes, because something like 89% of EY C-suite employees had a serious sports background up to college level. And the thinking behind it is that, and businesses now started to sort of cherry pick athletes and former athletes for their own companies. The thinking is not just

that you learn about teamwork and discipline that sort of thing, but you learn how to fail and too often women and girls are inhibited around this area. But you become really immune to criticism, you learn to just take it on board, keep going, you know you go back and you ask for the pay rise, you go back

and you present your ideas again, you stick your hand up in the boardroom, all of those things that women. You know, you go back and you ask for the pay rise. You go back and you present your ideas again. You stick your hand up in the boardroom. All of those things that women need. Maggie, I mean, I'm guessing you've kind of experienced that and can relate to that because having been, you know, gone from being an athlete yourself to then a very different career that encompasses so many different things. Yeah, I mean, and Sherelle will agree, Maya,

I think being an athlete, you learn so many um i guess you learn you have so many experiences which give you values and give you skills that you can take into the working world and um one of the biggest things that anna's really highlighted is that fast failure you know when you fail you learn i guess you learn how to be resilient you learn how to i guess problem solve as well and i currently do a lot of business talks and i go into companies i talk about you know resilience psychology of winning and i also do a lot of commentating as well and it's really amazing how my sporting life my sporting journey has had a big impact on what i do now as a career and if anything i think a lot of female athletes

especially they become more self-assured with themselves because they know what they're capable of doing and i do a lot of work with sometimes with female leaders in business environments and one of the things sometimes they might lack is that self-assurance and it's amazing when you've done a level of sport you know what you're good at and you take that into the business uh you know boardroom because you're not actually i'm capable of doing good things and i know what my weaknesses are and how to improve on them. OK, well, that's wonderful to hear. Let's talk about the future then. It seems like a good point to move on to that. This girl can seems to be the kind of current buzz phrase.

Is that our mantra for the future? Why was that campaign successful and what do you think it tapped into? Anyone? I think it tapped into that fear of judgment thing. I think the images of the advert were really important because it showed different body shapes and it didn't present women in the way that we're used to seeing them, which is kind of dolled up and aiming to look attractive.

It showed them having a good time and doing the sport and, you know, in a sweaty state and not thinking about their hair and all those things that I think women probably worry about too much. There were some criticisms about the word girl, you know, are we girls or are we women um and so you know it wasn't it's hard to be the perfect campaign but i think in the main it was something that was inspirational didn't that advert also come off the back of um people looking at jessica ennis hill and saying well i'm never going to be like jessica ennis hill

and what i want to see is the real person in the street going to the gym. And like you said, the whole sweat thing is the priority. I can see that and I know that I do that. I look like that and I can sweat like that person on TV. I mean, what do we think about the influence of social media here and the self-esteem questions there? Because obviously Fitspo is a big kind of hashtag there and strong as well as the compliment of the day, which is a big kind of hashtag there, and strong as well as the compliment of the day,

which is a complicated one, isn't it? Because strong of its strength is obviously a good thing, but I know that there are some questions about... Strong is the new skinny. It's the new skinny you think. Which is bad, isn't it? And there's... So I'm not on Instagram, but I went on Instagram to find out about fitspo,

and I was really depressed with what I saw, to be honest. It was the same types of female bodies that we've always seen. It's just that they had more muscle on them and they were in gyms. And it was the same kind of rhetoric, but it was just about muscle and being strong. So it was things like, oh, sweat is just fat crying, which made me want to cry. You know, and it just reminded me of that thing about skinny is not as good as food tastes or whatever it is. Oh, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, I believe. Yeah, it's all those horrible mantras.

I think it's just another way of women having to feel bad about their bodies or having to fit their bodies in particular little boxes, whereas really what sport and exercise should be about is celebrating all different types of bodies and when you look at the olympics there's not just one body type there and that's one of the wonderful things about it jean you could you can kind of give us the history on this and and you know having that experience and that knowledge where do you think the conversation is headed next? What is the next hurdle for us to tackle in the women's sports arena? I don't know that we're having very different conversations.

This is my concern. I didn't like this girl can as much as Anna did. I didn't like this girl can because historically women have been infantilised through sport for almost a century. Tell me more about that. You only need to think of that kind of visual image of the little St Trinian schoolgirls in their little tunics. The kind of jolly hockey sticks.

