From Playing Fields to Global Goals: Gender Equality in and through Sport | Goals Lounge

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Girls' Lounge. We're excited to be gathered here today to discuss how sport can be a powerful force for advancing gender equality and empowering women and girls around the world. An important conversation because sport is far more than competition. It is a powerful platform for confidence, leadership, inclusion, and social change. Yet around the world, many women and girls continue to face barriers that limit their participation and opportunities to lead both on and off the field. When women and girls play sport, the benefits extend far beyond physical activity. Sport helps build skills, resilience, networks, and self-confidence. It challenges stereotypes, opens pathways to leadership, and creates opportunities that can last a lifetime. Today's discussion will explore how we can work together to keep women and girls in the game, support women leaders, and create more inclusive sporting environments through stronger partnerships, targeted investments, and effective policies. Without further ado, let me introduce our Assistant Secretary-General, Nairadze Gombadzvanda, and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women. Ayesha, the floor is yours.

I start with the Paralympics. Paralympics for us with disabilities who love sport. I just was looking forward to this moment. I thought it would not come, and I'm trying to see whether the stick is placed on the chair. Good evening. It's just so wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for choosing to be here and really for the goals, including scoring on the pitch. For those here in the room and those online, thank you so much. Actually, we are talking about leveling the playing field to enable all to compete, to enjoy, and to be. But not everybody has the same opportunity or possibilities. Along the way, girls drop out of sport. We often talk about the numbers. How many girls start, how many girls stay, how many drop out, how many... Then we count those who excel, we count those who have won, we count the athletes But behind the story is a little girl. And that girl is more than a number. It's a girl who loves to run, that athlete who loves football like I did love football and I still do. A girl who dreams of playing for her school her community, her country, who wants to be in Brazil for the FIFA Women's World Cup. She dreams in her little village. And then at some point, she stops showing up. It's not because she has stopped loving the game. Usually, and maybe, she's not feeling safe. coming from the training to coming home. Maybe it's the hours in which the training happens. It's the transportation that she may have to look for. Maybe she doesn't have the uniform and everybody else looks so cute and good and cool. Maybe she's expected to look after her little ones, her little siblings, and she can't leave them in order to go to the game that she loves. And yet, Her brother might be allowed to go because the kids are left with the little sister or with the grandmother. Inequalities, care work, determine the possibilities of participation. Or simply she was told, "Sport is not for girls. What if you have your period?" Stigmatization. And eventually she just says, "I love sports, but not anymore. I can't continue." And when she leaves sports, she does just lose the opportunity to play, but also she loses the community that she wants to connect with through sport, the friendships that she would have nurtured, the mentors that could have been within her space, and where she had started to discover her capabilities and her possibilities. I know I know this is not only through my work at UN Women as the Deputy Executive Director. I know this because for the last 20 years through Rosaria Memorial Trust, I've been running the girls' soccer tournaments in my village. At times just using little paper balls because you can't afford a football. I know this because when girls came together, what started as a simple movement of few teams became a much bigger movement in the community. But when the girls came together year after year, it was the confidence, the courage, the whispering. the encouragement, the blooming. It was the sense that I belong. But when they stepped into the field, something remarkable happened. They played, they laughed, they competed, they talked. Their families came together, they cheered them on. Some went on to be acknowledged by some academy and others got some scholarship, but many also dropped out. because there was no career path. And for these few hours in the field, the field became a place where they could imagine something different from them. As UN women, this work that I've done for 20 years with girls in sport, in football, at the local level, little girls, is what we see every day in UN Women, our Sport for Generation Equality Initiative and Global Sports Strategy. Thank you, Jayat, my colleagues who are working with all of you on this. It is why the PlayOn Alliance is so important, but we also have to be honest on what it takes. We cannot simply tell girls to be confident and resilient and send them back into the system that make it difficult for them to stay. We have to change those systems. The private sector can make a real difference. You can help make equipment and transport accessible. You can support the people and organizations working differently with the girls and with the communities. And there's something else that is just important, influence. Through sports, we pervade the living rooms. The Those places where people say, can we go and watch the game together? Can we go and follow the marathon together? We are, sports is not only in the personal, it's in the collective space. The ability to change the conversation about girls is possible and can be done where they belong and what we expect of them. So my ask tonight is quite simple. Do not just invest in getting girls into the field and make sure that field is a proper quality field. Because at times that field is little stones, that field is not a real field where they can then compete. Make the field possible, get the girls into the field, invest in keeping them there. Because when we remove barriers, we don't just keep a girl in sport. We give her more time to learn, more time to grow, more opportunities to lead, and more space to imagine a future in her own terms. Every girl should have a chance. And when she walks into that field, she should never wonder whether she belongs, because she belongs. She should know that she belongs. Sports. Sports connects us with the being, connects us with the other, connects us with all together. Because through sports, we celebrate humanity. Through sports, we can achieve the goals. education, health and wellbeing, food security, income. Income, a female athlete should be paid, the little girl should be paid the same as the male athletes. At times we see a difference in the treatment of women athletes compared to male athletes. Goals are about equality, human rights and empowerment. My mother dropped out of school. She married my father. She didn't choose my father. My mother was a sports enthusiast. She was the treasurer of our local school where I went to. She never missed when I went for sport. She was there. When she was an old woman, She would still encourage us, boil the little beans for us to carry in my village in rural Zimbabwe. When she passed on, I said, we need to celebrate not only her dream to have played sport, but her aspiration for many other girls to play sport. And therefore, 20 years of impact since she passed on is this tournament. but also for me coming into the United Nations and saying the UN can, should, and is leveraging the power of sport. And to say it's also for the girls, they belong, they should not drop out, they should continue to enjoy because humanity is for all. Again, thank you very much for having me. No, no, I'm joking. Can you hold for me? Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. I'm competing with this deck. Okay, I'm here, I hope you're on your competition. Thank you, thank you so much, thank you, thank you so much.

