International Women’s Day

Baroness Heyhoe Flint Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Heyhoe Flint]

My Lords, I extend our warmest welcome to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry to this House. The emotion, eloquence and relevance of his maiden speech certainly captured the attention of his new congregation here in this Chamber. The right reverend Prelate lists on his very worthy CV a plethora of patronages of a wide variety of causes and charities. His parliamentary interests list higher education plus conflict resolution and reconciliation; one hopes that in this Chamber he has little conflict resolution but plenty of reconciliation. As a fellow West Midlander, which is perhaps why I have been asked to do this welcome, I also wish the right reverend Prelate better fortune to his diocese football team. Coventry City struggles on and off the pitch, and may the right reverend Prelate’s inspiration help to return the Sky Blues to a higher place.

I am sure that, like me, the right reverend Prelate has beliefs that women deserve a much higher level of recognition in sport and recreation, which hopefully should then encourage a more active lifestyle among UK females. Let us start at the top. I was intrigued on Monday to read new research by the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation that only 22% of board members in 33 out of 57 national governing bodies are female— up 2% from 2010, unchanged from 2011—despite government urging. Six publicly funded NGBs out of those 57 have no women on their boards, as was mentioned earlier in Oral Questions. The largest participant offender was British cycling, despite the impact that British women cyclists made in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Indeed, only a couple of weeks ago 21 year-old Becky James made a further impact for British cycling when she dashed into the record books when she won her second gold and a total of four medals in the recent track cycling world championships in Belarus—such an impact, no less, that Becky was featured on the front page, in glorious technicolour, of the Daily Telegraph, so perhaps the media are improving their recognition of our sportswomen, but more on that later.

I am talking not from a feminist standpoint but about a practical, common-sense approach, and I am not just saying that because in cricket I happen to serve on the boards of the England and Wales Cricket Board and the MCC. Even though I am there, still the men are not knitting and making teas in the pavilions of England, if that is what the fear is from the chaps. Diverse leadership is a bonus and women’s board representation, as has been mentioned, should help to unlock the potential of women’s sport, thus promoting higher levels of participation, sponsorship and media profile. As the Minister said this morning, Sport England and UK Sport wish that by 2017 every national governing body will have 25% board representation.

The MCC and the ECB have grasped the nettle and now the Football Association also has recently appointed its first female independent director to its board in 150 years, so we are making progress. She is Heather Rabbatts, not a token appointment but a lady well steeped in the business of football knowledge as executive deputy chair of Millwall Football Club, to whom I apologise after they were beaten 2-0 on Tuesday by my beloved football team, Wolverhampton Wanderers.

With a Government committed to breaking down gender equality barriers, how can the Royal and Ancient, the governing body of golf throughout the world, continue to operate a male-only membership of its club at St Andrews when this summer it is hosting the Women’s British Open championships? Such an entrenched attitude reminds me of a historic notice in a car park in an all-male golf club in Kent several years ago that read, “No dogs or women allowed on the course”—and it was true. Another discriminatory establishment drawn to my attention recently is Gathurst club in Lancashire, where the men will not let women on the course at weekends unless they are playing competitions, and the men will not allow women to play such sanctioned competitions.

My right honourable friend the Minister for Sport Hugh Robertson has spoken on the record about the R&A, saying:

“It is increasingly anachronistic not to allow women to become members … The defence of the Royal and Ancient is that it is a private club and so has the right to do what it wants. That is legally correct and I have no quarrel, when it is acting as a private club. However, I believe that when a private club fulfils a public function, such as staging a major event, then there is a different slant”.

Nothing could be more major than the Women’s British Open, so surely this issue should be addressed. I wonder if the participants might even be changing in the car park as a result of this sanction.

We all basked in the triumph of the Olympics and Paralympics; media coverage was brilliant, turning minor sports into major sports and unsung, unknown champions into heroes and heroines. Didn’t the girls do well? The women of Team GB won 10 golds and 22 medals in total, and a woman won the first Team GB medal of 2012—silver for Lizzie Armitstead in the road cycling. Women won the first gold for team GB—rowers Helen Glover and Heather Stanning. This was the first Olympics where women competed in every sport, with the introduction of women’s boxing, and we all marvelled at the heroics of Great Britain boxer Nicola Adams, who won gold. It was also the first Games where every country sent female athletes; Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei were the last three to do so. That is global progress.

The Government are seeking to encourage all sectors of the media to continue their high level of coverage of women’s sport, not just every four years when we have the Olympics and Paralympics or when Wimbledon comes along annually. We need that consistent coverage to develop role models for young schoolgirls, who I worry nowadays aspire to be footballers’ wives, page three models or “X-Factor” wannabes singing out of tune. I want those young girls to aspire to be Victoria Pendleton, Jessica Ennis, Ellie Simmonds and Katherine Grainger. After the Olympics, 81% of respondents to a Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation survey thought that female athletes were much better role models for young girls than other media “celebrities”.

The right honourable Maria Miller, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and Minister for Women and Equalities, believes strongly in the power of the media to raise profile and encourage greater levels of sponsorship for women. After the Olympics she wrote and met with all facets of the media to impress this fact.

There is light at the end of the camera lens that there may be extra coverage. There is to be TV coverage of women’s football this summer, the England appearance in the Euro finals, while Sky gave great coverage to women’s cricket in India, even though England did not quite come up with the goods, as they say. They also have platforms for netball super league, women’s hockey and European and USA women’s golf.

Women’s sport receives less than 5% of total sport print coverage and currently receives less than 1% of TV coverage and 0.5% of total sponsorship income. A recent Sport and Recreation Alliance report revealed only one in 10 14 year-old girls is getting the recommended physical activity levels suggested by health professionals. Sadly, 51% of girls say that their experiences of school sport and physical education put them off being active. Sport does not need to be team games; it can be competitive sport, non-competitive sport, gymnastics, aerobics or Indian dancing—though I am not sure the Prime Minister approves of that. My experiences at school were the other way around: I hated academia and sport was the only thing for my whole life.

Primary school teachers receive only a meagre six to 10 hours’ tuition in their training to teach youngsters in primary schools. Surely more is needed. On Tuesday this week an alarming report published in The Lancet showed that we have dropped from 12th to 14th in the life expectancy tables. I must close now but could my noble friends the Ministers in Government ask whether it is possible to give more recognition to women’s sport and women’s activity? What better, on International Women’s Day?