This Girl Can is our nationwide campaign to get women and girls moving, regardless of shape, size and ability.
This Girl Can is a celebration of the active women everywhere who are doing their thing no matter how they do it, how they look or even how sweaty they get. It is a national campaign developed by Sport England and a wide range of partnership organisations to inspire more women and girls to become active, and conquer fear of judgement as the primary barrier. Women are less likely than men to become active because of body image and competency fears, research reveals a huge difference in the number of men and women playing sport, and it’s not because females don’t want to get active. Millions of women and girls are afraid to exercise because of fear of judgement. The research revealed there was a significant gender gap, with two million fewer women than men between 14-40 years old regularly participating in sport. In other European countries, there is no disparity between men and women. In England, 75% of women said they wanted to be more active.
This Girl Can was created as a new and exciting campaign for women. It is the first campaign of its kind to feature women who sweat and jiggle as they exercise. It tries to tell the real story of women who play sport by using images that are the complete opposite of the perfect and stylised images of women we are now used to seeing. It uses slogans such as “Sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox” and images of normal such as mums, plus sized and business women enjoying sport.
Now millions of women have joined the craze of working as a team and making each other feel better about themselves. This Girl Can want to tell the real story of women who exercise and play sport. They come in all shapes and sizes and all levels of ability. They have a myriad of reasons for doing what they do. If you are wondering if you should join them or carry on this campaign, it really doesn’t matter if you are a bit rubbish or completely brilliant, the main thing is that you are a woman and you are doing something, and that deserves to be celebrated.
For more about This Girl Can, go to www.thisgirlcan.co.uk where you can find out about the women in the campaign, get tips on how to get active and join the national debate. The initiative is being promoted on national television and in cinemas and on social media using the hashtag #ThisGirlCan.
