Women in sport

The Independent Commission for Equity and Cricket (ICEC) stark report, ‘Holding a Mirror up to Cricket’ delivered critical verdicts on sexism, racism, classism and elitism in the game. Podcast host Caroline Nokes MP sits down with the Chair of the ICEC, Cindy Butts to explore her report’s findings and hears why she remains ambitious for the future of cricket.

Attention then turns to what can be done to address the personal, practical, financial, and institutional challenges which women and girls face from grassroots to the very top of sport. Paralympian and cross-bench peer in the House of Lords, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, also Chair of Sport Wales, describes her experiences in sport and how a more radical approach is needed to keep sport in women’s lives.  While Dame Caroline Dinenage, Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee sets out details of her Committee’s work in this area.

Listen and subscribe

Committee Corridor is available wherever you get your podcasts. You can subscribe directly by selecting the relevant channel below, or subscribe manually using the RSS feed.

Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Google Podcasts
Audible
Subscribe via the RSS feed

Transcript

Caroline: Hello, and welcome to Committee Corridor.

The Women's Ashes, the Ladies Tennis at Wimbledon, the Cycling World Championships in Glasgow, athletics in Manchester and London, World Cups for football in Australia and New Zealand — women's sport is going from strength to strength, and it's really exciting, but behind the scenes, other battles are being fought.

And today, we'll hear from three women who are asking big questions about sexism and misogyny, and the personal, practical, financial, and institutional challenges which women and girls face from grassroots sport, all the way up to the very top.

I'm Caroline Nokes, and I Chair the Women and Equalities Committee in the House of Commons. I'm also the Conservative MP for Romsey in Southampton North.

Let's start with cricket.

Racist, sexist, classist, elitist. 

The Independent Commission for Equity and Cricket delivered its report on June the 27th after a two-year investigation. The England and Wales Cricket Board Chair pledged to use this moment to reset cricket.

I wanted to get into the details of what it means for women in the sport, and those who help others to discover and enjoy the game. To help us do that, the Chair of the Independent Commission for Equity and Cricket, Cindy Butts joins me now.

Cindy, thank you so much for joining me. The Commission's work has resulted in what many people are calling a landmark report. Did you know when you were carrying out your work that this was going to be the reaction it received?

Cindy: No. I mean, I knew that we were doing something special. I had assembled a most wonderful team of commissioners and secretariat staff with deep cricket knowledge, knowledge of equalities issues and sport and organisational change.

And we always knew, in fact, that we were going to be ambitious. We always said that we didn't want to just examine what's wrong with cricket and recommend ways in which they can put that right.

In fact, our ambition was cricket's ambition and the ECB’s ambition, which is to make cricket the most equitable sport in the country. And so, we started to think in terms of what do we need to do in order to enable and propel cricket to become that which it wants to be?

And so, I knew we were always ambitious, but you know what it's like, once you give birth to something, you never know how it's going to be received. And so, it has been quite a shock and a really pleasant one at that. I'm really pleased that it's generated such a kind of national conversation.

And I am pleased, I've got to say, as much as, whilst there's been an important focus on the issues of race, which are incredibly important to us and to the people we spoke to, what I really wanted us to do is to be able to talk to the issues around women in sport, in cricket. And to speak to the issues that we found around class and the structural barriers that exist within cricket.

And I'm really pleased that there's been a real sort of focus on the full breadth of our work. And my only hope is that that conversation then leads to tangible change.

Caroline: And I'm very conscious that it's not just cricket that has a problem with equality. If you look at Parliament, think how few of our select committees are chaired by women, we've got a long way to go on equal representation.

From your experience, do you think cricket has a uniquely poor record on equality and diversity, or do you see it elsewhere as well?

Cindy: I think it does exist elsewhere. I don't think it's unique to cricket. And I say that from my own experience, but also having seen a lot of the recent issues that have come to the public's attention, whether that's in relation to policing, the fire service, the CBI, board representation more broadly.

