Sport: Women in Rowing

Baroness Brady Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, on securing this debate. Indeed, I am delighted to participate. Sports governance is an issue very close to my heart, especially when we are talking about celebrating women’s participation and trying to raise awareness of how we can improve it. I stress that I am not a rower myself but, according to the British Rowing Association, rowing,

“is a low-impact sport, suitable for all ages and abilities and with strong female representation across all types”.

So I will just say at this point, “Never say never”—I may join the team at some point.

Despite not participating myself, the exploits of British rowing have by no means passed me by. One of my abiding memories of watching Britain compete in the Olympics has been our extraordinary exploits in rowing. I first remember Sir Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent winning gold after gold in their amazing partnership, which almost ended prematurely with the final gold at the Atlanta Games in 1996, when a seemingly exhausted Sir Steve gave his interviewer, and indeed anyone else watching, permission to “shoot” him if he went anywhere near a boat again—only for him to return four years later, thankfully unscathed, and sporting another gold medal in Sydney.

But at London 2012 it was the women who stole the show, from Heather Stanning and Helen Glover in the coxless pairs winning our first gold of the Games, to the looks of utter surprise, bewilderment and joy on the faces of Katherine Copeland and Sophie Hosking in the lightweight skull. Finally, there was Katherine Grainger—what a story. In her fourth Games after three successive silver medals, she persisted, with the kind of grit and determination that I so admire. She came back again, redoubled her efforts, and this time it was gold for her and teammate Anna Watkins in the double skull—Britain's ninth medal in women’s rowing since 2000. Nine medals since 2000, with three golds coming in 2012, cannot be a coincidence. This unprecedented success has been underpinned by a club network with impressive stats on women’s participation.

In a nutshell, we want that success to be made permanent. So how does it look for women’s rowing? Numbers from the British Rowing Association make for excellent reading, and it sounds as if success in the London Games is being translated into more women getting involved. Noble Lords before me have mentioned various impressive statistics. A point very well made is that not only are more women getting involved in the sport but leadership positions in rowing are increasingly being held by women. As has been said, there has been a female chairman for the past 27 years, Dame Di Ellis, and now we have chairman Annamarie Phelps, making a great impact. But we must keep pushing.

I commend a piece of research by Dr Alison Maitland of Brunel University, which concluded, among other things, that barriers to increased participation include a lack of opportunity at suitable times of the day and a lack of female coaches. As someone who is committed to empowering women, particularly working mothers such as myself, to achieve their business goals, I can see that some of the same challenges might apply to rowing. Providing weekday time slots is key to allowing for greater participation, but this is when only paid coaches are likely to be available, rather than volunteers. British Rowing could look at repeating what it did at Walton Rowing Club. It provided a paid coach to run an adult improver programme, which attracted more women to row.

Just as in business, so in sport; we need to encourage more women to have confidence to come forward and volunteer in an environment they may not be familiar with. With the help of British Rowing, clubs should provide more support and training to get women into volunteering and coaching roles, which in turn will lead to more female rowers. As has been said, we must also praise schemes such as Women on Water and This Girl Can, which encourage all women to get involved in sport.

I am delighted to say that the future looks bright for women’s rowing. We must ensure that the governance arrangements, the volunteer network, the facilities and, yes, the funding, continue to be there to deliver the pipeline of talent needed to build on the success of 2012. Just as they were at Eton Dorney, I want to see more women atop podiums in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Tokyo in 2020 and beyond. Let us do everything we can to make that happen again.