As for health literacy, this is all about how well girls actually understand their body, particularly when it’s changing during adolescence. Hormone levels and temperatures can fluctuate week to week and moods can swing, and when girls don’t understand these changes, they can feel alone and frustrated and more likely to give up sport.
The final challenge I mentioned is culture—whether there are enough role models for young girls in sport. Many of the girls who took part in my research explained they’d been told they were too small or weak to tackle sport, which really impacts their confidence. So many of them don’t even put their hand up to try to participate because of that culture.
Tell us about your Play On project. How does it help address these challenges?
I’m targeting in particular the lack of representation of women and girls in sport in Australia. Sport offers us so many opportunities—a sense of connection, the ability to make friends and to improve our physical and mental well-being. I thought it’s not fair that half of the population is missing out on these. So my Play On project seeks to make those opportunities available to as many people as possible.
There are four modules: female athlete health, mental health, nutrition and inclusive spaces. I created a team of 14 experts, all women from diverse backgrounds—dietitians, psychologists, body image experts, athletes—and they each recorded 10-minute presentations.
Six of them are female Olympians who visit schools and sport clubs; they tell their own stories there about the challenges of being a female athlete and how they’ve overcome these. They cover each of the four topics and conduct open conversations where girls have the opportunity to ask questions and talk about things that they may have previously felt embarrassed about.
So really in a nutshell, Play On is my gift to my 15-year-old self. It’s the project I needed when I was a teenager.