So, I think it exists out there in society and within other organisations. What I would say is that I would guard against cricket thinking just because these issues exist in other organisations, or indeed, in society more broadly, doesn't mean to say cricket shouldn't be sorting itself out.

Yes, it's a mirror of what's going on elsewhere, but what we're not saying is, “Cricket, you need to sort out the ills of society.” What we're saying is “Cricket, sort out cricket.” So, yes, it does exist elsewhere, but it shouldn't be seen as an excuse.

The only other thing I would say in respect of that is that I think a lot of the barriers that exist for women, for people from minority groups, socioeconomic, working-class people, I think there is something that is really quite embedded within cricket's history.

And I think that that is something that we really wanted to highlight throughout our work, which is why quite unusually, for a commission, for an inquiry of this nature, we dedicated a whole chapter to cricket’s history because a lot of the issues, the unspoken assumptions, the barriers, they exist in cricket’s history, and we see them reflected in cricket’s current, where it is now.

And so, whilst everybody wants to move on, understanding its history and why it is where it is, can only help us to move cricket onto a better place.

Caroline: And talking about the history, we know that schoolboys from Eaton and Harrow have played at Lord’s every year since 1805. That's the home of cricket, isn't it?

But there aren't any plans for the first Lord’s Women's Tests until 2026. Do you think it's fair to accuse Lords of being a home for men and not for women?

Cindy: Yes, and we say that clearly and starkly within our report. I just think it's so outdated, and it speaks to the lack of value and recognition of all that women's cricket represents, and also, speaks to the elitism within cricket as well. I think it's outdated. It doesn't represent Modern Britain, and it needs to change.

Caroline: One of the issues my select committee has looked at when it comes to sport is about kit, particularly our focus was on football boots and how they're made for men and just sized down for women.

Do you think there is a challenge in cricket as well, that the availability of kit for women and girls, and the number of grounds and facilities they're able to use are there for other team sports as well as cricket? Or is there a particular challenge in getting girls access to kit in that sport?

Cindy: I'd probably say it's quite similar. We heard about issues of women and young girls having to play in whites and obviously, for young girls and for women, when they're menstruating, just how difficult that is. And sometimes, they're anxious and fearful.

So, a lot of women and girls raised that as an issue. So, I do think it runs across different sports. To be fair, I think that cricket and the ECB has certainly seen that. And I know that there've been ways in which they've tried to improve the kit that's available for women, for example, young girls from Muslim backgrounds.

There are now wonderful kits that are more culturally appropriate, for example. But it still has quite a bit more work to do.

On the issue of facilities, again, that's an area where we saw quite a lot of, I guess, for us, it was indicative of some of the inequalities that exist for women, not having access to training grounds, men's teams taking precedence over women's teams, men booking the nets, for example, just in case it rained. And therefore, women didn't have access in the same way.

So, yes, I would agree, it’s very, very similar issues in relation to other sports as well.

Caroline: In order to move kit on, in particular, the issue of whites, that requires men to understand the problem. How important is it to make sure that there are male allies across sports governance?

Cindy: Oh, I'm so glad you asked me that question. It was something that came up time and time again from women within the game, from current players within the game. But also, to be fair, from some men too.

And women talked about just the lack of visible support, particularly from England men players. They spoke of the Australian men's team and gave examples of how they would really promote the women's game on their socials and speak positively about it.

And given that they are seen as role models, I hope that the men's team, in particular, the England men's team, can follow the Australians’ lead because it can make such a huge difference. We see what impact it has on tennis.

Andy Murray talking so beautifully and passionately and supporting the women's game, and we'd certainly like to see more of that.

Caroline: Some of the descriptions in the report were, to me, really shocking; a widespread culture of sexism, misogyny, and unacceptable behaviour towards women, both in the recreational and professional game, frequently demeaned, stereotyped and treated as second class, unwanted, and uninvited advances from men towards women. Were you shocked by that as well?

Cindy: I would have to say, yes. I mean, I'm someone who's unfortunately been around the block a fair bit. And there's not much that shocks me. I've overseen the Met for 12 years, but I was shocked.