Hi, everybody. Hello. We're just going to bring our panelists onto the stage. Assistant Secretary General, thank you so much for those inspiring remarks. We hope to continue some of that inspiration with this conversation this afternoon. I don't know about you, but this is one of my favorite places at the United Nations because I feel like we can gather around, look at each other, have a casual but inspiring conversation. And I hope that that's what we have today. My name is Chris Reyes. I am a news correspondent for Canadian Broadcasting and I normally cover politics and current events, but lately I've been wanting to be a part of conversations around sport. And I'll tell you why. It's because I think it's one of the few arenas where the human element remains essential and irreplaceable. And it's an arena where we can talk about big issues and it can feel unifying rather than divisive. I think in sport, we can understand fairness and excellence and how to get there. And we have a group of panelists who will be able to share some of their insights and wisdom with us today and to talk about sport as a powerful driver of gender equality and opportunity. So let me introduce everybody on the panel today, let's start with Sarah Axelson, she's the founder of, she's with Billie Jean King, King's Foundation of Women and Sports. Sal Vitale, head of coverage, US and Americas at Standard Charter. Kate Teabolt, commercial director at Liverpool Football Club, and Sarah, I messed that up, vice president at the Women's Sport Foundation. It's been a long day, everybody. This is the easy part. This is the easy part. This is the part where we can breathe a little bit. So again, we're gonna be talking about sport as a driver of gender equality. And Assistant Secretary General put it so poetically how allowing a girl to play sports can really make the world a better place, to put simply. So, Sarah, I wanna start with what your organization is doing, starting with some of the legacy of the founder, Billie Jean King, any tennis fans in the audience? I mean, her energy burns bright to this day. Where are you seeing, Sarah, some of the most promising advances for women and girls in sport today, and where is the biggest gap that still needs attention?

Absolutely. First, I mean, credit to, and all credit to Billie Jean, right? She is just such a pioneer, she has such an amazing legacy that she continues build to this day and such a visionary to begin the Women's Sports Foundation in 1974, literally with a $5,000 check. And now we are to the point where we have invested more than $115 million in our advocacy, research, and community partnerships and the work that we do. So really building on that vision that she had so boldly, so many decades ago. And I think in terms of when we're looking at the advances and what is growing so quickly right now, it's hard not to name professional sports, especially here in the US. Women's professional sports are just skyrocketing, and we see it in Europe as well with football. you know, NWSL and WNBA, the WTA, right, the tennis tours, and new leagues like Athletes Unlimited, we see growth in so many aspects of women's professional sport and, you know, record setting, collective bargaining agreements with the W. And that's, you know, the viewership, the attendance, that all kind of shows the momentum that professional women's sports is getting, but it's not coincidental that we're here in this moment, right? Especially here in the US, but we have Title IX, and that is a policy that was put in place in 1972 to give equal access to education. But here in the US, sports is part of our educational systems, right? And it not only has helped grow sports for girls and women here within the States, but globally as well, because we see how many international athletes come here, benefit from our educational systems, our collegiate sports opportunities, and then they may go back home and play for their home country. It builds the global game as well. So I think in terms of where things are advancing, the pro level is undeniable, the momentum that we're seeing right now. But we have to ensure that when we're looking at the full pipeline, right, that we're protecting those opportunities, that we're adding opportunities for the girls who want to play and not just girls with the means to access elite access, you know, elite opportunities. It's, you know, what are girls in low income areas and communities? What do they have access to? What do girls in rural communities have? How are they getting to a pitch to a field? How are they accessing that equipment? And then in the US, we have plenty of things that need to keep a close eye on. We have the Senate very clearly moving towards making some major changes in college sports that could have big implications for the access of women's sports and what that could trickle down to in the future as well.

