Alex: 0:37

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Working it Out podcast. An amazing guest with us today. She is the CEO of Women in Sport. We've got Steph Hilborne welcome to the podcast. Steph.

Steph: 0:48

Great to be here, Alex. Thanks.

Alex: 0:50

I really appreciate you coming on today. What we'll do is we'll jump straight into our first question. As we always do, it's about our Working it Out locker. So this locker is to do with CEOs items related to their relationship with physical activity. So thinking back throughout your life, is there an item to do with your relationship with physical activity that you would like to induct into our locker?

Steph: 1:10

Yeah. I had a quick think about this and the thing that came to mind, especially because I envisaged quite a small locker for some reason, is my my netball colors from school.

Alex: 1:20

Amazing. Please tell me more about'em. How did they, how did you get those?

Steph: 1:23

I got a few other colors at school as well because sport was my everything at school. And even though we didn't wear uniform by the time we were giving them, so you couldn't show them off like in the old days, it was one of my biggest moments of pride. And the reason I suggested going to collect them was one of my biggest moments of prize. And the reason I suggest it is because we, people sometimes overlook how important those moments are. Smaller moments too. Just winning a tiny little race when you are eight or something, something you might remember forever. So I just thought it was important to to just put on record that it really matters. It really matters our childhoods our relationship with sport and exercise as a kid because you never forget it.

Alex: 2:05

And what was yours like growing up? What was your relationship with physical activity like? Were you quite a sport individual?

Steph: 2:10

I'm from Generation X and we were the least parented generation. We were sent outside in the morning, called back in the evening, and I was actually with a friend recently, a bloke I know who grew up in Derbyshire and he said him and his brother sent outside in the morning onto the hills and the only way their mother could call them back was by using a huge kind of handheld cowbell that she just used to ring them back in. So I was an outdoors child and and my father was quite handy with racket sports and he got us playing badminton extremely young and table tennis and things like that, and so by the time I got to school, I just was looking for any sport I could play. And then my whole school life really, I just focused on, on when I could get out to netball court or onto the pitch to, to play sport onto the courts to play tennis in the summer or whatever it was badminton. That was my relationship with sport. It was basically my everything at school. And it wasn't until I got a little bit less fit actually in the sick form. And then I did a rather badly timed, very high shot in badminton, put my back out, that I had to rethink a bit and wonder if there was anything else to life. And it was just in time to do a bit better in my A levels, I think, than I might have done. And that switched it for me a bit.

Alex: 3:24

That. I was trying to think of how to frame the question of how does someone go from that sporty, like you said, like that, to where does your relationship with conservation come in? And you said you started straight away by saying you're outside all the time. As a child, I can imagine it felt like a very natural thing to transition into then.

Steph: 3:42

Well, I was fired up because, not only was I one of the many who watched David Attenborough's programmes and got fascinated by the complexity of nature and life, but I was obviously by being outside, walking in the very places that became the M 25 and the A three the motorways down in that part of Surrey. And so living basically at the junction of those two pretty well not knowing about. What was going on with planning policy the first I knew of one of those roads with me and one of my brothers just walking one day and suddenly there's this absolutely massive scar in the landscape and it was quite high impact. Just watching that and all the other development going on, I was like, what are we doing watching the world news? I was quite a serious kid actually. I even read a book about the Greenhouse Effect and since I'm 56 And I was 16 at the time I read it, I was very early on to understanding about climate change. Yeah, so I was quite serious about it. Pretty worried my parents were quite politically engaged and I wanted to save the world, so that was why I went into conservation. but, one of the reasons I ended up in this job was because I knew throughout those, actually about 27 years in the environment sector, at the beginning of which no one gave a single I'm trying to polite language. Nobody cared. The reason I survived was because of the resilience that I knew I'd built through team sport and having a brilliant coach in, in netball in particular. And, I felt that at times when it felt hopeless. I could remember when it felt hopeless when I was playing against a six foot four shooter and netball and, I'm five 10 and you feel it but you gotta keep going. So there was that kind of sense that it had set me up well for life.

Alex: 5:19

You've used some powerful words there, which links to the next section around one word would you use to describe the emo your emotional link to physical activity? I've heard words like resilience coming through. Is there one word that encapsulates everything? All of your feelings towards activity?

Steph: 5:33

I think it is joy,

Alex: 5:34

joy.

