 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the second meeting of the Young Women Leads Committee. This is a very unique committee that the Parliament is supporting in partnership with Young Women Leads. It's a leadership project that 30 young women from across Scotland are taking part in. Some are around the table today and others are with us in the public gallery. Today's session will run until approximately 10 to 1. Welcome to those who are watching online. Thank you for all your interest in this work. Before I say more about that, I would like to indulge myself as convener and talk about a recent visit that I have had to North America and some meetings that I had, which I think would be useful in terms of the inquiry that we are doing about sport and women's participation. I went to New York and I went to Toronto. I have had some interesting findings from people that we met there. The one that I want to particularly talk about was a meeting with the United Nations women in New York. They have a specialist called Jennifer Cooper, who deals entirely with sport and women's participation. It was a real learning curve for me. Before I go on to potential dealings with Jennifer Cooper, I want to say to you that, from an international context, not just in developed nations, I found some of what was discussed really interesting. That sounds quite simplistic, but I have been thinking about it a lot since. The women who work in developing nations across Africa and across Asia were telling me about the importance of sport even in those contexts and the problems that it causes because women, culturally or for poverty reasons, do not get involved in sport at all. It therefore means that women are disadvantaged in all walks of life. I find it difficult to understand what they were getting at until they said to me that, if women are never involved in sport, when natural disasters come along, it ends up that more women are killed, damaged, affected by these natural disasters. It is as simple as women have never been taught how to run, how to climb. For example, they used the tsunami as an example. Women tended to just stand and wait for it to happen, whereas men and boys ran away to higher ground, climbed trees, etc. Therefore, there is a direct impact even in something as fundamental as life-saving, where women are not encouraged to get involved in sport. I felt that that was a really interesting international context. The work that Jennifer is doing also potentially affects us here. For example, through the United Nations, she is currently working on a memorandum of understanding with FIFA ahead of this summer's World Cup. She is keen to engage with the SFA and other Scottish colleagues. She was very interested in the work that the committee is doing. I thought that we could try to arrange a video conference at the next meeting so that you can relate to the United Nations and the work that they do. They also met the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Sport and Physical Activity. That was interesting, too. To pick up on something that we have looked at before, she told us that all the studies that have been carried out show that women coaches, if we had more women coaches, it would be better to be able to develop the respect of sports. She also said that, at a participation level, there are quite a lot of women coaches in communities however, when a sport starts to become more competitive, it goes higher up the ladder and you start to get into competition, etc. The number of women coaches dwindles and that's when the men coaches start to come in. She's looking at a bit of work that says how do we encourage women coaches to participate at higher levels as well. They were the two particular meetings in New York and Toronto that I thought were most of interest. Does anyone have any questions about that before we move on to the next part of the meeting? Yes, Amy. Throughout our research, we found that women coaches and role models were vital to increasing participation. Could you elaborate further if there are any methods that they are putting in place to try to increase women coaches and to make sure that they rise up? What we said to Clemence was that we would come back to this meeting and take your views on that. She's more than happy to share her research with us. Again, I can get that out to you for further discussion at the next meeting. We'll move on. This committee last met in January and, of course, that was the topic of inquiry that we decided to do. Barriers to participation was the main thing that we thought we would focus on. We had a meeting in February and the committee members undertook engagement activities to hear the voices and experiences of young women across Scotland. At today's meeting we'll be hearing the results of those engagement activities. I'm very happy to welcome our first panel, who will tell us about the work that they undertook in looking at the impact of socioeconomic factors, protected characteristics and intersectionality, which all sounds very technical. Welcome, Jenny, Jenny Snell and Svea Horne. I'll give you up to 10 minutes, please, to make your presentation before we move to questions. Overall, we looked at the relationship of young women and sports, as he just said. Our group in particular thought about how certain protected characteristics and socioeconomic situations might affect or impact the participation of women, because women face barriers in any way in sports. If you add additional barriers for those women who fall under these protected characteristics, that's even more barriers to the additional ones that you have anyway. We also thought that socioeconomic barriers are also important to consider in top of general protected characteristics, because we found just in our early research that that's something that comes up a lot and impacts a lot of women. So in order to find all this out, we used survey as our main source of data collection, and we attached it to the group who were looking at young women in schools. We decided that that would be more effective rather than sending out two separate surveys. The survey was promoted on social media for a three-week period and was also sent through a targeted approach to organisations who work with the communities that we were looking to engage. Overall, we had 618 completed responses to the survey, which we thought was quite a high engagement overall. In addition to the surveys, we also reached out to organisations individually to provide some case studies and information on how protected characteristics and socioeconomic barriers can impact on women's participation in sport. We didn't receive a lot of feedback from those organisations, but we still receive some, which we think will have benefit to the findings. One of the areas that we looked at was the socioeconomic barriers. In the survey, we asked the question, do you feel that your participation in sports is affected by how much money you or your family have? We had over 400 responses to that question, and of that, 80 per cent commented that they thought family income or a lack of disposable income was a barrier to their participation in sport. The reasons for that varied, but those coming in the highest, was the cost of membership fees for sports clubs, the cost of gyms and the cost of sports in general, so that 40 per cent responded that that was a barrier. The cost of competing also came in quite high, with 20 per cent of people highlighting that that would be a barrier, so things like dance exam costs or tournament costs. A quarter of the respondents noted that costs associated with sports such as equipment and clothing was a barrier, so things like trainers, gym clothes, PE kits. A further 10 per cent noted that travel costs were a barrier specifically in rural areas, so getting to and from sports clubs. A lot of the younger women had to rely on parents for lifts. The socioeconomic barriers were the highest trend that we identified overall in our survey, and it was quite broad across all age groups, so young women in schools, students, professionals and young mums. We also looked at sexuality as a protective characteristic