The jolly hockey sticks tunics. And that is a kind of dominant image in the way that sport is presented. And again, going back to this debate that we began with around motherhood, almost as if once you've had your children, that is the real business of your life and you shouldn't really be concerning yourself with sport. So there's this strong kind of historical narrative around infantilising women in sport. I didn't like this girl, Can, for that. So this girl, Can, did not make meising women in sport. I didn't like This Girl Can for that.

So This Girl Can did not make me want to do sport. So what should we be doing? And I'm sporty. Where should we be taking this conversation? Well, why don't we focus on the, as Anna has indicated, the women who have been sporty, who have also made their subsequent careers in public life i mean there are lots and lots of examples i'm sitting next to at least two here and um

you know there are lots of aspirational role model stories that can be told and historically that you know there have been um i think it's one of these aspects of women's history that women's sport is part of our hidden history. And if you think of... OK, so think of your... If you go to an average football game, the way that we talk about football is very much if you go to Arsenal or whatever club,

you will know something about the history of them and why they're called the Gunners and it's part of the kind of language of sport and yet as we've indicated around this table very few people could name Gertrude Earle the first woman who swam the English Channel they don't know about Violet Piercy who was inspired by Gertrude and Violet Pearcy actually began to run marathons

in the 1920s in her Mary Jane shoes Amazing So there are these wonderful sporting stories in history of women leaders and I think we have them now I could listen to Jean all day I know

I feel like I want a massive coffee table book with just pictures of everyone and the full kind of the full tale, it needs to happen and also shouldn't all our school children hear about these stories, rewrite the history It's certainly a pleasure to be able to talk about them on the radio tonight

and what about the conversation around sex and gender, Jean because I know that you think that's an important one and one that, you know, we mentioned earlier. In four years' time, next Olympics, what are we going to be talking about? Primarily, it makes me sad because we wouldn't treat people like that

in the rest of our lives, would we? Can you sketch the debate out for us a little? So the debate that has been around Casta Semenya is that she's a very talented 800 metres runner who has been subjected to extensive, what is called gender verification tests. And what that means is basically that she's been tested by medics either to prove that she's fully feminine or fully female I should say or fully male and of course we we all know that

gender is performed we do it every day whether we put on a slip of lip gloss or you know we do whatever so gender we know is not either male or female it's a kind of spectrum it's a spectrum and yet in sport these particularly women it hardly ever happens to men um are tested extensively and um she's proved to have uh what are called intersex characteristics. And therefore, she's been taking testosterone suppressants to try to reduce levels. But as Anna discusses in her book, this is pseudoscience. There's an awful lot of disagreement

about the extent to which testosterone actually is a competitive advantage for a woman. It isn't proved what levels are an advantage. And so there's an awful lot of pseudoscience. And I just think the way that Casta Semenya has been used and her very kind of intimate personal life discussed in quite a crass way is really really sad. Anna you've covered this debate as a as a sports journalist tell me what you've found out and where are things at with it because it sounds it's it's extremely contentious. I think I mean I was an athletics correspondent when Castor's story emerged at the world

championships in 2009 and I followed her story and it became you know it was a huge degree of sort of fetish fetishization around it I remember going to when she was first allowed back after she'd taken these suppressants to a tiny meet in Finland and all the top journalists descended on this tiny little meet in the middle of nowhere in Finland and they were sort of peeping through the athletes tent to watch her get changed as though they might be, you know it was like a it was a freak show, it was horrific and it's not just about Castor there's other athletes, some of them have not

been named but we have heard about some of their stories, it's very violent invasive processes have happened to these women, there were four after 2012 were taken to France and operated on. They had labia reductions and things done to them that were not actually related to sporting performance, but they were just done anyway. And they were basically put in a position where it's either

you have this done or you cannot compete. And the scary thing about this, part of the problem in the media out there is that journalists are very far behind the curve in terms of what the research is scientists too are only just catching up but this court of arbitration for sport has ruled that the iwf the athletics governing body was wrong to ban castasimonia unless you took these drugs and all the other women um and actually there is not enough evidence in science to prove that testosterone has that much of a factor in in terms of performance and there are too many other factors and so for the moment anybody is allowed to compete and that that

rule has been overturned um but it's it's very worrying the way that the debate is represented in the media athletes talking about us and them as though you know castus menu and others are some kind of aliens and not women, crucially. And when you look at some of the facts around it, it's really, really important. You know, men are not being tested for any kind of genetic make-up. So this just isn't an issue?