I was shocked at the extent of the way in which women are treated, frequently demeaned, undervalued, treated as subordinate, some harrowing stories. Women having to enter into the score box only to be confronted with signs that said, “No bras allowed in the score box.”

Women who were being told by coaches, women shouldn't be playing cricket — coaches, the very people who are supposed to nurture and help them and support them. Sexting going on and women feeling vulnerable, particularly around when alcohol is involved, having to deal with predatory behaviour.

It's 2023, not 1923, and I had to pinch myself a fair few times. But it extends beyond the interpersonal, which is why I was so pleased that that there has been such a focus on structural issues because the way in which the structure of the women's game is, their lack of voice around the table, we speak to the issues of women needing more power, influence, and voice in the game.

Of 18 first class cricket counties, only one woman is serving as a chair and she's only serving in an interim role. The rest are all men. That's not right.

Caroline: You are so right to say it's not right. There's an action plan in place for transforming cricket, which the report was very positive about, but goes on to say that there continue to be serious issues of discrimination, some of which are structural.

You want that addressed with urgency. So, how quickly should we expect to see action?

Cindy: Look, I think there are some things that can be done fairly quickly. I mean, we make 44 recommendations and within that, there are lots of sub recommendations.

I think there are some issues that can be dealt with in the shorter term, so fairly soon. There are other issues that do require quite a bit of resources and some deep thought by cricket about how it might implement the recommendations.

So, as I said at the beginning, we set out to be ambitious for the game, and it is a longer-term plan; some shorter term actions, some medium term actions and some longer term ones.

But I would like to think that now that we have launched our report, cricket will come together and the first thing it needs to do is accept the realities of women and girls experience, as well as those from ethnic minorities and others who contributed — accept what they are saying, are their everyday lived experiences.

And then the game needs to take the three months that we've given them to work out a carefully crafted plan about how it meets the recommendations we have set out. But we're not expecting them to do it all overnight.

Equally, we're not expecting them to kick the can down the road, because a lot of it needs to be done urgently.

Caroline: And one of your recommendations was calling for equal representation within the governance structure and a fundamental overhaul of the women's pay structure to get to the point where there's parity with men.

Are you worried by the argument that because the men's game generates more interest and therefore, more revenue, that it's fair for male cricketers to be paid more?

Cindy: Look, that's an argument I hear over and over again, and I don't buy it. And the reason I don't buy it is because women have been playing cricket for as long as cricket has existed.

It's been chronically under invested, and that is precisely why the men's game generates all of this commercial revenue, because it has been invested in. Women's cricket hasn't been.

It's time for people to wake up and accept that it hasn't been invested in and that's why it doesn't generate the revenues. Invest in it. As the old adage goes, build it and people will come.

And we've seen how that can happen. We've seen that in The Hundred. The ECB have invested in the women's game in terms of The Hundred, and people have flocked to the game. It's the biggest growth area for cricket. And indeed, most sports, the same is true in terms of football.

So, one, it makes brilliant business sense (you invest where the growth is), and two, it makes good moral sense too, because it's about fairness and it's about justice.

Caroline: The Hundred is a brilliant example of attracting new diverse audiences to the game. And so, there have been gains in elements of the women's game, which I think your report has described as a testament to what can be achieved if you've got a clearly defined vision, if you've got institutional will, if you've got investment.

And so, there is good stuff going on. Are you worried that that leads to a danger that you've endorsed part of the progress, and people might sit back and as you put it, just kick the can down the road and think that the job's done?

Cindy: No, I don't think that. The reason why we said that is because it's true, and it's so important in processes like this that are inevitably focused on problems. And so, what's really important is to recognise where progress has been made.

I think it's unfair to just talk about the problems without accepting and giving recognition to the progress that has been made. I think that will spur people on.

I know from my own personal experience, I was a commissioner at the Independent Police Complaints Commission — gosh, it feels awful when you just keep getting battered around the head, told what's wrong and people not recognising the good things that you're doing.