And I'm gonna let Salad and Kate jump into this conversation as well, because to your point, it takes one person to inspire, but you need a community to allow those actions to grow and really take root. What have you both learned in trying to bring organizations together to try to grow this movement?

Yeah, I'm definitely happy to start. One, thank you very much for having me and thank you much for the inspiring opening.

Yeah.

I think, yeah. Thank you for that. I think for me, it's, to go back to your question, so I think this is, for us, it's that kind of, it starts with sort of commitment matters, right? From a Standard Chartered perspective, we've been fortunate to sort of be connected to the Liverpool Football Club for about 17 years. And as part of that, we have been a front of jersey sponsor, but most importantly, we've been sort of partners on an organization called Play On. Play On is an organization that we've sort of jointly have built together that is really encouraging in a variety of different aspects. And Kate will obviously build on this as well, is how do we kind of get and include women in sport for longer term. So it's a global franchise that we've sort of built and we definitely will continue going forward. The other aspect to which you've mentioned, you call the community, I'll call it from an ecosystem perspective. The ecosystem that we've built here, it can't just be a bank like Standard Chartered or a football club like Liverpool or a corporation or your foundation as well doing it alone. We all need to do this together. to make real change. And the third piece, I think, for me as a male executive and as a father of a boys, I think the most important thing is role modeling. And the role modeling aspect that becomes, and to build on what we've done with PlayOn, is when we do host things together, I'm not just bringing the male legends from Liverpool who played football and scored all these goals. We're very much making sure that even if the stage is balanced, we're bringing female legends as well. I think it's very important for both sides to see examples of male players and also seeing female legends who've done phenomenal careers in sport, and giving both boys and girls a chance to see that that's actually a path.

And I want to let Kate jump in here because as we listen to the Assistant Secretary General talk about her memories of playing sport, I could feel just how much that can live with you for a lifetime. And you would have seen firsthand with initiatives like Play On, how sport can build confidence, leadership and opportunity for girls. What can you share about what you've seen, Kate?

Absolutely, Chris, and thank you to everyone for joining today. I know it's at the end of the day, we're happy to have you here, and thank you to our partner at Standard Chartered for the opportunity, and Jaiyama, the UN Women's team, and the GOALS Lounge team, delighted to be here, and I love that opening, so inspiring, and we talk a lot about it internally at Liverpool Football Club, the fact that it does not matter if you play with a $2 rag football or a $200 FIFA football, sport has the power to change the world, certainly football has the power to change the world, but to add a third to that, we really do believe that partnerships have the power to change the world. And those need to be done right. I can't be a flippant. I have my mic. Yeah. A flippant one time done campaign that has no legs to it. And we've been really fortunate, as Sal said, we have a 17 year partnership right now with Standard Chartered. That's really rare in global sports when you look across any of the big five leagues. just announced that we're extending, it'll take us past 20 years. And what that enables us to do with partners is it enables us to really sit down and put strategic plans in place that are gonna make a global impact. When we layer that into our approach at Liverpool Football Club, I'm a biased juror, obviously, but I think what we've done well is we've really prioritized sustainability. We have an umbrella called the Red Way, which is world leading within sports, and it really, is super focused. We focus on people, planet, communities, and we've come out really boldly saying 100% of our partners need to ladder up to this. And between us as new friends in the room, when that came out, there was a bit of, can we go and do that? And I think with the right stance, we said, if we can't find partners that care about people, planet, communities, that will support our women's team, and that led us to a one team approach where if you partner with the club, you have to be a partner on both our men's and women's team, we probably shouldn't be partners with those types of brands and could not be prouder The fact that girls drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys at the age of 13, and then layer in the fact that 94% of C-suite female executives played sport at a senior level, the data's there. So with that, to have a partnership with Standard Chartered around Play On, where, for those of you that aren't as familiar with it, we actually swap their jersey position once a season on both our women's team and our men's team, we reach over 100 million in reach when we do that, so you talk about just awareness on a global level, You're turning a television into every market in the world to be able to see that play on initiative. But then we really underpin it and back it with initiatives around development, around training women, around coaching, around every different way you can slice it. And we get teased a bit, well, what do you want to do? We always say, we want to do it all with that. But it's created this truly global platform in partnership with Gender Charter to do that extremely well.