This is specific to women. So if men have any variations, you know, if you're Usain Bolt, the kind of conversations we have around women are and Castus Semenya is everybody else is competing for silver and therefore it's unfair we have the same conversations about Usain Bolt but nobody complains that that's unfair we say he's brilliant he's a genius I mean Maggie Shirell do either of you want to come back on this I mean as athletes obviously your your bodies are a part you know part of your job and it's and you know having these kind of categorizations and rules and regulations on them it's really complicated

with with the boxing for example um i was in a cab a couple of weeks ago and i was saying to the cab driver i'm a boxer and he was like he was pretty he's all right he's open to being open but he was like well i don't agree in women boxing. I don't think, I'm not sure they're strong enough compared to men, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Spoiling for a fight. I'm sitting there like, partner's passed out, had too much to drink, I'm sitting there like, here we go.

And he's like, oh, I thought it was all right with Nicola Adams and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, you have no idea. I feel like people need to be in the sport or have an experience with the sport to have a valid kind of you know opinion if you've not been in it you're not you're not really going to understand i mean like we look at it this way scientifically i'm a 64 kilo woman there's a 64 kilo man yes they hit slightly harder but i can take his punch and i'll give just as good as I get,

you know? So, I mean, I don't have, this whole gender thing just, it winds me up. My biggest frustration, especially of Rio 2016, is the question of womanhood, you know?

So, you know, in case of athletics, they've been talking about, you know, testosterone. In other sports, they've talked about your appearance, you you know you don't look like a female or and i think that's what frustrates me the most around um the way it's perceived to be what is a woman what is perceived to be a woman you know if you don't look a certain way are you are you a woman um if you like i said in hormones if you don't if you have more than the other, are you still a woman?

And I think that's what has really come to light in Rio. Actually, the perception and definition of a female and what a female looks like and what a female should really present in terms of performance. I think that's what's been slightly frustrating to me and how certain stories have come out about people's looks and how people perform on the day in comparison to other women. I mean, I guess this is also a potential opportunity and that, you know, hopefully in four years' time

we'll be talking about these women as pioneers. Who will be the athletes that you'll be watching in the coming years and who you are looking to for that, for moving things on a bit? I mean, I suppose one other thing we must say on that debate is just that a lot of the debate is around protecting women's sport and women's sport will fall apart if we allow women like Custis and Enya to compete and it will all be over.

And I think, again, that goes back to what Jean was saying about infantilising women, as though we need some kind of guard and protection and we can't do it ourselves and when you look at the stats you know um casta semenya would have not made the men's heats and uh you know she would have dropped out at that stage she is not a man she is a woman and she's competing at a female level so i hope that we see castor again in four years time and others like her and i hope that we have an end a real end to this horrible sort of us and them and well you can see that she's not a she and just this vicious language and we start to embrace womanhood for for who just just touching on that i just bring up a quick point uh men have taken off head guards

they're talking about should women should keep them on because it's not safe if women take off head guards i tell you right now i've been sparring men heavier than me without head guard actually it makes you more defensive instead of standing there and taking you know punches and stuff so it's debates should women do three minute rounds or two minute rounds men do three but women only do two you know so it's like well and i'm hearing things like women shouldn't do three minute rounds because they haven't got the body type to do three minute rounds. And I'm like, well, actually, I do three minute rounds and I'm pretty good at them, you know. So there's loads of debate on it and equality.

And then if you don't do three minutes, we get paid less. Oh, we'll probably get paid less anyway. Anyway, that's true. Anyway, it's for an OD. Yeah, that's a whole other programme. Yeah, we definitely need to do that one. Maggie, you said at the beginning of the programme that you were delighted by the way that team sports

were represented and performed at Rio this year. I mean, what are you hoping for for the next Olympic year? I think a rise in team sports again still. I want to see rugby continue to get the recognition that it deserves, men and women. And same with the hockey, seeing the women's team do really well there. For me, it's probably in the world of broadcasting what I want to see. So I want to see a greater female representation in that.

What's great to see Claire Balding be in the front face for BBC and seeing Gabby Logan. There's many others. And I think what I want to see more of is more women and girls coming out and going, I want to work in the world of broadcasting and be a reporter, a presenter or a pundit. I can completely recommend it as a career choice. It's a lot of fun. Thank you very much for joining me tonight. My fantastic guests, Anna Kessel, Jean Williams, Maggie Alfonsi and Sherelle Brand. Thanks again. Thank you. I'm Sarah Trelevan.

And for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.