So, I think it's important to give recognition where recognition is due, but also, recognising that women will be behind the progress that has been made. So, to ignore it is to ignore the efforts that they've made in order to get that progress done So, I think that's really important for women too.

And we make it really, really clear within our report that whilst there's been progress, my gosh, there's a lot more that needs to be done. We haven't let them off the hook.

Caroline: What really came across to me is that there is a love of cricket written into the whole report. It talks about the game having fairness written into its laws, and that it's a game for everyone.

You put in it that chairing the commission has brought together two of the greatest passions in your life. The sport of cricket itself and the advancement of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Do you write that with optimism, sadness, or both?

Cindy: Sadness in the sense of what I talked about, what shocked me when I spoke to people and people gave evidence to us and responded to our survey, that was the sadness people's experiences and the fact that those experiences have been ignored for so long. The lack of action over the many, many decades. That's the sadness.

The optimism, I wouldn't have done this unless I thought that cricket had the ability to change, neither would any of my commissioners. We all absolutely love cricket. Cricket's in my blood.

My mum used to take me to Lord’s and Oval and drag me along and singing in the garden and all of the lovely Calypso Cricket,  lovely cricket tunes and all of that. That's my family history.

And so, we've got a former cricketer on the commission and a cricket historian, made up of people who love cricket and want to see it progress. So, sadness, yes, but plenty of optimism. And I just hope that that optimism isn't misplaced.

Caroline: Cindy Butts, I have to say this has come across as a conversation with a lot of optimism about the future of cricket. Thank you so much for taking part today.

Cindy: No, thank you. Thank you, it's been my pleasure.

Caroline: Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson is one of Britain's greatest Paralympic athletes. She was 13-years-old when she realised that wheelchair racing was her sport of choice.

Over her career, she broke 30 world records and won 11 gold medals, four silver, and a bronze at the Paralympic Games. She became Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson in 2005 for her services to sport, and is a crossbench member of the House of Lords, where she was part of a committee, which considered the need for a national plan for sport and recreation.

She's also the Chair of Sport Wales, which is the national organisation responsible for developing and promoting sport, and physical activity in Wales. She joins me now.

Thank you so much for joining Committee Corridor. We all know that you've had an incredible sporting career and achieved a great deal, but I wanted to focus on the difficult bits. Where were the challenges and barriers?

Tanni: Oh, well, there's quite a lot of barriers, but actually, I think being involved in sport at each different stage helped me deal with them. So, I would say there's been misogyny, ableism, paternalism (starting to get a bit of ageism).

So, a whole sort of plethora of people either thinking early on in my career that disabled people shouldn't do sport or that women shouldn't do sport. And I think it's quite interesting.

Some of the big barriers that I faced they sort of dip in and out of sort of all those different isms. But my parents were amazing. My dad played a lot of sport, my mom loved watching sport, so they always taught me that sort of the bigger prize in terms of being involved was worth it.

And learning to deal with difficult people partly helped me become the athlete that I eventually did and led to some of the things that I was able to do.

Caroline: And certainly, learning to deal with difficult people probably helps you now in all of your activism and work in the House of Lords.

Tanni: Yeah, it's really funny because I get a lot of, “Oh, isn't it really hard going from sport to politics?” And actually, I mean certainly at the Lord's end of the building, it's generally very polite. So, I think sport absolutely prepared me for the things that I do now.

And it's funny when people say sport and politics should not be mixed, I mean, there is more politics in sport than in politics. So, it's really funny how people like to pretend that they're not inextricably linked.

But the medal table is politics, what countries are allowed to compete in Paralympics is politics, and that's just two of the big issues we deal with.

Caroline: And women's sport has got more coverage, more prestige than ever before. What do you think's changing and how much further do we still have to go?

Tanni: So, the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics were called the women's games because we had a lot of female athletes that did well, that was just brilliant. But we have these peaks and troughs.

So, on the back of the Lionesses winning Euros, that was amazing. And it has shifted some of the conversations and people who support.

