From my motivational talks, and meeting and networking with more women, one of the things I’ve noticed is the lack of sponsorship for women and the lack of media support for women.
There are so few examples of women doing physical challenges, or playing sports or going on adventures. If you were to look in the media or on the TV you would think it was only men who had an interest in sports and women just watch, they never get involved. All the TV programs about adventure are with men, they tell the stories of great adventures by men. What about the women?
Though twitter, and other social media platforms it started to become more and more apparent that women had done a hell of a lot of amazing challenges, but no one was sharing their stories.
I was not aware of them, I read a lot, and it was like coming across a secret underground world. It got me thinking, if I don't know about them, what about the younger girls, would they know that women have rowed across the Atlantic, swam the English Channel that women have scaled the highest mountain in the world, or have run 53 marathon in 53 days?
I knew there was a lack of support for women in sports by the lack of sponsorship and media coverage. But I did not realise what a massive gulf there was. If you’re a female, trying to do anything in adventure or challenges, it is phenomenally hard to get sponsorship, don’t get me wrong there are some women who have sponsors and that’s fantastic. But generally there’s a massive lack of support from large media outlets and large corporates who sponsor events. They rarely sponsor women.
I could talk about this all day, but me talking about it wasn’t going to change anything. Instead, I decided to take action. I wanted to educate women and girls out there, that their are different opportunities available to them.
If you haven't listened to the Tough Girl Podcast then I would encourage you to give it a listen. It’s aimed at women and girls, but I do have male listeners, who also enjoy it as evidenced by the reviews in iTunes. The format is a relaxed interview, where I talk to the guest and find out more about what they do, how they do it, what challenges, they’ve faced and how they’ve overcome them. I ask them for their tips and their advice.
My guests are just fantastic, I mix it up and try to get a real variety in the show. I’ve interviewed Olympians, runners, swimmers, mountaineers, rowers as well as boxers and female fencers. I have so many amazing episodes I want to get out in December as my present to my Tough Girl Listeners, I’ve decided to double it up in December and have two episodes per week, one on Tuesday (Tough Girl Tuesday) and one on Thursday (Tough Girl Thursday) both being realised at 7 am UK Time!