minister for sport speech at global working organization on ladies and recreation handover

a speech given by means of the minister for game on the international running group on women and sport handover from new zealand to the uk.

thank you to new zealand in your generous hospitality.

i’m truly delighted which will attend these days’s event which starts the respectable handover of the global running organization on ladies and recreation from new zealand to the uk.

it is amazing that the event might be taking place at the very equal time as birmingham 2022, which – and this is really worth repeating – has the largest woman sport programme inside the history of the commonwealth games and can be the primary time a first-rate multi-game occasion will characteristic more girls’s than guys’s medal occasions and i assume this is high-quality.

i am truly committed to assisting women’s sport at every opportunity – pushing for extra participation, employment, business possibilities and visibility in the media. the amazing achievement of the lionesses this weekend suggests simply how far we’ve got come.

the united kingdom has a sturdy song record and robust history of empowering ladies and women via sport. there may be an extended way to go but we’ve got a great deal to be happy with in this place.

the media profile of women’s sport is continuing to upward push and recent studies suggests that -thirds of uk game lovers currently comply with a few shape of ladies’s recreation, and 1/2 have attended an event proposing girls’s athletes.

our domestic projects, like this girl can, are inspiring millions of women and women to get physically active. something that is specifically critical as we get over the pandemic.

we’ve also visible the increase in audiences for women’s game.

latest research published with the aid of ladies’s game agree with suggests that domestic girls’s sport attracted a document british broadcast target audience of nearly 33 million in 2021, the primary drivers being the hundred and the fa ladies’s superb league.

and the management position of certain media stores may be very important, along with the bbc, which made the strategic choice to make sure that a lot of the ones suits have been on bbc one, height time. it worked. it confirmed that there’s a mass target audience for women’s sport. and that is pivotal. if the eyeballs are there, then the money and business opportunities begin flowing. instead of just doing that due to the fact it is the proper issue to do, we will have increasing opposition to preserve these events and ensure these events are on television because they’re commercially feasible and commercially profitable.

and a document crowd of more than 87,000 attended this yr’s uefa ladies’s euros final – the very best attended healthy at both a men’s or girls’s european championship. i was fortunate enough to attend a number of the suits along with the very last and i can truly say that there was a wonderful atmosphere. the spectators had been flippantly balanced and importantly, more than 100,000 youngsters have been spectators in the ones fits. i recognize the complete country will had been stimulated via the lionesses.

there have also been document sponsorship offers struck with girls’s sports leagues, inclusive of barclays’ sponsorship of the girls’s superb league, the most effective women’s football league in england.

and the united kingdom is because of host some of excessive profile women’s sports activities events this 12 months, together with the rugby league international cup and the billie jean king cup. plus birmingham 2022 of route which is going on at this moment in time.

we are running tirelessly to make the most of those occasions in showcasing girls’s game, and inspiring extra girls and women to get energetic as a result. but we recognise that we need to go similarly.

the iwg is a extraordinary possibility to construct on this fulfillment and no longer handiest proportion the exceptional paintings we are doing but to study from different international locations too.

the united kingdom secretariat’s imaginative and prescient for a ‘just and sustainable post-pandemic international wherein girls and ladies play a full and equitable role’ is something that i experience passionately about.

it’s far essential that we hold to try for more equality and opportunity in game.

we were running with our ladies’s game running institution inside the uk, which many of you’ve got attended, to examine some of the challenges and opportunities that exist and i am definitely keen that we retain to make progress as a result of those discussions.

i’d also like to commend the work of the present day hosts new zealand in sharing, selling and helping tales of inspiring exchange from around the world.

their development of the world’s first iwg perception hub as a domestic for the world’s pleasant studies, insight, case studies, news and interactive programmes inclusive of training and seminars has additionally been ground breaking.

i trust the iwg can be a catalyst for girls’s recreation as we get over the impact of the pandemic.

i would really like to take this opportunity to thanks for the role you’ve got all played in securing the iwg secretariat for the uk.

it’s absolutely important that we work collectively to share the messages behind the bid of inclusivity, fairness and collaboration.

i sit up for continuing to work with you to make certain that women’s recreation continues to thrive no longer simply in the united kingdom however at the international level.