So, I was on a train a little while ago, a dad with two sons, they're talking about their favourite striker and who was better than who, and they were talking about the women's game.

And I just said to the dad, that is amazing because even a few years ago, we wouldn't have had that. But the reality is, away from big sporting events, only about 2% of coverage of sport goes to women in sport. There's a complete mismatch of sponsorship, of women who work in sport. The numbers aren't even close to being equitable.

So, there are some big roles in sport, so the Chair of UK sport is Katherine Grainger, the CEO, Sally Munday, I'm Chair of Sport Wales. But actually, when you start looking to beneath the surface, in the whole sector, there are still challenges for women coming into sport and working in sport.

So, it's better than it's been ever, but we're nowhere near equality.      

Caroline: And you were part of a committee which considered the need for a national plan for sport and recreation with a particular focus on how we make more progress tackling inactivity, particularly among women, disabled people. Your report call for a national plan. Have you seen any progress?

Tanni: It's slow, I'd have to say. I mean, we also asked that sport be moved out of DCMS, and got put into health, which seemed a more natural place for it to sit, especially when we're talking about legacy of major events.

Sport for sport's sake kind of looks after itself. And if you're talented and determined, and you have the right things around you, you can do okay, but there are still massive issues in terms of getting involved, being physically active, getting onto that pathway.

The average cost of a pathway athlete now, for a family is £10,000 a year. There are a lot of families that can't afford that. And the drive for medals has been brilliant and I love seeing British teams do well, but it pushes those costs to younger and younger ages.

So, what we need is to make sure that we have a really broad base at the pyramids. And for me, we should be talking about physical activity, physical literacy, we expect children to play sport without teaching them the building blocks. We don't expect children to do trigonometry without learning basic maths.

So, if you're good at sport at a young age, you get all these natural sort of jumps. So, it is slow. It's really slow. But I think a lot of the people I work with are also really optimistic about what we need to try and do because the barriers for women and girls, we value sporty boys more than we value sporty girls.

Boys get opportunities at a younger age that girls don't. There's a lack of women in coaching, and so all these things make it harder for girls to stay involved, which then make it harder for women to be active later on in life.

And 80% of women are not fit enough to be healthy. That has a massive impact on society, on pension ages, on the impact on the NHS, on working life. So, some of the changes I'd like to see are not about getting more medals. I still would like Britain to be good at elite sport, but it's actually about the health of our nation, and we've got to do something a little bit more radical.

Caroline: And when it comes to inactivity, and some of the barriers that there are for girls, we know there's a massive drop off around puberty for physical activity for girls. What can we do to encourage them to carry on playing sport? And what are you doing at Sport Wales to help that?

Tanni: So, some of it is about how you introduce girls to sport, and some of that is actually about attitudes of parents. So, one of the things we've seen with the Lionesses is that dads are kind of more inclined to take their girls to play sport.

Now, okay, this is going to be a gross generalisation here, but boys are a bit like puppies. They need to be fed and exercised. And a lot of mums who've had a bad experience of sport want to protect their daughters from that same experience.

So, we've got to look at the absolute building blocks. So, Sport Wales, for a number of years, way before I started, and with the support of the Welsh government, have been really focusing on physical literacy. About it teaching you to run, jump, and throw, because then that has an impact on education and lots of other things as well.

So, we're continuing that work. We're also looking at puberty, menstruation, the kit the girls wear is a really important part of it. There is so much pressure on girls and we're seeing that start to creep into boys as well in terms of how you look, how you behave, photoshopping impacts, what young people think of themselves.

But also, I think we've got to think a bit differently about what girls want to do. So, girls don't necessarily want to do individual sports or team sports can be challenging, things like dance and walking, that there are different ways to engage girls.

And it's kind of interesting that some of these barriers have been around for a long time and they're really difficult to break down. And there are a number of girls who don't want to feel exposed in terms of playing sports.

So, we now accept that people dip in and out of playing sport. Just because you're sporty, you're not always sporty because different things happen in your life to bring sort of challenges to that.

