‘Women’s sport hasn’t been visible enough to occupy that same spot in our hearts. It should, it can and it will’

IF SHE CAN’T see it, she can’t be it.

Surely, by now, you’ve heard of the 20×20 campaign, which officially launched in mid-October. You’ve seen #20×20, #CantSeeCantBe and #ShowYourStripes over and over as you scroll through social media; you’ve seen the videos, read the articles and saw photo after photo pushing the landmark initiative.

Source: 20×20.

But just incase you’ve been living under a rock, here’s a plain and simple reminder of what the campaign aims to do: increase media coverage, boost attendances and ultimately, grow involvement in female sport by 20% by the end of 2020.

The story behind those 20% targets, the hashtags and the striking red stripes runs much deeper though. Behind the touching experiences and stories told by ambassadors, the powerful videos and thought-provoking messages used to catapult 20×20 into the public eye stands the brains of the operation. 

Conversations in an office built on different ideas eventually led to its inception, and everything snowballed from there. The co-founders of Along Came A Spider — a creative agency in Dublin — Sarah Colgan and Heather Thornton, are both mothers of both sexes and had caught themselves, on occasion, treating their sons and daughters differently in terms of sport.

“I had noticed my own auto-pilot reaction with my daughter,” Colgan tells The42 as she sits down to reflect on the campaign thus far, “of basically being much more determined that my son would play sport rather than my daughter.”

Another example she gives is friends in Mayo with three sons and a daughter. With the county’s men’s side in the All-Ireland final in 2017, they were dead cert on going to Croke Park. The week after, the women were also facing Dublin but there was no mad hunt for tickets. They weren’t even going to go until they realised, ‘What are we at, we have three girls, what’s the difference?’ Into the car and off to Dublin they went again, so.

It’s the way it always has been, the done thing. A mindset, the Irish psyche perhaps, with the need for a cultural shift: that’s the real target of the campaign, which is presented by the Federation of Irish Sport.

“With 20×20, what we’re really keen to do is to set some measurable objectives,” Colgan explains, her passion shining through with every last word she utters.

“We had seen that women’s sport is trapped in this cycle of lack of attendances, lack of media coverage and not enough participation at all levels, whether it’s player level, coaching, refereeing or administration,” she says, adding that if they could have a fourth pillar it would be funding and sponsorship.

20×20 and Along Came A Spider co-founder Sarah Colgan. Source: Bryan Keane/INPHO

“To look at breaking the spokes in that wheel meant that we needed to boost participation, we needed to boost attendance and we needed to boost media coverage. By doing that then the funding would also follow.

“Really, the bigger philosophy of 20×20 is to look at our cultural perception of girls and women in sport, and bringing about positive cultural recognition, and celebrating it for being something valuable. That’s really what’s driving everything. If we can get there culturally, then the attendances, participation and media coverage will follow.”

It all kicked off in the public eye on 15 October, the launch day, and chapter one — of five — is all about ‘making us aware of this subliminal bias that we hold towards girls and women in sport’. Colgan stresses that the idea is not to fix anything or make major changes straight away, but to make parents, teachers, sporting bodies and media organisations aware that it is there.

The reaction has been something else There’s been some comparisons drawn to This Girl Can, which is pretty surreal, she says, considering the huge differences money-wise.

“This Girl Can had a budget of £10 million in phase one whereas there’s no advertising spent for this, we can’t book any media, it is all organic. It’s had an incredible reaction organically, not even just with the media but with teams, schools and members of the public contacting us.

“The thing that it’s shown us is the time is 100% now for there being a public appetite for women in sport.

“The fact is though, we are still light years behind men’s sport. It’s brilliant the success stories are there, but women’s sport hasn’t just been visible enough for long enough in order to be able to occupy that same spot in our hearts. It should, it can and it will.”

Visibility. It really is massive. That is, of course, where the tagline if she can’t see it, she can’t be it stems from.

“It’s visibility, not just in terms of column inches or media coverage,” she continues, “but visibility in terms of seeing your neighbour playing, visibility in terms of girls in your class going to training on a Saturday morning, visibility in terms of your mother coaching, visibility in terms of sitting down as a family to actually watch a women’s competition on the TV and going to female games at the weekend.

“If she can’t see it, she can’t be it is not only referring to, ‘I can’t be an elite athlete unless I see female elite athletes around me’. It’s: she can’t be part of what sport gives us culturally if she hasn’t been exposed to it. She, as a sports fan.

A picture of a panel, and others including Colgan, at the launch of 20×20. Source: Morgan Treacy/INPHO

“The visibility thing has got to become seen as a normalised part of our culture, of what we do and who we feel we are. For older generations, it’s a bigger leap because women’s sport wasn’t visible. For these younger generations, if it becomes as visible as men’s then we won’t have that hurdle to jump over.

“20-30 years ago women’s sports wasn’t half as prolific as it is now — but it still isn’t half as prolific as it needs to be.”

20×20 is, of course, pushing that more and more with Mary O’Connor and the Federation of Irish Sport ensuring that all sports are also driving the same message.

The campaign is funded by the five official sponsors — an equal split between Lidl, AIG, Three, Investec and KPMG — with Healthy Ireland also offering some support. “They’ve made it entirely possible,” Colgan smiles.

“We don’t have enough money to develop programmes or bigger initiatives or things like that, but what we can do is we can raise public consciousness and rally everybody towards the various targets.”

Those targets, those 20% increases; how exactly does that work? Well, Neilson are their official research partner. The American firm carried out an audit of Irish media before the launch, and those will act as the benchmark statistics. In terms of participation and attendance, National Governing Bodies (NGBs) and Local Sports Partnerships (LSPs) are providing those figures themselves.

Neilson then do an analysis, a before and after if you like, to discover if the targets have been hit at the end of 2020. Colgan says they would love to check in between now and then, but that all depends on budget.

It is tricky, she admits, because each sporting body is set up so differently, each media organisation is starting at a different baseline, things are measured differently everywhere; but that is all being considered. 

Each of the NGBs and LSPs can choose a different pillar, or target both participation — covering playing, coaching and officiating numbers — and attendance. The LGFA for example, she explains, have a really wide participation rate and growing that by 20% is too unrealistic, so they’ll go after attendances.

Media then, 20% can be done no matter what, she insists. Although some organisations would consider themselves further ahead of others in their efforts, there’s always other angles to look at. Not just increased coverage, there can be more female commentators, pundits and writers reporting on men’s games as well as women’s games, she says.