and all specifically, do you identify anything other than trade and other things like that? We asked our protective characteristic question, which was, has any part of your identity or certain characteristic ever affected your relationship with sport or physical activity? For that question, we had a really high response rate for members of the LGBTQ plus community, also women in general, so what we did not expect was that a lot of responses to gender were just linked to women, not specifically to the LGBTQ plus community. We also found that the participation of LGBTQ plus women who responded to it was just under one quarter of the whole survey responses, looked quite high, and 22 per cent of those commented that they had had negative experiences due to their identity. Generally, we also found that not just specifically for LGBTQ plus women, but for all women that there is a lack of safe spaces for changing. For example, there was one woman who replied to our survey, who identified it as bi, who said that she was made to change in the disabled changing room in high school after she came out. We also had about one per cent of responses reflecting the current media coverage of inclusion of trans people in sport, which also highlights the current atmosphere of trans community faces when they want to participate in sport. That is understandable why those numbers might be lowered and unusual. We also looked at disability, and we asked the question, do you consider yourself to have a disability in the survey, and then asked the further question on protected characteristics. 68 respondents to the survey highlighted that they considered themselves to have a disability, and of that 68, 18 per cent responded that they felt it impacted negatively on their relationship with sport. There was a range of disabilities and conditions mentioned in the survey, but the majority were non-visible disabilities, such as inflammatory conditions and Ehlers-Dan loss hypermobility. Respondents highlighted that they felt that there was a lack of awareness and training for teachers to support young women with non-visible disabilities, and that is an area that we think could be looked at in regard to recommendations. We also received some organisational feedback from a pelvic physiotherapist, who commented that incontinence is a huge barrier to young women. The figure was that 20 per cent of young women can suffer from incontinence, but it is not a spoken about subject. It still has a lot of stigma surrounding it, and there is a lot of embarrassment associated with commenting on that. We did not have any responses in the survey about incontinence, but we did have the response from the organisation that said that there was a lack of training for teachers and there is also a lack of education in PSE classes for young women to recognise the kind of signs and symptoms of that. We also looked at pregnancy and single and young parents, so young mums in particular. The question that we had in our survey was, do you have children? If you do have children, how has that impacted your relationship with sport? Out of all of day, over 600 responses, we had 67 survey participants saying that they had kids, and 65 per cent of those who said that having kids had a negative impact on their relationship to sports. A lot of the comments were on a lack of options available for women to participate before, during and after pregnancy, and for women who have young kids who need childcare. However, we also had 14 per cent that said that the participation had increased, mostly because they wanted to set a good example and be good for model for their kids in the future. The final area that we looked at was race and religion. We asked about ethnic groups in the survey, and we asked about how that impacted on relationships with sports. However, we had a really low return rate from BAMU women. We only had 4 per cent overall who responded, and there were very few comments on how it impacted on the relationship with sport. Only 5 per cent commented that a protected characteristic associated with race or religion had impacted their participation levels, and those reasons were mostly due to cultural and religious attire. We had one respondent saying that, I feel that, since I wear the hijab, I am judged when coming into the gym or going to a sports club. I do not feel welcome, therefore I mostly exercise at home. I think that more research needs to be done on that area to get a more accurate response. Thank you very much, panel. I think that we will open up to questions now and I will go first to my vice-conviner, Beth Clawton. Thank you for presenting your information. My first question is about economic barriers. In your research, you talked about active sterling, and I was wondering whether you thought that was a successful project, and whether it should be replicated to other councils? I specifically had a look at active sterling during the research. Overall, I think that it is a successful project, because 16 per cent of sterling's overall population is participating in sport compared to 12 per cent in other local authorities. That is a 4 per cent increase, which I think is quite impressive for your short time that I have run this project. It is also supported by the sterling council, so if this could be replicated in other councils, that would actually make a difference in increased sports, especially for women with low incomes. Act of sterling has a £20 per month membership, which I think is cheaper than a lot of other bigger gyms. You cannot only use gyms, but you can also use any other facilities, which are included in the programme as well. It really helps a lot of people, and it also specifically targets the areas around sterling, where there are a lot of people who do not have a lot of money, so they are specifically trying to get these people involved as well. I found some of the comments about LGBT pupils quite distressing, not just from teachers, but fellow pupils who still have the sense that LGBT people cannot control sexual impulses and are inherently dangerous in some way. I was just wondering what you thought schools could do to a sexual education issue or a healthy relationships issue that needs to be taken up elsewhere. I think that there is a lot of work at the moment going on in education around school with the Tide campaign. I think that that will have a positive impact on the peer assumptions of LGBT community in PSE classes. I know that organisations such as Leap Sports are doing a lot of work on how to engage more LGBT young people in sports and how to be kind of a more inclusive process. How do you propose that we combat the barriers that exist for parents? I think that a lot of young mums, especially young children, are a lot of child care because you have to have your child looked after while you exercise. It is very difficult to do both at the same time, although it could be considered from your exercise as well. That is the biggest issue, and I think that there is something that will be attached upon later while body image and self-confidence, especially after pregnancy, is quite a big factor in that as well. If you could improve that with campaigns within gyms or something like that, that would help. Any further questions on those issues? Thank you very much. That was a very comprehensive presentation. I am sure that there will be more questions coming to mind when we all read over the evidence that you have given. I will suspend briefly to allow a change of witnesses. I will reconvene and welcome our second panel for this morning, who will be discussing the work that they have done looking at the provision of sport and physical activity in schools. I see that there are three panel members, Becky White, Hannah Gray and Amy Leitchman. When it comes to answering questions, we will not have time for all three of you to do that. Like the last panel, could you indicate to me who is going to answer the particular question? If you feel that you really must come in and add something, let me know and we will accommodate that. I invite you to make opening remarks of up to 10 minutes, please. We were researching the provision