Steph: 5:34

I think it's joy. because it's just that sense of freedom, liberation, and and you just, I used to play badminton, my brother for two hours a night, and we just never stopped laughing, as we were playing just by somehow the ridiculousness of putting in a short shot when you've just done a long one and he's being splayed on the floor and it just pure fun and joy.

Alex: 5:55

It sounds your father and the role he's played and then your brother and playing activity with him. It sounds like it, sport and physical activity were quite an important part of your family's lifestyle.

Steph: 6:04

Yeah, interestingly, activity in terms of walking was as a family, but I've reflected on this only quite recently actually. Mom didn't. Guess why? She was actually just working part-time as a social worker looking after three children and initially a a mother in a wheelchair. So she didn't have any time to do an exercise. And yet she had been quite good at tennis actually as a kid. That's really sad and I hadn't really reflected on that until quite recently. because, she didn't used to say anything about it I'd like to come and play or this, that it just wasn't even considered something she do.

Alex: 6:40

This seems really common.

Steph: 6:42

Yeah, really. It's hit me quite hard a few years ago when I realized that.

Alex: 6:45

Yeah, it seems really common with the conversation I've had recently about how specifically mothers and the roles that, they have played to enable the leaders to be amazing leaders, but also to have a real role in their own physical activity, but then that they have not done anything. Maybe they've put that they've in the backseat or maybe that was the generation that they were in, but it seems like they, they performed role model role of the mothers come out really strongly throughout this series.

Steph: 7:11

Yes, I, it was certainly a really, actually awful generation to be a woman. The generation where were educated and then basically to be a middle class woman, I would say, it is very different depending on your, your economic background. But a lot of middle class women were educated to, to take on particular professional roles, and then as soon as they got married, even not even pregnant, they were told they were, they would. Sacked, and were often then just expected to be in the kitchen and to be the housewife with no kind of idea of how mad their brains would be going at having no ability to express everything they know and all their capabilities. So my mother was quite assertive in going back to work. But in common with all, with not all mothers in common with the vast majority now of mothers still expected to do more than more than 50% of the household unpaid work. And in, in momma's case, more than that, although my father was a lovely man and did do the washing up. But, that was, but as far as it went, and this is not something that's in the past, but the not being allowed to pursue a profession is more in the past for sure, has been a massive jump up in the percentage of working mothers. But without really the true shift in the percentage of unpaid work that the woman does. And so that means you know that they will lead their daughters. They don't want their daughters to end up necessarily under that sort of level of pressure, but what we know from women in sport is that the leadership of the dad for sport is particularly important for a couple of reasons. One, because you comment on that perhaps separately. They usually had a better experience of sport as children at the school. And secondly because they probably actually have more time because they're not doing the unpaid work. The leadership of the fathers really important and we also know that whilst 50% of dads support their sons to be active and do support, only 30% of dads support their daughters too. So there's a bit of a call out to dads here,

Alex: 9:04

Wow.

Steph: 9:04

that your dad's very important to you as a girl growing up when it comes to sport. and probably because the dad's a stereotype to think their job is to look after their son's sport. You know that 20% of dads need to step up. Let's be honest. We'd hope a hundred percent would be just to make that gap up.

Alex: 9:22

I completely agree, and I think we are definitely gonna, it sounds like we're definitely gonna be digging into that in the second half of what before we, go into tackling inactivity. I just want to really understand. What does joy look like for you now in terms of physical activity?

Steph: 9:36

Yeah, that's a really good question. After I see when I had this back injury, looking back, frankly, I was a bit of a whimp and I probably with someone just pushing me could have got me to do other stuff, but I started to swim. I started to swim as a, as swimmers exercise really. But I always loved water and I always loved swimming, but never competed or taken it very seriously. But I, so that just became my exercise for the next sort of, 15 years. And I used to swim three times a week and I might do a mile. And it got fairly handy technique wise. And that was, what I did. And I did that right up until my, I had my children. In fact, to the point, this is a little one for any midwives listening, when I had my first child, I had such strong stomach muscles, it was a rather sudden birth. Because they don't allow for that. So they, they say pushing your stunt muscles that strong. My, my daughter, yes, it was all bit sudden. But anyway so right up, so I had my children. Then that kind of three times went down to about one time, and it wasn't until actually really quite recently, probably about five years ago, that I went back out to do anything much else. I'd, when I had, children, I'd play badminton with them and do stuff like that occasionally, but nothing regular for me. So I joined a kind of local, boot in the village I live in run by a really classic guy actually who used to be a kind of semi-professional boxer. He's in his seventies and he is moved, or maybe he's about seventies, moved out to the countryside. And he's really good, actually, really good at doing this kind of boot camp. So why that's joyful is because he does it outside most of the time. Most of the time we're doing like short strengthening exercises or short runs or whatever it is, but outside and it just makes you feel free again. And like a kid

