Sport: Women in Rowing

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I would like to focus my remarks on both ends of the age scale. Perhaps I should start with older women. I started rowing at the age of 60 and still do it occasionally. I would probably do it more often if it did not entail getting up so early in the morning. I have also been a member for several years of your Lordships’ House’s mixed-gender eight for the Lords and Commons boat race on the Thames. This has been a mixed experience since the Thames can be like the North Sea in a storm when the wind is against the tide. However, on the whole it has been an enjoyable and certainly a sociable experience.

Rowing, I am told, is very good for me because it helps to strengthen the core muscles, which get weaker as you get older. I know of an all-women crew in Australia called the Ancient Mariners, two of whom are over 80. I relate these facts in order to emphasise the fact that you do not need to be either young or an elite athlete to enjoy rowing and benefit from it. It is one of those sports that you can take up at any age and do either for enjoyment or take it right to the top level. What is important is that we make provision for girls and women of all ages to row.

The Olympic legacy has brought about a tremendous increase in interest in women’s rowing, to the extent that some adult clubs simply cannot cope with the demand for Learn to Row courses. It is a great pity if women are put off by having to wait many months for such a course and find a different sport where participation is easier. If we are going to develop the Olympians of tomorrow, we must nurture the grass roots of today. Is there anything the Government can do to help here?

At the other end of the scale there are girls who would like to take up rowing at school. Many independent schools offer this facility, with boats, coaches and accessible water, but what about young people at maintained schools? Apart from the excellent Westminster Boating Base which caters for many disadvantaged young rowers, it is often difficult for schools to find coaches and the money for boats. I therefore endorse the call of my noble kinsman Lord Thomas of Gresford for employers to consider giving volunteers time off to train as rowing coaches as part of their community service programme.

Whatever the reality, there is a perception among pupils and others that schools care more about, and spend more money on, sport for boys than for girls. I would not want to add to bureaucracy, but the decline in girls’ participation in sport is sufficiently serious for there to be a need to ask schools to focus more attention on girls’ sport. It has been suggested that this might most easily be done by an amendment to the public sector equality duty for schools. In the United States there is a thing called Title IX legislation, which makes it an offence for publicly funded institutions to discriminate in funding between boys and girls or men and women. That may not be appropriate here but we need to find a way of achieving the same result.

I was very interested in the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee report on girls and sport. It is concerned about the lack of communication and co-operation between government departments, which it thinks presents a serious obstacle to delivering the Olympic legacy. It recommends that the DCMS, Department for Education and Department of Health publish a joint annual report to Parliament on school sport, focusing on participation levels, the availability of different types of sport, partnerships with clubs and charities, and training for teachers. Perhaps such an annual review would force departments to work together and pool funding to achieve better value.

Sport England is doing a lot, in particular with its This Girl Can initiative, though I am delighted to see that many participants were girls many years ago. Also its place-based pilot launched in Bury is an imaginative initiative, involving local authorities and many partners in taking account of women’s real lives and bringing sport to them. I did not notice rowing in the list of sports but, if the scheme is rolled out across the country, does the Minister know whether rowing will be included wherever there is a suitable body of water? Can he tell us whether the initiative has yet been analysed and what plans there are to roll it out? Will women’s rowing benefit?