and the barriers to sport and PE in schools and how those influences attitudes among young women. We did that through two surveys, three teacher interviews and one focus group. For the survey, we did this alongside the group who are researching protected characteristics. We created a survey aimed at women aged between 13 and 30, asking for their loved experiences. In addition to that, we also put together and shared a survey aimed solely at teachers, alongside interviewing three PE teachers, which allowed us to gain a valuable insight into how sport and PE at school is viewed, understood and valued by those who teach it. In terms of responses, we had 613 responses from young women, 192 of which were still at school, and we also had 257 responses from teachers. For three weeks, both surveys were promoted through social media platforms, as well as targeting individuals and organisations from a variety of sporting, political and feminist backgrounds. In terms of the geographical demographic of our results for the PEWPLE survey, we managed to reach 31 out of 32 local authorities, but the majority of the results came from the central belt. For the PEWPLE survey, we focused in on the following areas. Enjoyment of PE in primary school and secondary school, whether school had helped them to understand the benefits of exercise and diet, how to improve enjoyment of PE at school, the barriers to taking part in PE and exercise out with school. For the teacher survey, we wanted to explore young women's direct voices, the curriculum and teaching methods. In the survey, we asked teachers what barrier did they perceive that young women face in regards to participation in sport or exercise at school, and we also posed a similar question to barriers in the PEWPLE survey. 56 per cent of PEWPLE said that body confidence was an issue, and 73 per cent of teachers also saw this as a barrier, which shows that they see it as a barrier. 45 per cent of teachers saw PE kit as a barrier, whereas only 11 per cent of pupils said that it was an issue. 35 per cent of teachers viewed menstruation as a barrier, which matches the 36 per cent of pupils who also viewed this as an issue. 28 per cent of teachers viewed facilities within schools as a barrier, but only 16 per cent of pupils viewed this as an issue. Our other barriers that PEWPLE mentioned included ability and lack of motivation, and other barriers that PE teachers viewed included mixed gender activities, perception of gender roles and provision of activities within the school. The PEWPLE survey also highlighted some other interesting results, which included that only 40 per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that school had taught them about the importance of a balanced diet and the same with the benefits of physical activity. We also saw that 83 per cent of young women stated that they agreed or strongly agreed that at primary school they enjoyed PE, but when posed the same question about secondary school, it massively decreased to only 54 per cent. 53 per cent of respondents said that their enjoyment between primary and secondary declined, but 14 per cent said that it had increased. 74 per cent of respondents took part in sport of exercise at school. We also included some open questions, allowing for additional information. When we asked why respondents' level of enjoyment had changed between primary and secondary school, we found four main areas—gender dynamics, competitiveness, judgment and body confidence. We also conducted three teacher interviews, so we did that to gain an insight into their lived experience of PE teaching. The first teacher we interviewed was Ross Johnson, who won Young Coach of the Year in 2018 and coaches rugby at the Edinburgh Public School and works with girls of all ages and from all backgrounds. The barriers that he identified were lack of equipment, body confidence, gender dynamics and lack of time. We also introduced Jude McMullen, who teaches PE at an independent school in Dundee. She also coaches hockey, and she noticed that girls from a traditionally active background tended not to drop out, but that other girls would. Although McMullen herself loves sport and has done all her life, she can still feel intimidated in some sport situations, such as the weight sections of a gym. A brilliant quote that we got from her was, if someone like me who is sport staff feels intimidated in some sporting situations, what will others who do not regularly exercise feel? The last teacher that we interviewed was Jess Jameson, who is a PE teacher who has worked at both independent and public schools throughout the central belt. She noticed that pupils in more affluent areas tended to have more confidence to participate in sport more, as well as having a better access to a wider range of opportunities and facilities. We also found out about how they encouraged young women in sport, barriers outwith school and what they think could be done to make more young women participate in sport. We also conducted a focus group with a local girl guiding group, consisting of 20 guides aged between 10 and 12 from Edinburgh. We asked what they would change about PE, what they liked and disliked about PE, and a key theme that came up from all that was sexism. We also conducted a teacher survey, and here are some of the interesting findings. 86 per cent of the teachers said that they agreed or strongly agreed that the young men were enthusiastic about sport, but when we posed the same question regarding young women, only 61 per cent agreed or strongly agreed. We also saw for the repetition of already common themes and barriers, such as lack of equipment, lack of facilities, body confidence and PE kit. I think that we really saw that there was a real focus around body confidence issues. In schools and within young women, both teachers and young women agreed that body confidence was a massive issue in their enjoyment and participation. We thought that the ways that schools could tackle that was to teach women and provide more focus at schools on how women's bodies change, what they should expect and to prepare young women and boost their confidence that way. We also thought that, potentially offering cubicles in school changing rooms that would allow young women to have privacy would also increase their confidence. It would allow them to actually get changed away from prying acts if they do have body confidence issues as well. Also, female role models were another big one to increase confidence. That has been seen throughout each group. The female role models are a big issue that we need more female leaders so that young women can actually see themselves in others and see that they can also go on and achieve and do what they want. The other thing that I was thinking of is that we also heard a lot about pupil or student-centredness and asking young people what they are looking for in young women. That was reflected in Professor David Kirk, who came to our last committee meeting in his evidence about the advantage of student-centredness. It was also reflected in our surveys where one of the highest results was around more choice of activities—54 per cent of young women that we spoke to in secondary school. They said that the key thing was student-centredness and hearing that—not that it was student-centredness—that it was more choice in activities would increase the way in which they feel about engaging in participation and removing barriers. That was reflected in the teacher questionnaire survey that we did. One of the teachers had a really good example of where they had changed from having white peaks and white shirts because a lot of the young women felt that they were see-through and the young women reflected that, if they were changed, it would increase their engagement. That was shown at that school that improved engagement when that voice was heard of the young women. Did you find it challenging to reach out to teachers while conducting this research? How did you manage to overcome these challenges? We managed to reach 257 teachers, which we still think is quite a good number. The issues that we did have were that when we were doing our engagement it was the school holidays, so we were not able to connect with schools as much as we would have hoped, but I still think that we definitely got a lot of teachers as well as doing the teacher interviews. Lisa Douglas, in your teacher survey, what were the percentage of male and female teachers that responded and were their responses different? Amy Leishman. 