Alex: 11:16

I can imagine the types of areas, if you're still in the same areas. I live quite near that, M, 25, A3 junction, regularly going past there. I'm in the reigate area. And know, I can tell if you're outside around the Surrey Hills, if that's where you still are, bootcamp in that,

Steph: 11:29

I'm up in Oxford now do love the Surrey Hills and I miss them.

Alex: 11:33

Yeah. I can imagine doing a bootcamp around this area would be actually outside would be actually lovely. Is that something you're still doing regularly then?

Steph: 11:39

Yeah, I do that once a week and then I try and swim once a week and I try and and do a stretch class, but I frankly, because I'm a, this is another thing I would probably come on to because my mother's terribly elderly and has needed me down there a lot. I rarely fit that in

Alex: 11:52

Life always is a challenge, isn't it? We've spoken about a few people throughout throughout this in terms of the roles of Mothers, fathers, family. This, it is quite a classic question in other areas, but I've brought it into this sporting field in terms of three people who have inspired you throughout your life linked to physical activity. Doesn't have to just be family, friends, it can be professionals. We've just released one where there's Denise Lewis on there, and then there's moms and school teachers. Yeah, interested to know who your three would be.

Steph: 12:19

So I think I've already said my dad. And you know that very early, expectation that girls could be as good as boys at notes skills wise at sport and just that expectation was always there. And so he, he was the one who got me into it and demonstrated the joy of it really. At school, my netball teacher was just phenomenal. Just had that kind of something, that ability to understand people. Really good brain, really strategic, really natural leader. And she valued me for the stuff I'm really, actually genuinely good at. And she's one of the few teachers who did, so that's, not just. Intercepting the ball. She saw my leadership skills and she saw that my brain was pretty smart at working out where people might be going and tactics and all sort of stuff. So that felt good. She actually Mary Bill was one of the all timing the network greats and select till quite recently. So I was extremely fortunate. Beyond that, I think, what is challenging for women of my age who love team sport, and for me it was really team sport. There, there were, I was never gonna get that brilliant at other sports, there was nobody visible. were no women's team sport visible until literally the last 10 years max. And even then, probably the last five. So I couldn't have this kind of hero figure on a court or a pitch or anything like that. So obviously for me it was gonna be either the Olympics or Tennis. I think the one who I related to most, who I watched was Steffi Graf.

Alex: 13:47

Lovely. Great one. And why was that?

Steph: 13:50

There something about her naturalness actually. I didn't relate to the kind of the kind of made up I don't know, girly American, incredible tennis styles, but there was something about Steffi Graf that was just really natural. And I just really, I thought she was wonderful.

Alex: 14:07

The, exactly like you said the importance of people being able to see someone that you resonate with. And lucky that there was at least that just one person within tennis because you never know if Netball Super League was on back then you might be saying someone.

Steph: 14:19

may well have been. Yeah. And now I watch my daughter when she's watching the netball with me and she's a massive Ellie Cardwell fan and, she can really relate to the Netballers and but I, and I didn't quite have that apart from my own teacher who was brilliant. Yeah, I mean there's something about watching somebody you can. See yourself in that is very important, isn't it?

Alex: 14:39

Yeah, I completely agree. We've transitioned on to the second half of the podcast now, and so what we do, we know Steph as an individual. That's what we try to do first, is find out about you and your personal interests and your relationship with activity. And now we're going into Steph as the professional. So there's two, two main bulks. One is just a bit of an introduction as to who you are, what your current role is, what you are working on at the moment, and then we'll dig into what your beliefs are in terms of tackling inactivity. So if you could introduce your role and what the organization's focus is on.

