On Being a Change-Maker and Changing the Game.
I have been coaching lionesses since founding Be Braver.
Giving lionesses pride in themselves and each other – to be inspired by their collective courage.
Helping them to Be Braver than they’ve been before and to choose courage.
Building a mindset to activate their limitless capacity to achieve the seemingly impossible.
Many of us shed a tear or even sobbed yesterday when our lionesses won Euro 2022.
Tears shed for all women. For women sports, for the future of our children and society.
It represented something far more significant than winning a trophy.
We were seeing the stories of women throughout history being told. Women defying the odds in a world which has underestimated, underrepresented, and underinvested in them.
Women who have grafted, persisted, overcome, struggled, and juggled to have their dreams, passions and talents given the playing field they deserve.
It isn’t just football that has to meet this moment, women’s sports that needs to create a new legacy for women. We all need to look to the spaces and places we operate in.
Recognise the bias we all have.
Challenge our own thinking.
Spot the gargantuan amounts of spaces and places gaps like these exist in (sports yes, but also health, culture, education, work, representation and women’s safety)
We need to ensure investment is there from birth to create equal opportunities, education, academies and routes to professional futures.
To not appropriate commercial opportunities with duplicitous bandwagon jumping. As Ian Wright said (who has been an exemplary an advocate for women’s sports).
if there's no legacy after this then what are we doing?
We want to recognise that our women’s team are role models for all of us, not for just women. For what they bring to the game, how they play – on and off the pitch.
And let us not forget the fans. May the women’s fans lead the way in fan engagement for the exemplary supporter base they have shown themselves to be. The best of England was there to be seen in all its glory yesterday.
If football has captured the attention of what inequity for women has done to society, then may it's lessons about what and how we teach in schools, what happens at a grass roots level through to playing fields and leagues, offer us the analogies we need for the rest of society.
Take the comparisons in to your offices and look at the life journey of women coming to, starting and staying in your organisations. Dreams don't just live in stadiums.
Let me finally talk about the courage of women. My life's work. The area of research and practice I committed my life and business to.
We over estimate men’s courage and underestimate women’s. We privilege men with stories of courage bravery and valour growing up. Never building into the stories the power and responsibilities they held for creating the battles they heroically fought.
We over estimate men’s courage and underestimate women’s. We privilege men with stories of courage bravery and valour growing up. Never building into the stories the power and responsibilities they held for creating the battles they heroically fought.
We ignore the damage this has done to generations of young of men. The opportunities the future holds for all of us when are able to measure each others courage equally.
Women’s courage is the under-researched and misunderstood.
In my mind. Women are exemplars of courage.
Women practice courage on a daily basis. They labour courage.
The more discriminated and marginalised by society you are, the more courageous you had to be. The harder you have worked, the more creative you have had to be, the more you have persisted, overcome, faced, threats and fears. The more uncertainty you have encountered.
The courage you saw yesterday in our team of lionesses, the drive and determination to give their all to the thing they love is the courage that drives the creativity, innovation, passions and talent of every woman on this planet.
Women need the playing fields they deserve.
When a society has systematically underestimated you, it is easy to fall in to the story it has created for you.
We need to rewrite the stories we write for ourselves, that we co-create and that we share with our children.
We all need to Be Braver. Braver as men at being advocates, braver as women at spotting the stories we've been told that limit us. Braver collectively to create change.
To collectively accept the reality of the society we find ourselves in and to take shared responsibility for the future we create in it.
To leverage the courage of women for the powerful changes and futures it can create for all of us. To have the courage to accept that to level the playfield we all have a responsibility to change the game.
We are all change-makers in the game of life. Be Braver today.