You know, this is a special week at the UN when all of the world's leaders are sort of under one roof. As you try to deliver a message of how to create more partnerships to bring more girls into sport, what is missing in those conversations to keep growing those partnerships?

You know, I think intentionality matters. I think making sure that, you know, we're investing, like I said, at all levels of that pipeline, making sure that we're reaching the most marginalized girls. to have access and making sure that we are talking about all of the benefits of sport that we've heard echoed today, right? The education, academic, health, leadership, social, emotional, there are so many benefits that come with participating in sports that we have documented very well through the research at the Women's Sports Foundation, but really engaging that research and those benefits and making sure that we're talking about sports not just as this nice to have, right, as it is a critical piece of a child's development and a critical piece that we can lean on to help move things in the sustainable development goals, right? And making sure that we're prioritizing that because I think sometimes there's so many problems to solve and so many issues at hand that sports can take a backseat. And so looking at sport as the solution rather than, you know, the extracurricular.

Absolutely. And really an arena to have all of these other big conversations, again, in a much more unifying way, I find. rather than maybe in other arenas where it can feel like there's a lot of division. Speak to us about what you see as the next frontier in growing this. You know, there's that saying, "What gets you here won't get you there." And so there's been a lot of advancement in bringing girls and women into sports, but there's still a long way to go. What would you like to see in the next five to 10 years?

Like to start.

I think from our perspective at a club level and my personal perspective as well, I suppose, we're really still at some basics right now. There's such amazing media coverage around women's sports. You've got partnerships, you've got investment, you've got awareness around it. But I'll ask this, how many folks in the room are watching Ted Lasso this season? Anyone? Okay. So for those of you that are not, there's an episode where Rebecca and Keely kid out the locker room, the women's team locker room. The season four is all about the women's team. And what they do is someone who works in sports is they put logos. It's really nice, but it's not the fanciest thing you've ever seen. And the pure joy that the women's team has walking in to see the infrastructure that's up to par with the men's team is just is just, I mean, it's really wild when you think about that. And there's just this delight from the women's team. Sorry. Am I good? There's this delight from the women's team that they have this beautiful new locker room. And, you know, I think to really drive women's sports forward, you are going to need it all. And you're gonna need the infrastructure that starts at home, certainly, as a right holder. At Liverpool, we've invested in a new facility, we actually bought back our men's facility that we'd sold, which puts our women's team in a new practice facility that's on par with some of the lower tier Premier League clubs. We then went and invested in a permanent home for them so they don't feel like day in and day out you're turning over signage somewhere that's really a home. And then the triple threat, a little beyoncé, if you will, is we've then got three matches every season that are played at Anfield, our men's team home for bigger crowds. But I think when you layer on that, then you take a partnership like Standard Chartered, you focus on the content around it, you really need all of the pieces to drive it forward.

And Sal, I mean, take it away because that there is an investment piece to this where we sort of have to put your money where your mouth is when it comes to some of these issues that you believe in. What investment is needed to move this forward?

Well, I think it's two pieces of that. There's one, the investment that Standard Chartered or the organization is making. One is with sort of Liverpool and Play On. The second is the Formula One Academy that we've also just sort of rolled out over the past year, which is our attempt to sort of encourage, develop and bring greater women into the sport of Formula One, which is quite more of a men's dominated sort of aspect. And this definitely has sort of taken traction. So that's one aspect. The second aspect for me around investment is that I don't think any campaign at Standard Chartered, as much as I love my bank and so passionate about it, a campaign alone is not going to do something. We need to make this, as I said before, an ecosystem approach or sort of the connections approach. As a super connector, that's what we pride ourselves on, is that you have to connect organizations. And some of it is around the stuff that you do, the stuff that you do, the stuff that we do. All of us together have to sort of bring our thoughts together to kind of come up with a solution. too much of a flip word for me. It's more of a, how do we make progress together? So I think that is the case where if we can continue to invest in each other to kind of come up with more of a unified front of investment, I think that makes a big difference. And the other aspect as somebody who works at a bank that does a fair bit amount of work in the Asia, Africa, Middle East environments, I think it's very clear to me that there's no one-size-fits-all. What I might need in Long Island, New York, is very different than what we might need in Vietnam, very different than what we might need in India, very different than what we might need in Zimbabwe or in Africa. And I think we have to be very mindful as we're pulling these organizations together and thinking about different levels of investment. It's this different initiatives and it's different, for lack of a better terminology, nuances and cultural aspects and different items that we need to address collectively through this organization to kind of unlock, you know, more women in sport in each of those geographies.