89 per cent were female respondents, which shows that our engagement was more targeted towards women, or maybe women were the ones who came back to it because they felt that they had something to say. Next time, if we wanted to gather more information, we would want to create a survey or a questionnaire that specifically targets male teachers to ask the same questions so that we can compare the data on that. In regard to the actual differences and responses, that is something that we could get back to you, but, just because there was 89 per cent, we did not really have many responses from male teachers, so we do not really have that data. Kiara McGuire. I was just wondering, did you find at all during your research if teachers fell able to talk to young women about the issues that came up around PE and sport, body image and stuff? I agree. I do not know if we kind of, there was quite a high response rate to our survey, and certainly teachers in general do not have the exact statistics. Their main focus was, I suppose, on they could see barriers to young women, and I think that their main focus was on how that played out in PE. I think that one of the interesting things was how much they talked about role models and positive role models within that environment, but I do not know if anyone else has anything to add on that. Becky White. In one of the teacher interviews that we did, I think that it was Ross Johnson. He now has multiple female volunteers because he sometimes did not feel confident or comfortable, or the girls would not feel confident or comfortable talking to him about some of the barriers that he faced, whereas now they can confide in some of the female volunteers. Eileen Eichman. Just to add to what Becky said, I was interviewing Ross and one of the things that he really stressed was that being able to train those female volunteers up had allowed him to also challenge issues that he had or worries that he had. As a male teacher of female young women, he said that he had issues with going into changing rooms or discussing female-only issues, so he said that, as a coach, it also helped him to have female role models as well and female volunteers. I think that that is quite an interesting fact, that it is not only pupils that are benefiting, it is also coaches and teachers that it would help. Lauren H. I was wondering with the focus group that you did whether any of the young women had given more details about the sexism that they encountered from teachers and what form that took. I agree. It was unfortunate that none of us were dialectically at that focus group, but we were quite interested in the fact that there seemed to be a very high number in that small group of young people that talked about sexism between the ages of 10 and 12, which I was quite shocked at. We were not particularly sure that it was just maybe a specific teacher or whether it was such a narrow focus group, but it would be something that we would possibly like to explore more. I know that Girlguiding UK has done quite a lot of work and a lot of reports on sexism and general experience of young women in Scotland. Yes, Becky White. One of the direct quotes from the focus group when we asked what you don't like about PE, it was when our PE teacher is sexist and when we asked what they would change, the top thing that most of them advised was to reduce sexism towards girls. Findings about the lack of equipment and facilities are interesting, but what could we do as a group to change that outcome of providing more facilities for pupils that fit as the barrier? What methods or strategies could we do to change that to increase that participation for females? This is anecdotal evidence, again taken from our teacher interview, but one of the ways that Ross Johnson, who coaches young women in rugby, and he actually coaches every Thursday and his participation rates are around about 35 young women every single Thursday, and I think that that is quite a big success. He says that they have a bowling policy with shoes because one of the issues was that a lot of the young women wouldn't have rugby boots, which can make it quite difficult to play on the grass. What he does is that their school or their team bought a whole bunch of rugby boots in different sizes and they operate the kind of you giving your shoes, you get the rugby boots, so maybe just thinking creatively and outside the box on different methods of letting young women borrow equipment and not having to spend their own money on equipment so that it allows people to try things out and then keep participating if they want. In regards to actual facilities, I guess funding for facilities, but apart from that, I don't know if there's anything else to add. I agree. I was just going to add to that that's about that student centredness and student support and actually asking, you know, we're only a small group of young women, but there's clearly a voice of where there maybe are solutions and maybe it isn't all about funding, but it's just about hearing voices of where there is discomfort and responding on an individual basis to what that is. Any further questions or quick comments? Okay. Thank you very much, panel. I found that really interesting concerning for me about 10 to 12-year-olds feeling that they suffered sexism so young. I do know that Girlguiding UK, as Hannah said, have done a lot of work on that and had a very specific year where they were looking at the experiences of the young women that they deal with, so I'm sure that they'd be very helpful in giving a lot more information on that. Thank you very much, panel, and again, I'll suspend briefly to allow for a change of witnesses. We will reconvene and welcome our third panel this morning, who will be discussing the work that they have done looking into the influence of social media on the relationships that young women have with sport and physical activity. Welcome, Ashley Stine, Katrina Lambert, Samantha Stewart and Anna Henshaw. Can I have your opening remarks for up to 10 minutes, please? Instagram is used by 1 billion people worldwide. 90 per cent of those are under 35. From the experiences of the young women lead participants and our peers, and evidence provided by witnesses at our first meeting in February, we felt that it was the perfect platform for us to investigate societal pressures and external infancies, with a particular look at social media. We felt that it was the perfect platform for us to investigate societal pressures and external infancies, with a particular look at social media on young women's relationship with physical activity and sport. We posted questions, polls and opportunities to respond over five consecutive days, targeting self-identifying young women under 30 to respond in any way that they felt. Doing engagement work in this way, which will ultimately contribute towards our report and recommendations, is a new and innovative method to reach the target group. We felt that we had to go directly to young women who are digesting and exposed to these images every day. Anxious, fluctuating, love, guilt and health. Those were just some of the words young women used to describe their relationship with sport and physical activity when asked. It was clear from those responses that everyone has their own unique relationship and that those can be changeable, suggesting that a number of factors are at play. Despite most respondents stating that they follow fitness-based accounts and more stating that they follow body positive accounts on Instagram and other social media platforms, two thirds said that social media makes them feel worse about their relationship with sport and physical activity. The body positive accounts generally make young women feel better than general fitness accounts, but this is not universal, as