But we've got to be much better at bringing women back. So, things like netball, return to netball, brilliant, because so many girls played netball through school. They've got an idea how to play it, it's easy to bring them back.

But sports like rugby and cricket, so when I was in school, girls weren't allowed to play rugby and cricket because it was too dangerous for us. We don't have that big pot of women who've played it to bringing them back in. So, we need to be thinking more creatively about some of those things.

But in Wales, the Future Generations Act, the health of the nation is really important to the Wales government. And that sets quite an important tone for Sport Wales to follow in terms of what we're doing.

Medals are really interesting and it's great for Wales to do well at Commonwealth games, but actually what we want to produce is well-rounded athletes and a nation that's fit and healthy. And then the medals will look after themselves.

Caroline: And you referenced appearance in relation to kit and the pressures on how athletes look.

But we heard in our inquiry in the Women and Equalities Committee that actually there was also problems with kit when it comes to equipment that's designed for women as opposed to equipment that's designed for men. Some real problems with anterior cruciate ligament injuries for women.

Is enough thought going into how women experience injury, how those injuries are caused and what's being done to prevent them?

Tanni: To the first part of your question, women are still more likely to be sponsored on how they look and not how they perform. And those are issues that men don't have to even think about.

But alongside that comes, some disciplines are very sexualised and in terms of what you are allowed to wear, so hockey's just been through a really big transformation where now women are being allowed to wear shorts.

All the rules about women had to wear skirts and look a certain way and your hair has to be a certain way and you're meant to have your nails and your makeup done. That bit's not in the rules, but it's really encouraged by some of the sponsors. And the pressure on women to look and behave in a certain way, I think is really difficult.

And it's only recently emerged that things like football boots are designed for boys, not girls. And they just make them in different sizes.

So, none of this is a surprise, I think, to anybody who's worked in sport for any amount of time. But you look at a sport like beach volleyball where they now are allowing women for religious reasons to be covered.

But men are allowed to wear shorts and a vest top. Women have to wear a bikini, and the bikini bottoms can be no bigger than two inches on the hip.

And I wonder who designed those rules. And that for a lot of women to just participate, have fun, they're not going to do it. And unless we tackle some of these big rules, there is no reason why women in sport anymore have to wear skirts.

And again, gymnastics the boys and men wear shorts and vest tops. The women have to wear these very high cut leotards and apparently it’s to show the muscles in their legs off. Well, if it works for the girls, it should work for the boys.

Caroline: And we also heard about injury and the support that professional athletes would be given to come back from injury. And the mismatch between that and the lack of support they got coming back from pregnancy.

Tanni: Yes, sorry, I'm laughing because when I was pregnant, one of my team managers wanted to put me on the injured list. And it was like, I'm not injured, I'm still trained. I mean, I trained all the way. I think I had about two and a half weeks off training when I was pregnant, when I had my daughter.

So, it's one of those things, even relatively recently, I've spoken to women in sport whose coaches have said, you can't be a mum and an athlete, and it'll make you soft. I mean, I was told those things.

One of my team coaches said to me exactly that, “You'll never come back to where you were before.” And he was quite aggressive with me, and my response was, “Let me stick a bowling ball inside you and slash it out with a knife and see if you are training two weeks later.” And I was accused of being impertinent.

But it's all these things that if women want to come back, at the elite sport, if you want to come back in after starting a family, there needs to be more thought given to how that can happen.

Because actually at elite level, if we've invested an awful lot of money in a female athlete and then we're not putting the support around them to start a family and then come back, if that's what they want to do, then we're actually not maximising our investment.

And it's really funny — my daughter's now 21, but she just travelled the world with me, and we used to stick her in a long jump pit with a bucket and spade which is probably not the best thing. I think she's over it now.

But that was because I was really resilient. And as a female athlete, you already have to make choices if you want to try and start a family about timing it around major games.

Whereas, again, men … I don't want to be bleating on about it, but male athletes don't even have to vaguely think of these considerations.