And Sarah, let me ask you, what do you want people to know about women's sports? Because I think sometimes we can have a conversation about growing women's sports as if it's something that needs to be helped rather than something that we need to, as you guys have been saying, kind of build an infrastructure around it because there's demand. I mean, people want to watch women's sports. Tennis made be a sports fan and often it is the women's tennis that are drawing the eyes and the audience more than the men's. Not to compare the two, but I think sometimes people forget that there is not just a demand currently, but a growing demand for it. Talk to us about that potential.

Yeah, I mean, and I think that we're seeing it play out, right? Everything that you've just said, I think that the record setting CBA from the WNBA is evidence of the environment that we're in. But I think that we're in this stage now where some probably points of view need to be shifted from this idea that women's sports is a charity versus it's a good business decision. And I think that we've seen that through investments from big time investors, from the valuations of different franchises and expansion fees and things that are happening at the pro leagues. that show us that this is good business, the demand is there. But again, we can't only focus at the top of the ecosystem, right? We need to make sure that we're focusing on the whole pipeline because if we're not focusing on protecting opportunities for youth, expanding opportunities for youth, the most marginalized, we're not gonna get to the point where we have those elite athletes because we're gonna be losing athletes along the way. So yes, that investment matters, that the case is there for the investment, but we have to focus on the full ecosystem.

And to do that, I'm guessing it requires sort of this intricate web of partnerships. Can you talk to me, Kate, a little bit about how, what are some of the challenges in building those partnerships at all levels?

Yeah, I think we've touched on longevity and long-term commitment really matters. So having partners signed up for multi-year terms that can really get backed in terms of commitment. And then you can bring in private sector, public sector, you can bring in groups to sit around a table and really discuss what matters. I guess at a commercial level for a rights holder in a big club like Liverpool, we always have a bit of debate on as we bring in partners like Standard Chartered, who's doing amazing work with Play On, we have AXA who insurance who entitles our training facilities for our men's and women's team. We've Expedia who provides accessibility and transport to our women's matches. You have all these different lanes that partners can drive in. And at some point you want to keep them protected so they've got stages to really stand on and dance on with their own lane. But then where does collaboration come in? And that's what really excites me. I think if you've got great blue chip brands, you've got private sector and public sector, you've got support around that, like the work we've done with UN Women, that's where the real magic happens. you're seeing more of it now than you ever have before. And I'm delighted about what's hopefully ahead if we all keep our foot on the gas.

Yeah, I think to build on that, one is clearly the partnership, and it's an honor to be partnering with you on PlayOn all these years. I also think, and you hit on something earlier, is around changing the expectations. And this is the whole aspect, and you mentioned earlier, Sarah, with the CBA, with the collective bargaining agreement with the WNBA and all these other aspects, I think there's an aspect to say, This is over a decade plus ago where people, well, we were afraid to ask for that incremental amount of money or incremental or even what you made the point earlier around getting a sort of kit or a locker room at the same standards as the men's. So I think we all continue to kind of push, it's a small steps day by day, but if we all continue to raise the expectation that no, they should be on equal levels. They should go when they're expecting to get that and push harder. Now, it's not going to happen overnight, but if you start with that and then have the organizations like the three of us are really well connected to try to deliver it, I think it's a powerful statement.

That's why as we wrap up this conversation, I want to give each one of our panelists the last word. What drives you to continue to do this work?

For me, it's recognizing what an impact sports had on my life. and wanting to make sure that all kids have access to that. I have two children, a son and a daughter, and I want to make sure they each have that same opportunity and they have more than I had and the same as one another as well and it's equity between the two of them as well.

Wonderful. I just believe that sport and partnerships do have the power to change the world. That gets me out of bed every single day with a big club like Liverpool that can make such an impact on a local level, but also can go into every corner of the world. And I'm really proud of not just our women's team, but our men's team too, and all that we've got.

I think for me, it's two aspects. One is it's quite clear from a community perspective and everything else, everybody needs to prosper. And I think we all could do that together. Some of it is around the connections we make at Standard Chartered, some of it is around the community and everything else. But I look at from my aspect, it's really leading by example, what really inspires me. Is that for me, I don't want to say it's the right thing, but we need as executives, as leaders in sport, leaders in your organization, we need to lead by example because that's where the next generation comes. And if it's around a girl staying in sport longer, or if it's men sort of boys created, turning into men and creating those opportunities, I think there's more we can be doing from the bottoms up to sort of to get to the right outcomes over time.

Wonderful. Sal, Kate, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us for this wonderful conversation. And thank you to our audience for being here and to those watching online.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.