may have been expected. Clearly, many young women are interested and drawn to this type of media and content, but a lot of what exists currently is not largely impacting them in a positive way. Some of the themes that we got from responses showing why this could be is that the content focuses too much on aesthetic versus fitness and wellbeing. Sexualisation of women is rife and must be avoided and content needs to be both representative and realistic. Also, positive spaces, clubs and opportunities for women to engage with sport and physical activity should be promoted and encouraged more on these platforms. We also gathered more information that echoes some of the evidence that we heard from a witness in February regarding role models in sport. Only eight out of 22 respondents in this area said that their role model was a famous or well-known female athlete and that mostly their friends or relatives or their coaches and people closer to them were who they looked up to regarding sporting role models. Overall, despite the research being limited in some ways and being purely anecdotal, the themes and ideas raised show that social media should be taking seriously in regard to its role in shaping young women's mental health relating to physical activity and more broadly. We feel that this shows a need to consider it for informing future research and recommendations. No one else is going to say, oh, that's wonderful, because you want some discussion then to use up all your time. Very, very good. Okay. I'm going to go first to Beth Cohn. You suggest that we should avoid the sexualisation of women when exercising, but how do you think that this can be brought about? I think that there's not one solution to it. It's something that's very widespread in society. On one level, there needs to be an element of cultural change in how we treat women and how we perceive women's bodies and what they look like. That can be done very much through education, through speaking to young people, young boys and young girls about how to treat women and what's appropriate and what female bodies look like. There is also an opportunity potentially for some change in policy and in the regulation of how women are portrayed in the media. We've seen that recently in gender stereotypes and advertising. We've had advertising bodies and regulators taking some action to reduce the gender stereotypes. I think that there's potential for some sort of more legislative and regulatory change as well, but it's not one or the other. There definitely needs to be both of those happening at the same time. I was wondering why you think it is the case that young women are more likely to see women who are close to them, like family members and friends as role models rather than more famous athletes. I think that this has probably several reasons. This is purely speculative, so this is not supported by our social media evidence, but I think that, especially in the media, it is mainly male athletes, very famous male athletes that get a lot of screen time and get a lot of coverage. Most of the reporting about sports, like if you just watched the news in the evening, it's always about any kind of male sports like male soccer. Maybe there isn't a lot of visibility of these female athletes. Of course, there are many very famous female athletes as well, but then it seems maybe a bit more distant than these very present male role models, so then it might seem more intuitive to look more towards your own environment to look for these role models. Just to add to that, it kind of echoes a more societal-wide problem of women not being represented at higher up in lots of fields, most fields. The world in sport is a really good example of this, so I think that it's ingrained that we shouldn't aim as high as men maybe. I think that's probably pretty safe to say in sport in particular, so that could also be at play as well, that we don't think that we're ever going to get to that point, so why would we? We have time in this session for some comment as well as some questions. Lisa Douglas. Did you find when using social media, in particular your Instagram takeover, was successful in reaching young women? Do you think that there were advantages and disadvantages to using that platform? Katrina Lamart. Obviously, that was quite a new method of engagement, and we sort of went into it not knowing exactly what was going to come out, but the reasoning is that we were looking at social media, we wanted to go to young women where they were using social media and where we knew they were going to be interacting. I think that it was very people picked up on the fact that it was quite exciting. We did get engagement and coverage of it, and it removed a lot of the barriers that exist in a lot of engagement, particularly with a Parliament like this, which can often be seen as quite scary, quite intimidating. There's a lot of language barriers to get through, because we had it in an accessible format, and we were going to young women in a way that they understood and were able to express their opinions. I think that it was really exciting to be able to get their views that way. Obviously, there were some concerns that we had about the number of people that we were reaching. It was never going to be as many as it would be through the likes of a survey or through focus groups. Obviously, it was only young women who were able to access our social media and were to already some extent engaged. In the future, engagement is something that would be very exciting to take forward, but it would need some refinement in how we specifically target as many women as possible and look at the analytics of things like times to post and the nitty gritty of making the best of social media. Overall, it was a really positive experience, and it was very exciting to be in a position where we could do our research in that manner. You mentioned one of your questions about social media being the people that responded. They felt worse about sports and exercise, but do you feel that different body positivity accounts can help to build that healthy relationship with sports, fitness and body image? I would say that, based on the evidence that we got that, generally speaking, the body positive accounts made them feel better than the normal accounts, if you like, just based on fitness. Obviously, that is hard to control what that content is. We are being quite general in saying that type of account versus the other, but I found it interesting that you might assume that a body positive account is automatically going to make you feel better, but that did not happen in all cases. I think that the content regulation is still at play here and there are more factors, so we can speculate that we still have a tendency to compare ourselves to people that we see in social media and those images. Even if it is somebody that is a bit more representative of what we look like or how we feel, if maybe on that day that we are looking at their positive image we are not feeling like that, then it can have just as big a detrimental effect. I think that there is a whole issue with social media and what we are exposed to and how frequently and what a big part of young women's life it is now is not going to go away, so we need to think about what is there and the impact that that is having and that it is not as black and white as this is positive and this is not. Within your evidence, you made a distinction between fitness pages and body positive pages. Was it just wondering if you had seen the different comments, if there was a difference in the comments and the messages that were portrayed on either type of account? I think that when we were looking at formulating those questions we wanted to make that distinction between those two accounts because we think that although often they will be dealing with similar issues of body and sport they have a quite different way of approaching that message. We see that a lot of those fitness exercise accounts are very focused on aesthetic, looking a certain way. Often this is linked to promotion of products such as dieting products. We have seen a lot of coverage of that in