“Someone always has to step up and make the noise to empower others, and there are so many great stories I have read across the Telegraph over the last three years that never would have seen the light of day otherwise,” Murray said. “So I’m eternally grateful to the Telegraph for taking that leap of faith and investing in women’s sport in the way that it has.”
Apart from increasing in quantity, the standard of coverage also changed with TWS’s launch. Before, while only dipping a toe into women’s sports coverage sporadically, there was very little space across newspaper and media coverage for critique or nuanced stories when it came to women in sport. Too often women were boxed into the role of being “inspiring”, with no room to expound their own opinions or talk about the sport itself, and interest dropped off a cliff if they underperformed. TWS provided a platform for consistent analysis of the sport on the pitch, wider conversations about inequality, but also about sexual orientation, motherhood and pregnancy, body image and women’s health.
Interviews with athletes including Maria Sharapova, Ada Hegerberg and seven times World Champion swimmer, Tai, opened up conversations around female agency in sport and breaking records, while columnists like Murray, Dame Sarah Storey, Alphonsi, Dina Asher-Smith and Naomi Osaka have tackled issues of race, disability and gender that affect women across sport.
With that, TWS has seen the tangible impact of its journalism. Participation at grassroots level remained at the heart of the work, in particular with the Girls, Inspired campaign. Launched back in April 2019 with an aim to close the gender activity gap for girls in school and grassroots sport, it was praised by the government for having a powerful influence on policy.
Special investigations have exposed inequality: women being excluded from concussion debates, huge pay disparities and sub-par facilities existing in the Women’s Super League, inadequate kit for female athletes and para-athletes, and even how maternity benefits in sport remain decades behind the average workplace.
When the pandemic hit, women’s sport was the first to fall by the wayside. Having a dedicated team of journalists to hold power to account became all the more important, especially when a TWS investigation found that women’s sport amassed 664 more days of inaction than men’s sport did in the first 12 months of the coronavirus crisis.
Our journalism has also inspired investment, with Justin and Kate Rose sponsoring a women’s golf series after reading about female golfers’ struggles one prime example.
TWS has shone a light on issues often exclusively experienced by women in sport. Guest writer and campaigner Caroline Criado Perez highlighted the gender data gap in sport, last year’s Me Too investigation included survivors of sexual violence and harassment whose stories had previously existed in the shadows, while a recent feature on incontinence in women’s sport led to an outpouring response from readers who could relate to the experiences of the elite athletes brave enough to speak out on a taboo subject. Women’s health was finally on the agenda with TWS, as stories about endometriosis, dementia, menopause and ACL injury prevalence for women from grassroots to elite sport finally given a forum.
The complete reshaping of women’s sports coverage did not go unnoticed, with TWS winning a stack of awards – including nine in its first year – and contributing to the Telegraph’s three consecutive SJA sports newspaper of the year prizes.
This huge commitment has come at a time when the growth in audiences is at an all-time peak, with nearly 33m people watching domestic women’s sport last year. Broadcast deals and investment are piling up, and the results are clear: the appetite for watching sporting greatness is not reserved for male athletes.
With equal pay finally becoming a reality for leading international teams in football and equal prize money existing in The Hundred, there are promising signs of rising standards. But they remain isolated cases, and there is so much work still to be done. Maternity pay and leave is still in its infancy, medical cover for female athletes is still below par, equal pay is a far off dream in most cases and prize money disparity remains a joke almost across the board.
Those stories still need to be written, and the guarantee is that TWS will be leading the way.
