Meeting of the Parliament 28 November 2023
I add my thanks to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee for its report. I also thank the committee for bringing the debate to the chamber to give the subject the prominence that it deserves and provide an opportunity for all members to debate this important issue.
It was important that the committee decided to focus the inquiry on participation at not only elite level but community level. The interesting recommendations on how female participation in sport is supported, reported and promoted will help us all to move the dial forward with regard to preventing the drop-off and plugging the gender gap about which we have heard in the debate.
The committee aimed to identify actions that should be taken to help increase the numbers of women and girls who participate in sport and physical activity and, crucially, identify what can be done to ensure that they are able to remain active and engaged throughout their lives.
The reality is that we are talking about a long-standing issue that is a really tough nut to crack. Sadly, there is still a huge disparity between the participation levels of women and girls and those of men and boys. As I have mentioned in the chamber before, the figures are compounded by deprivation, with higher levels of non-participation in areas of high deprivation. We all wish for sport to be a great equaliser, but the figures suggest that, for too many people, opportunities are limited and that personal as well as national potential is not being realised.
During one of its evidence sessions, the committee heard from the Young Women’s Movement about the scale of the challenge:
“we were shocked by how much someone’s socioeconomic background impacts their ability to access sport. We assumed that there would be an impact, but 81 per cent of the people who responded to our survey indicated that that was a key barrier for them, which was disheartening. Although we thought that there would be an impact, we were surprised by how big it was.”—[Official Report, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, 14 March 2023; c 26.]
In 2020, the Observatory for Sport in Scotland identified socioeconomic deprivation as the main barrier to participation in sport in Scotland. The reality is that, if we want to ensure that women and girls have the best chance to participate in sport and activity throughout life, we need to acknowledge the reality that affordable sports facilities are being closed as local government funding is squeezed. I hope that the minister will speak to that issue and bring it up again with those in power.
In the small amount of time that I have left for this speech, I want to focus on what young girls have told me about participating in sport. Last night I had the great pleasure of joining a session of the 3rd Mauchline brownies. As well as having my debating skills challenged by a very vibrant and able group of young girls, I was able to take the time and opportunity to ask them about sport and physical activity. There was great enthusiasm for sport and activity, with a big bubbly round of discussion about football, rugby, gymnastics, running and swimming. All the girls agreed that they loved sport, they knew that it was really good for them and they knew that it was important to participate in it.
I went on to ask them if it was easy to participate in all those activities, and that is where the discussion changed. The girls talked about getting time at school for sport. That was sometimes difficult, because “important lessons mattered.” They also talked about transport and facilities in their rural community. That is often more difficult there. Even at their very young age, they could identify that local community centres where they had participated in sport were closing, and that swimming pools were about to be closed in the local area.
By far the biggest challenge that they faced was boys. That is in line with some of the evidence that was collected by the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. It struck me that the group of young girls in front of me were just approaching the drop-off range around the age of 14. The young girls speaking last night very much echoed the evidence gathered by the committee. They said to me that boys dominate the playground space, and that they often “exclude us girls” from the open areas.
The girls told me that boys sometimes say to them that girls are not very good at sport. They also told me that, although they loved to participate in certain sports such as football and rugby, sometimes the boys said to them that those were not girls’ sports. It was striking to me that that was the experience of young girls here and now.
Given the research and the committee’s report, we should be doing all we can to change attitudes and trends. Changing the participation of women and girls in sport is not just about speaking to women and girls; it is definitely also about having conversations with boys, men, teachers, sports coaches and the wider community. I do not believe that those attitudes are ingrained at an early stage; I believe that we can change them. However, it takes us all working together to change things for the good. It takes Government to acknowledge the barriers and to put the participation of women and girls in sport to the very top of the agenda, with funding sources to support it.
There is much more to say on this subject, but I do not have any time left. I thank members from across the chamber for raising other important issues that are addressed in the committee’s report, and I thank the committee and its clerks for all their work in this important area. I hope that we all move on together to make the necessary changes.
16:02