Caroline: So, we've heard about differences in kit, differences in training facilities, differences in training methods, lack of female coaches, different medical support. Do you feel that women are drawing the short straw? Are we doing enough to make sure that they're not?

Tanni: Yeah, they still are drawing a bit of the short straw. I mean, sport is incredible to be involved in. It's given me the life I have now. I've got friends who sort of went through the system and sort of dropped out.

There are so many positive things, but that sort of drive for equality, it still does feel a long way off … even though I've talked about all the barriers and the problems, I am really optimistic because it feels like there's a tide turning.

The fact that we're talking about these things, the fact that the Women and Equalities Committee is talking about sport, again, just wouldn't have happened a couple of years ago. Sport would be something that's sitting on the side. 

What we can do in Parliament is harness a little bit of that. But those moments can be quite fleeting. And we need to be looking at our education policy. We need to be looking at how P.E. is delivered in schools about whether we have trained P.E. teachers at primary school level.

The reason still public schools do well, some of it's about money, some of it's about facilities, but a big chunk of it is also about having trained P.E. teachers from the youngest age in teaching good physical literacy.

So, in the Lords we generally have to be quite creative about where we find places to talk about sport and physical activity as opposed to it being included in lots of different bits of legislation.

So, I think the good thing about what we're doing now is it's about educating MPs and peers to think about where sport and activity fits in to people's lives.

Caroline: And there are two select committees in the Commons at the moment looking at women in sport. Culture, Media and Sport is looking at the challenges which women sporting organisations face in growing audiences and revenues and what can be done to bring about parity between men and women's sport. They're also looking at participation rates of boys and girls.

And my committee, Women and Equalities, is looking at sport. We started with football and we're now turning to health and physiological issues for women in sport more broadly.

Have we got that right? Or if you were given free reign to tell us what we should be looking at, what would it be?

Tanni: No, it's a really good start because I think, I've been saying for years, football I think is a sport that could unlock so much. And I remember talking to someone about 10 years ago who worked in the sport who's like, “Yeah, girls don't want to play.” I was like, “Yeah, okay. I'm not talking to you then.”

Because football as a culture, it sort of seeps through so many parts of our life and I think football can be the thing that unlocks, it brings people in.

We can talent transfer young women to other sports.

if I had a magic wand, it would be where I'd probably talk a bit more about physical activity than sport, if I'm honest.

And it's where we could get that across every different committee that looks at things, just where is the physical activity lens, because it impacts education, it impacts business.

I know I'm bound to say that, but just if it was part of every committee, they just had a little bit of time to think about it. I think we would get way more movement and traction than we've had up to now.

But you know what, two committees talking about women in sport, honestly, I never thought I'd see the day. That's pretty big stuff.

Caroline: Tanni Grey-Thompson, thank you so much for taking some time to talk about your views on women in sport. It's been fantastic.

Tanni: Thank you.

Caroline: As you heard there, two select committees are asking questions about women in sport, Women and Equalities, which I chair is one. And the second is Culture, Media and Sport, which is Chaired by Dame Caroline Dinenage, who is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Gosport.

Caroline joins me now. Caroline, welcome to Committee Corridor and thank you for joining us.

Dinenage: Thank you for having me.

Caroline: You're also looking at women in sport at the same time as the Women and Equalities Committee has been looking at some of the issues around misogyny in sport. What have you noticed are the differences between the two inquiries?

Dinenage: Yeah, so I think we're coming at it from different angles, but it's funny, we may well somehow meet in the middle on this.

Our inquiry is sort of starting from the point of issues relating to the growth of women's sport, building on some recent successes. So, obviously the Lionesses success last summer was just phenomenal.

But actually, the year before that, back in the summer ’21, there was a remarkable moment I thought when The Hundred started. I went to the opening night of The Hundred, the new sort of short form of cricket at the Oval.

And it was brilliant. It was very vivacious; it was very well attended. Lots of young people, lots of women, super diverse, everybody having a fabulous time.