the media recently with petitions going to both this Parliament and the UK Parliament. We saw in contrast a lot of body positivity accounts, although they were dealing with similar issues. The message did tend to be one that was more positive and encouraging women to be the best version of themselves but not in a way that was going to be damaging to their mental or physical health. It was still, like Samantha said earlier, interesting to note that despite the positive message that we were seeing from those body positivity accounts there was still an element that some young women didn't necessarily mean that they always felt good about themselves from interacting with them. I was just wondering if you have any opinions on the role model research that you got and the sexualisation of women. Obviously women should embrace their sexuality if they want to but it seems that there is a relationship between women preferring to use family or friends to represent them or to look to them for inspiration rather than female athletes. Do you think that there is something like a relationship between the overt sexualisation of women when exercising and that being quite a homogenous image that not all women can relate to? Do you think that that is why women tend to relate more to women that are presented quite holistically? I do think that that probably is a fact but we can't determine causation based on what we've done here but I think that that is probably quite a safe assumption to me that that must be part of it because it's these unrealistic images that we're being fed and that we can't relate to and even the treatment of some of the top female athletes. So like Serena Williams, for example, is probably the main example that people use the way her body is scrutinised and the way she's presented in media although it's got better recently it's still not the same as our male counterparts so I think it's even the people that we should be looking up to they don't have it easy either so yes I think that that is a big part of it of how these female athletes are presented in themselves and we wouldn't want to aim for that either. Yes, Anna Henshel? I think if I can add from my own anecdotal experience it's also just these professional female athletes I feel completely removed from them as a person who enjoys sports because the way they look when they are exercising is always still fantastic while when I exercise I don't want to like for example I'm embarrassed to recognize even friends at the gym because I feel self-conscious so I think if you look at your friends who also don't look glamorous when they're exercising I think that can be quite nice and quite encouraging and motivating. Do we have any comments? Yes, Rona Wilder? One of the recommendations was less of a focus on aesthetic and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how we approach this on a platform like Instagram that's entirely based on images. Ah, you stumped them Rona. Samantha Stewart? Yes, I think that similar to what we were saying earlier about there being some regulations around it I think that echoes what I said that generally speaking because Instagram is used by a vast majority of under 35s it's possibly not taken as seriously as a platform for engagement or that can have an effect on people as maybe more traditional media but we need to kind of face facts that that is where people our age and younger are digesting things so I think regulations in that sense and how much the Instagram and Facebook and the like are all being used for advertising purposes now so the same regulations that are put on TV adverts and things that must be accounted for so as Katrina mentioned there are petitions and things in place that are starting to take place but I think that that needs to be pushed and taken seriously. Katrina Lambert? I think also obviously all these kind of we'd like to see some change in what's happening on social media but I think we need to like you said except you know Instagram is to some extent always going to have an element of aesthetic because it is kind of image based but I think that doesn't mean that there's not things that we can do I think it could be we need to have more education for young women on kind of like dealing with social media and actually improving their confidence because we can do all the action that we can to try and make sure that this isn't out there and it's not what people are consuming but you know there are thousands of young women living in Scotland and some of them are going to be exposed to things which make them feel bad about their bodies and means that they don't want to participate in sport so I think that there is a really exciting opportunity to actually look at particularly in schools because we've seen that I'm in my last year at school the moment but I can see girls in years much younger than me already being impacted by social media as young as nine or 10 already having to deal with those issues of how they feel about their bodies and seeing them then drop out of sport as they move up through school because they don't feel like they can engage is something which is quite hard hitting so I think that we can definitely do something about empowering young women to actually deal with when they're faced with social media I think you know improving kind of body positivity having these accounts but also making sure that young women and girls have the tools to kind of be confident in their own body and make sure that seeing these images doesn't affect their participation in sport and physical activity. Lisa Douglas. From your research a scene that you asked about fitness apps and how young women responded to them what do you think needs to be done to allow these fitness apps to improve the experience young women are having with sports rather than hindering it? Samantha Stewart. Again we don't know too many details about specific apps that people were perhaps referring to so that's something that might need to be looked into more but again the themes that emerged were that a lot of it was based on almost a competitive element and that many women felt that it was making them feel guilty for not reaching certain targets or not exercising enough and also that they don't take into account women-only issues such as menstrual cycles or pregnancy or that type of thing so I think that that needs to be looked at in a bit more detail because again people were engaging so I was surprised by most people saying that they use fitness apps it's not something that I use or know much about but that we are interested in it young women generally are interested in these apps and this content but it's just not fit for purpose for what we want it foreign can then be counterproductive in a way because it just makes us feel guilty and that we aren't doing enough so I think that again it would need to be looked at and having some software or approaches that are more applicable for young women's needs. Yes, Anna Hynchall. Just to support Sam's point some of the words that women used to describe these fitness apps were a mad pushy, messages, counting, functional and weight loss so I think that kind of gives us a good idea of what were where they are going wrong now and how they could potentially be improved. Laura Leitcheson. Sorry, I can never tell this on sorry. Just your touch on guilt there Samantha so I just wanted to ask there is such a I was really surprised by the number of young women who seem to follow these like fitness and exercise accounts and then how many still feel terrible about their engagement with exercise and I see a lot of people my age now with their engagement with social media get like sort of curating their feeds and being like no I'm not going to feel bad about myself anymore so do you think there is an element with younger women following these accounts purely because they feel like they should feel guilty about the way their bodies look and it's sort of a form of self-punishment I suppose just what were your opinions. Ashley Sting. I'll say something now. Yes. I guess I suppose because like if you're from like a personal point of view like when I was going to start doing exercise