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Don't waste Olympic legacy, says WSFF
Major changes are needed in sport in order to maximise the Olympic legacy opportunity for women. This is the message the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF) is giving MPs at the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Women's Sport and Fitness, which is meeting today, for the first time since the Olympics.
British women had their best ever Olympics, with 11 golds, eight silver and six bronze, however, the WSFF claims there needs to be a cultural change in sport, in order to capitalise on this success.
Currently only 5 per cent of sports media coverage and 0.5 per cent of commercial investment is directed at women's sport.
At grassroots level, only 12 per cent of 14-year-old girls are doing sufficient physical activity, half the figure of boys of the same age. This is partly because of a culture which prizes being thin over being healthy.
WSFF is proposing a strategy which would see greater media coverage of women in sport, a rethink of school sport to encourage more female participation and more female leadership at the highest levels.
"The issues are endemic and chronic," says WSFF chief executive Sue Tibballs. "The achievements of Jessica Ennis, Sarah Storey, Kath Grainger and so many others have taken support for women's sport to new heights… But we cannot rely on goodwill alone to overcome the obstacles to women's sport taking its proper place in public life. This has to change or the Olympic legacy will have failed for women."
The WSFF wants the government to scrutinise how public money is being spent on sport to see how much funding is reaching women.
The organisation launched the Go Girl campaign this year to create the biggest celebration of female sporting achievement and to create a community of women to inspire each other to get healthy.
In celebration of the Olympics, it also launched the Gold Challenge, in partnership with the British Olympic Association and Sport England, encouraging women with challenges, such as to learn a new Olympic or Paralympic sport, or complete distance or time challenges.
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