The next day all over the media, all over Radio 4 and Times Radio, as I was walking into work, they were talking about this new short form of cricket and whether it actually sort of signalled the death of test cricket and all that kind of thing.

And at no point did anybody say that that first cricket match had been female cricket. And for me, that symbolised a massive change in direction. It was the first time that women's sport was just described as sport without it having to be genderised.

And I think that that's a really important moment. So, we're interested in what other sports should be learning from the growth of football, but also cricket, what needs to be done also within these two sports as well, but also others to grow audiences and revenues to make sure that women's sports got the same reach and resources it needs to thrive.

But obviously we can't do that without looking at some of the obstacles it's facing. And some of the stuff that your committee's looking at in misogyny and sexism is linked very closely to some of the things that we're looking at too.

Caroline: And we've also been talking to the Chair of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket, Cindy Butts, about the report “Holding up a Mirror to Cricket.” What did you make of that report. 

Dinenage: So, it's pretty sobering reading for anybody who cares about cricket indeed, anybody that cares about sport, frankly. I mean as you'll be aware the committee that I lead has been concerned about this for a really long time.

We had Azeem Rafiq came forward and spoke out before our committee incredibly bravely and undoubtedly was a vital step in that kind of reset that cricket needs to do to itself to make it become more inclusive.

I think the commission's report echoes very much what we found - that racism is pretty much entrenched in the sport, but we do welcome that the ECBs new leadership has come up very quickly to accept it and to apologise and to sort of set out what they're going to be doing in months ahead.

We're going to be hearing from them in the autumn to look at their response to the commission and the progress that they've made.

But I think what I would say is it's really important to note that this report’s not only about racism, it also found sexism and elitism, class-based discrimination are also rife.

And I am concerned about that in many ways. I mean, and some of the things they say, like for example, we will review the affordability of paying women equal wages. I mean, that to me raised some alarm bells here because it seems that at every level, they don't see the baked in sexism from the starting point of some of their phrases.

So, I think we may have a way to go, that this has to be a turning point if the game wants to remain one of our national sports and for everybody.

Caroline: And it really feels to me as if the ECB is leaning into this report. But do you think there's a case for every sport having a root and branch audit like this one has been? And if you were to choose a sport to look at next, what would it be?

Dinenage: Look, sports governance has been a massive theme throughout this parliament for the committee that I lead, whether it's the moral failures in cricket, the financial failures in rugby, the desperate need for independent regulation in football.

But my feeling is it shouldn't take a crisis or a scandal for sports bodies to take a look at themselves or need a select committee to get involved before these issues are taken seriously.

We've had some really positive evidence from different sports on the outlook for women, but we just want to make sure that as well as hearing the good news stories, we're also hearing some of the concrete action to root out problems once and for all and to get them sorted.

Sport has so much potential on every single level, economically for our country, for people's health and wellbeing. And it shouldn't be gendered.

And actually, in many ways, I think that the men's game can learn so much from women's game in many, many ways. We've seen that from football. Some of the behaviour of spectators in the women's game is so much more positive. Some might argue that the quality of the football in many cases is better.

And actually, we've had a lot more success in women's football than in the men's game in the last couple of years, that's for sure. And hopefully we'll see in the World Cup this summer that continues.

Caroline: Caroline, thank you so much for joining us on Committee Corridor. It's been great to talk to you today.

Dinenage: Thank you.

Caroline: My thanks to all my guests today. We've covered some ground and I'm pleased to have been able to bring you some different aspects of women and girls’ interaction with sport.

If you'd like to find out more about either of the committees we've been talking about, search for Women and Equalities Committee, or for the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

Catherine McKinnell will be in the host chair next week, catching up on the impact of recent changes on voter ID.

I'll be back on July the 21st when we'll be talking about committee work around violence against women and girls.

I'm Caroline Nokes, and this has been Committee Corridor. Thank you for listening.

Further information

• Women and Equalities Committee
• Petitions Committee
• About Parliament: Select committees
• Visiting Parliament: Watch committees

Image: Tim West/UK Parliament