International Women's Day

Baroness Heyhoe Flint Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Heyhoe Flint]

My Lords, I am trembling at the batting crease, waiting to face the Opposition’s fast bowling, but am relieved that the traditions of this honourable House mean that interruptions are not considered cricket.

With great pride, I have moved from Lord's NW8 to the Lords SW1, and I thank everyone for an incredibly warm welcome—from the doorkeeper is to the highest officeholders among your Lordships. I also thank very much my two calming supporters, my noble friends Lord Coe and the Minister, Lady Verma. I know the doorkeepers by the football teams that they support. I must declare an interest as a former director and now a vice-president of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club. Sadly, no doorkeeper is a Wolves fan, but on the Floor of this Chamber, I can reveal two Wolves supporters: the Lord Speaker—who perhaps is in the changing room now—and my very kind mentor, my noble friend Lady Perry, both of whom, like me, are former pupils of Wolverhampton Girls’ High School, where cricket was our main summer team sport. What a very strong batting line-up, you might say.

My father was director of physical education for Wolverhampton and my mother taught gymnastics at local schools. With that sporting background, I again declare an interest. Not only do I understand the LBW law in cricket, I actually understand the offside rule in football.

Our debate today presents an opportunity to emphasise the challenges that women have to face in gaining acceptance and recognition in the world of sport: in participation, funding, media coverage and representation at board level. My challenges in sport began at the age of seven with garden cricket with my brother and his friends. I was not allowed to bat for three years—“Girls don't play cricket”. When I eventually got to bat, the boys could not get me out for three days so, in the middle of June, they decided that it was the football season.

The challenges were out there for me at an early age, and the challenges are out there nowadays for most young girls who want to get involved. As Peter Evans, Midlands regional development manager for baseball, softball and modern pentathlon—what a mixture—has written, it may seem simplistic, but if you provide an activity for girls with good-quality coaching and proper clothing that combines a cool image and a fun environment, they will thrive and commit themselves wholeheartedly. It is sport that will help to tackle issues such as obesity, self-esteem and prejudice.

The image and profile of females in sport could be helped enormously if more women were represented on the boards of sports governing bodies—providing, of course, they merit such an appointment and are not merely the statutory women. The 2010 Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport, ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, found that only one in five members of national governing bodies are women. One quarter of sport governing bodies have no women on the board at all yet, ironically, almost half the staff of 44 out of 47 Sport England-funded NGBs are female.

The business case is unarguable. The presence of suitably qualified women will provide a balance of skills and perspective. The England and Wales Cricket Board, if I dare mention cricket on a day like today after what happened to the English team in Bangalore yesterday—I hope there are some happy Irish people in the House today—is a shining example of an NGB which offers recognition, given that two out of 10 of the board’s non-executive members are women.

The MCC at Lord’s—the home of cricket—which is a private members club with a public responsibility for cricket, admitted women as members in 1998 after a mere 211 years. I was there at Lord’s to hear of the victorious result. One very sad, senior MCC member saw me, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “My life will never be the same”. I certainly would not advocate a quota system. I do not believe legislation is the route: no breaking of the glass ceiling—more a level playing field.

Greater media coverage for women in sport will assist development and improve sponsorship opportunities. When I was an active journalist—last century—I tried to get a better profile for the England women’s cricket team and, as a result of that, because he read about us in the Daily Telegraph, Sir Jack Hayward sponsored the England women’s cricket team for five years and developed the first women’s world cup cricket, two years before the men’s.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, for giving me the opportunity to speak to this Motion. It may only be by persistent persuasion that women will overcome the problems that I have highlighted, but in challenging economic times we need companies, charities and philanthropists to invest in the potential of women in sport who, after all, are 50 per cent of their market.