I was like cool I'll go and look at all this stuff and find things to make me sort of like get an idea of what I should be doing but then as soon as you do that like all this other like the algorithm takes over and then even if you don't even if you unfollow all that stuff all this other it still comes up in your feed anyway like on Twitter and Instagram and stuff and I think that even subconsciously you you do sort of want to punish yourself for not being like that or for not getting to exercise like until a certain point in your life or whatever so you do maybe hang on to these really really bad ideas for longer than you should have even if you don't know you're doing it and yeah I would definitely I think everyone I've spoken to where it's gonna think it feels like the same kind of vibe so yeah I think so. Thank you. The last two questions here be from Amy Lishman and then Beth Cotton. Amy Lishman. I think from all the evidence that we've heard so far it's quite obvious that there's so many different views and opinions and so many different relationships that young women have with sport and especially in social media context some women feel more empowered some women feel like they're not empowered do you think that we need a kind of targeted approach on social media rather than a one-size-fits-all this is the solution like regulation will help or do you think we actually need to be looking at certain different groups and certain different methods and can I add to that is it possible? Yes Samantha Stewart. Yeah I would say that that is obviously in an ideal world but that I don't think any of us think that you know that's gonna happen or be possible anytime soon and social media isn't gonna go away so I think what was said earlier about teaching us about how to interact with these images and that what they actually mean and not taking it is that everyone's better than you and that they have a better life and things because that has such a big impact on people's mental health and that applies I think for all genders and all kind of areas of life but obviously particularly in this one that we're looking at so I think that there can be small changes if it was regulation to do with advertising and the promotion of products for example that's the kind of big issue to start with but just going through that I think a general education and people taking responsibility for what they put on social media but also when it's out there how to deal with it so I think it needs to be a mix of all those things and the attitudes just need to change a little bit. Okay I noticed Nancy nodding away there would you like to make a comment Nancy? Yeah just in terms of like having I think if we're going down a route of having governments or whoever controlling what goes on social media it can get a bit not good in terms of free speech you should be allowed to say what you want as long as you're not hurting anybody because a lot of people do put these things out you know in good faith they just are like hey I'm at the gym I look great I'm amazing whatever that's their social media and they can do what they like so I think a lot does have to come down to teaching young girls especially not to take these things to heart like how to deal with these images without affecting your own self-esteem although it is very hard. Beth Glom. I was just wondering with any of the young women that responded did they mention any apps or social media accounts that they found really helpful and positive? Yes Christina Lambert. I don't think we had any specific kind of like answers about like specific apps that people had suggested I know anecdotally I've had a few friends who have suggested them but kind of what we were kind of being told overwhelmingly even if young women were using these kind of like fitness apps that they didn't feel like they catered specifically towards young women or women more generally I think there's definitely a gap in the market for kind of these apps being catered towards women so unfortunately we didn't have any examples although I'm sure that there definitely are examples out there they're just not in the mainstream and not being used by enough women. Did any of you come across anything you thought oh that looks useful? That's sad. Well I think from our first committee session we heard evidence from the to body positivity bloggers so I find those accounts personally very empowering and there is now more and more of them so I think that's I mean of course again I don't have any numbers this is just my personal Instagram feed that I'm curating but I think if we ourselves make a change to engage with Instagram or social media on a more general basis in a more healthy way maybe thinking twice about posting something and thinking about okay how will this affect all of the young women that are looking at my Instagram feed then yeah if we start with ourselves and then maybe something can change. That was a nice note to finish on thank you very much panel and we'll suspend until we have the fourth panel at the table. We'll reconvene and welcome to our fourth and final panel this morning. This panel will be discussing the work they have done looking into good practice examples that do exist to increase young women's participation in sport and physical activity and our panels Diane Stewart, Janice Wong, Katie Heath and Amy King. May I invite you to do your introductory remarks? So our group will probably fall on quite nicely from the last comments made and that we've been looking specifically at best practice examples in sport. So we've been looking at the UK and beyond to try and get an understanding of the key themes that seem to emerge in successful engagement. Our hope is that we can draw together some recommendations in order to encourage young women to feel like they have access to sport. So to do this we contacted around 30 different organisations asking the same five questions to try and get a consistent response. We asked the questions to their organisations and got eight in-depth interviews. We had two further responses from organisations who provided us with information on programmes that they ran to encourage engagement. We then pulled further information from secondary research such as websites and newspaper articles on five different organisations. So we've tried to make our engagement as varied as possible. An example of some of the organisations who have submitted evidence, we've had Project 42, an inclusive gym in Edinburgh, encouraging a positive mental attitude to health and fitness, Strathlaid Sirens Network team, Street Soccer, which encourages socially disadvantaged people into football, Feel Good Fitness, a women's only gym in Trun, a number of university sports organisations, Park Run, Run Mummy Run, The Daily Mile and Healthy Working Lives. So from this research we found that we were seeing three key recurring themes and we split this into barriers to engagement, successful engagement techniques and recommendations for further support. I think that we'll look at these later on so we're going to focus mostly on barriers to engagement and successful engagement techniques. It's worth noting that our evidence is largely anecdotal, as it was conducted mostly through interviews. It comes from groups who've had a success with largely women 25 and above, so we have to bear that in mind and hope that some of the evidence that we've been giving can be applied to a younger age group. So while researching best practice, we found that it's been almost impossible to address how to engage women in sport without actually understanding the barriers that they face. So we found that many of the organisations that we contacted addressed these barriers and thought of a way to conquer them with their chosen demographic. In terms of barriers facing young women, we received a lot of feedback that it's difficult to engage school-aged young women in gyms and classes and that gyms are having to make a special effort to reach out to this demographic. We found that successful engagement techniques focussed on the space in which women exercise and making this somewhere they could incorporate into their lifestyle. A