Steph: 15:10

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm I'm Chief Exec of a small charity called Women in Sport. It's been around for 40 years and a tiny bit, so 41 technically. And it was founded in 1984 by some absolutely incredibly visionary and courageous and wise women and also a man who was involved in the early days. And, so my role is to make sure this research and advocacy charity is as effective as it can possibly be. I've been there five years now and I think we've got the most epic team. We've got real clarity on our direction. We produce really high quality research and insights. We create political space by sharing that with the world and sharing the issues and the challenges for girls and women in relation to sport with the world. We work with others to find solutions and pilot solutions and to develop policy lines that we advocate for. And we then build, in order to achieve any change, we build trust with government, with with agencies, with sport. With other charities in the sector. And by that both women's charities and also the sport for development charities. and, and with corporates and others who are behind the cause and so that, that's the job. And obviously in any Chief Exec job, the bulk of it is in thinking about the direction they should have got the best people, making sure they've got the money coming in, making sure you are you way about either way you work, the way you express yourselves is true to the founders. So it is true to their sense of moral values and their approach and is incredibly well founded on evidence. So that's the job, if that's clear enough.

Alex: 16:48

That's fantastic. And you said research and advocacy. The one thing I do is when I see all your posts on LinkedIn of yourself or Women in Sport in general, how punchy they are. I love that in terms of from a sector, we're all quite friendly. As a sector, we all trying to co-creation, collaboration, trying one message, and especially me working at Sport England, Uniting the Movement is the whole aim, but seeing some women in sport posts, I do, I'm like, yes, tell them.

Steph: 17:14

Yeah. Good, good. Really important when you are a charity that's trying to lobby for a massive societal shift. And I say lobby loosely. Influence society to get that shift. It's really important. You don't lose sight of how much it matters, and if you lose sight of why you're angry about it, then you lost your way in a way, because you've gotta be thinking of, in the case of sport, that 800,000 girls who had they been born, a boy would be playing team sport now, but who aren't. So they're losing that joy and camaraderie and joint endeavor. We've gotta think of those 1.3 million girls who drop out in teenage. It's just basically, because nobody asked them to stay and work out how to, they can get over the issues like the social media onslaught, the management periods, the fact that they've basically had their self-belief drummed outta them. If we don't think about those girls, we don't think about those women who are actually having a far less enjoyable, less fulfilling life because they're not able to get out to have the kind of joy I talk about with that bootcamp or, playing Netball or whatever it is because they're carrying everything. If you don't sustain that sense of fire in your belly, then you're not gonna, you're not gonna change anything.

Alex: 18:23

You are firing me up.

Steph: 18:24

Good. Good.

Alex: 18:25

With this next part, what I'd like to do is try to find out about what you as Steph is most passionate about in terms of tackling activity. If you are going to be set, the challenge of how are we as England gonna tackle this, where does your mind first start? Where would you begin this process?

Steph: 18:40

Yeah. It's hard to answer that sort of in a, with a single. A kind of single approach because there's so many different angles to it, aren't they? Aren't there? I think maybe an angle I'll take on this in a more personal angle, is that if we looked after the natural environment, if we recognize that we are about the fifth most density populated country in the world in England and that we can't just take this kind of build everywhere approach and build badly, but we actually build in the right way, redevelop our cities and areas we need to, in the right way to build nature into it. Places which are rich in nature, that are places that humans feel happy in then. And if we build those in a way that means they're safe from traffic. And if we design them in a way where they're a multiple entrances and it societally feels safer, then our children can be outside again, naturally for more of the day. If we develop ways to obviously control screen usage get back to a culture of outdoor play, then we've got through half the challenge. When I, working Wildlife Trust one that the quotes we used to use was that the roaming range of a child had gone down from 4 miles to 300 yards in just a few generations. that

Alex: 20:10

Wow.

Steph: 20:10

there are that many children who live in Dagenham, we've never seen the Thames or who live in a small town or village, and Cornwall had never seen the sea. That is horrific and then you layer that with be outside more as a child and be natural. But you layer that with also sport because that's a kind of an additional layer of focus and endeavor and, joint endeavor, which teaches you so much about life. So there's the kind of two things of freedom. There's the outdoors and the joy of the outdoors, but then that thing of and learning to work together with other people because the time we are most happy, and this is what William, Dr. William Bird says when we are in a group outside, because that's what our DNA says what we are built for. And when we're either isolated or inside, we're stressed actually. If we could, if we could crack our planning and we could crack our development, if we could crack this, horrendous indoor culture we've got where we've gone from the average of 35 hours a week outdoors for a child to five hours a week. And if we could just reverse that somehow, or not reverse, but just reimagine that an outdoors lifestyle and build into that the well led the well led play, which would in my view include team sport. But not be restricted to that, but would include sports that involve balls and aims and having an objective and races. I think it's so important because it's something to focus on. It's something to focus on with other people. but I, I think that would probably my personal take, the joining up really my career would be that natural outdoor feel, but also that sense of joint endeavour with others. It's very broad.

