Netball is the only sport I was any good at as a child and, even then, my athletic career peaked in primary school. But I brought a certain spaniel energy to the position of wing attack, and my tendency to get overlooked by the taller opposition defenders meant I perfected the (possibly unprecedented) strategy of hiding behind them before bursting out to steal the ball mid-pass. These days, I indulge my fondness for the game by watching the England Roses compete for the highest of honours. They are currently training for July’s World Cup in South Africa, and while they have long had my fealty, this summer they have won my heart before even stepping onto the court.
While so many professional sports teams would be using the build-up to their flagship tournament to ally with betting companies, alcohol sponsors and official fast-food vendors, England’s netballers are using their temporarily elevated profile to promote women’s health and break taboos. Their captain, Natalie Metcalf, is keen to speak up about pelvic health; their goal defence, Fran Williams, wants to discuss the effect of contraception on training cycles; Ellie Cardwell, who describes herself as a “bigger-busted” player, is using her social media channels to highlight the importance of well-fitting sports bras.
Their efforts are part of NetballHer, a nationwide campaign that England Netball launched in April. Its purpose is to educate people from the recreational to professional levels of the sport about female bodies. There’s a myth-busting website curated by performance expert Emma Ross, GB rower-turned-coach Baz Moffat and GP Bella Smith, which demystifies issues from prenatal and postnatal training to menstrual cycles and the menopause. And there’s systemic investment, too, with development courses for coaches, officials and volunteers.
Just as significant is the organisation’s call for more research in female-focused sports science, a field that remains woefully neglected. Only 6 per cent of academic papers in sports science relate specifically to women, and recently the British Medical Journal identified “distinct knowledge gaps” in the relationship between women’s health and physical activity, including cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and postpartum physiology. In December, an article in Nature argued that the overwhelming bias towards males in sports science was impeding progress in the prevention and treatment of female athletes’ injuries.
As the top teams in women’s sports push for gender equality at elite and grassroots levels, boosting participation, the problem can only become more urgent. The other major World Cup taking place in July is in women’s football, a sport where potentially career-ending ACL injuries are increasingly prevalent.
England’s team have already lost their captain, Leah Williamson, to such a tear in the knee ligament; she was the fourth Arsenal player to damage her ACL in six months. The fact that women are between six and eight times more likely to suffer such tears than men has not yet produced a fix for how to avoid them. It is thought that the relative width of female athletes’ pelvises sends more stress through their knees—but the training and advice women receive continues to be built on male-based science and experience.
What I find heartening and, ultimately, vital about the efforts to address this bias is the intention to change the way that women think and feel about our bodies. Some of the statistics from the NetballHer campaign are as unsurprising as they are significant. More than a third of girls say they avoid school sports activities when they have their period, while almost nine in 10 female athletes say that their menstrual cycles impacts upon their performance. Yet fewer than one in five British women have received any education about their menstrual cycle in relation to exercise and training.
No wonder that so many girls drop out of sport at puberty. Or that so many women—be we occasional Sunday runners or committed gym bunnies—crash into mental and physical barriers that tell us we’re “just not a sporty person”. We’re used to accepting monthly pain and mood fluctuations, and for millennia the presiding message has been that these are limitations that we must simply put up with. Educating society—and educating ourselves—about the female body is the first step to understanding what it’s truly capable of.