Alex: 21:54

No. Yeah, I love it. To be honest we've had a a somewhat similar conversation with the, with Dan, who's the CEO of Wallball, and he is talking about urbanisation of cities and how we can embed activity into what he calls gray spaces.

Steph: 22:08

Yeah.

Alex: 22:08

There there's definitely similar things there. Have you, what's your thoughts on what Sport England is doing, say with active design is? because I find it is such a hard thing for just one organisation, one department to part of government to solve. It feels like it's a much bigger thing.

Steph: 22:24

Yes. It's the it's the major developers who do proper master planning. And we were working with Related Argent actually up at Brent Cross Town, for example, who have the power to really, to make that a reality. And Sport England does have a role to play in that because obviously it still, gives certain grants out, et cetera, to make sure that those are helping with that aim in terms of not holding back from creative new ambitions of how to create those spaces. and so I think that obviously in the corporate sector you have those master planners, and then you also have the local authorities and, the way they work with the private sector and the developers to try to do that. I think retrofitting spaces that people are likely to be more active in is also a, is also an approach to take. And that often does mean bringing in more nature, because people like trees, people like to be an area where they can hear birds singing. It's just instinctive in us. So yeah, being active in the grey space is really important, but being active in a green space is even better for us. Fact that so many people don't have that chance is pretty heartbreaking. So, but we can do something about it, we can do stuff about it, but we just need to be joined up. It's to make that change. You're right. And I think that at the moment with such centralized country in England that join up between government departments, for example, is so hard to get, but the regional mayors certainly offer an opportunity to demonstrate what is possible in a kind of more, city region context. So that's one way I think that some of the work that Sport England's been doing in places is, potentially really impactful.

Alex: 23:58

The one that I hear regularly, which I'm like, how do we resolve this? Is the, always little comment as well throughout, is the government departments aren't linked, there's no connectivity between them, or they're just so disconnected.

Steph: 24:13

Yeah. The the, when I was environment, the same problems arose obviously. You environment connects to every department as well. I think what, I ended up talking to people about a lot was this centralization and actually is it ever realistic for a population of 60 million to have centralized government departments that could possibly talk to each other? If you cut that population size down to a more regional size, like in the old government regions, suddenly there is just about the capability for you to both work out what to do in your area and to talk to the others about what they're doing and to try to integrate them better, which is why in Wales and Scotland and the devolved nations, you have sometimes a more effective intergovernment space and, Wales demonstrated with the the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, how you can come up with a really powerful concept, which is cross government, at a, when you've got a different scale, a population. I think we maybe should give up on integration on some aspects when you've got a centralized a structure as England is. But that means devolving more to, effectively would've been good if it was still the old regions. Now with a slightly less structure kind of city region approach, evolving more power so that you can get more join up because that's how it happens in other countries. Again, it's a bit like the highly density populated point. We're are one of the most centralized countries in the world. Very few countries are as centralized as England, like one of the top five I think people used to say, I don't know, but apparently. And with that, we can't be unrealistic, we've gotta be, we've got to be practical and think what level can we join things up.

Alex: 25:53

The one that I am working on is the devolution of skills within DfE and the local skills. So that seems to be. A hopeful, promising example of where this can happen. Understanding how education, what is needed in a specific place, and how a local skills plan can be developed to fill that gap in that local place. So seems like there is some testing of that.

Steph: 26:17

But I think Yeah, and that's because I think the other thing we're in, always in danger of thinking everything has to be the same. It doesn't it, wouldn't it be better if it was Disorganized but brilliant than if it was uniform, but uniformly bad. It's like everyone has this thing of we can't be different in places. You could devolve this, but then it would all get outta kilter. Or does that matter if it's outta kilter, if it's all better or if, if half of it is better. and the rest is exactly the same, but at least half of it's better. It's so I that's always a sort of psychologically we have this control mindset probably because we've got such a centralized country where we can't do all this because it would all get different. Well it's let it be, and I don't mean just different because you obviously need these skills here and these skills here. Just because of the humans that will be cooperating in that area, they will come up with different approaches. And that's really the essence of it. It's being comfortable with difference, really, I think.

Alex: 27:11

I feel like that's a fantastic place to finish you there. There's a really powerful final sentence, so thank you so much for joining me today Steph, I really really appreciate it.

Steph: 27:20

No, it's a pleasure, Alex. Thank you very much for having me.