great example of that cited by Feel Good Fitness, which is a women's only gym, noted that many women feel more comfortable working out in an all-female environment. It is not that they cannot work out with men, but members have suggested that in mixed gender classes and gyms they have previously attended there was often a more competitive environment and they found that to be off-putting and demotivating. By creating a welcoming, unintimidating environment, we are giving local women who are often lacking in confidence and often have not taken part in exercising years a safe space to ease back into a healthier lifestyle. From that research, we found that it is clear that women do not tend to prioritise physical activity as a part of their lifestyle and that one of the things that we found most commonly was that organisations had to find a way to make activity a part of a lifestyle in general. We had both run-mummy-run and street soccer speak about encouraging the community in social aspects with things such as running buddies and bringing a friend along to a class to try and encourage women to get engaged. It is really important to have a friendly and open space that we found and the most common word that we found in all of our evidence was environment and lifestyle that continued to come up. It is clear that it is especially hard to engage women after they have not been active in a while and that, often, the attitude to exercise that is found is created in school and that the bad attitude sometimes carries on into later life. That, coupled with pressures of a changing body image, which all seems to happen around the same time, was noted a lot. St Andrews University commented on that and found that they have said that, I think, that school sport still offers in places a poor sporting experience in an often male-dominant environment. Separately, there is a great deal of body conscious propaganda at that age, which might cause people to withdraw from physical activity in general. Body image and social media, as we previously heard, have a huge impact on engagement. Jogges Scotland also highlighted that to us, that even things such as getting changed and showered after an exercise class can bear really daunting experience, especially for young women. With the above to contend with, it is easy to understand why it is very difficult to engage young women. From the organisations that we have contacted, we believe that there has to be a more holistic approach to physical education. Once we have highlighted some of the barriers that young women face, we have found that most of the successful engagement techniques were specifically targeted at those barriers. Our evidence suggests that the best way to encourage young women into sport is by peer and community-driven initiatives, which focus on positivity and fun. The majority of the engagement that we have seen has been successfully introduced around women having children, as they are looking at a change in lifestyle anyway, that it tends to be a time when women can come back to sport. We believe that the best way to encourage a younger generation is to focus on creating positive messages around body image and encouraging visible role models, as we have heard from the rest of the groups, from an amateur level all the way up to a professional level. The best examples that we found of that were the daily mile and the Strathclyde sirens, who specifically target young people. They look at not just the physical aspects of sport, but also exercise as a means of encouraging young people to work as a team, based on the ability and skills of those around them. The daily mile stresses this across schools, encouraging daily activity in the form of a walk or jog, encouraging children to be outside and active in their surroundings. We also found that the sirens had great engagement with the sirens for success programme. That was rolled out across 42 schools, attracting 600 pupils to take part and looks to engage children specifically who previously were not interested in PE. They believe that by creating positive female role models, while also teaching children about wellbeing, that levels of participation are increased. They found that 79 per cent of PE teachers confirmed attendees recorded increased positivity and engagement towards physical activity, with 55 per cent then going on to lead a more active lifestyle. Role models were mentioned in almost every response that we had, which related to positive physical activity. Whether it was peers in a running group or seeing more women in coaching roles, it is clear that that is really important. It is important to stress that physical activity should not just be about appearance. Project 42 highlighted that very well, saying that, when engaging anyone to take part in sport or physical activity, we believe that it is important to promote the benefits to physical and mental health rather than focusing on body damage. It is most important when engaging teens to take part in sport and physical activity that there is a greater proportion of under-16-year-olds affected by body dysmorphia. It is clear that, given the barrier space, we need to re-educate young women on the link between physical appearance and sport and encourage exercise for fun and community feel. I have one more quote from Feel Good Fitness, which highlighted that this has definitely been their most successful way to engage. It is pretty evident that the ladies' pursuit of active hobbies is a way of getting exercise without it feeling like a chore. For many, the enjoyment may be linked to social ties. We can walk in clubs to meet friends or more solitary expeditions like a morning swim in the local pool when they take time for themselves. In many cases, I think that just taking part in exercise with the primary aim to have fun seems to be the most engaging way to get women into sport and fitness. Initiatives such as this are crucial to encouraging young women into sporting environments and tackling the barriers that we have identified. We should be encouraging as many positive examples as possible and to create communities that not only understand women's bodies and requirements but to celebrate them. I wonder what support strategies could be put in place for women who cannot access women-only environments. Amy King? I think that a big part of that is revisiting policies for improving access from community level. We have to really look at reaching diverse audiences through diverse representation. That starts from engaging young women from diverse backgrounds in sport from a relatively early age and embedding them in and seeing the career progression aspects. I think that it is also important that we look at more training for women to become coaches at a volunteering community level as well as looking at the professional routes. I think that for young women who are struggling to access, we need to make sure that we are listening to those issues. If young women are struggling, they are going to say something about it and we need to make sure that we are tapping into those communities and listening to where those barriers are and how we can overcome them. It is very much a community lens approach that needs to be taken. The language is also really important in terms of how we engage with different groups. From our evidence, there have been responses that have said that even though PE was compulsory during the primary school or early education stages, they found that the language was quite technical, that they were not keen on engaging in sport because all they wanted to do was have fun. It could be small changes, so from talking about sport to talking about physical activity, but also talking about community engagement is what Amy was saying, and just getting involved and meeting people and also having fun is really important. Research from the young women in schools group also found that a lot of young, well not a lot of young women, but more young women than young men have to drop out of school and therefore physical education due to caring commitments. You also said that a lot of mums find it difficult to re-engage with sports. How are initiatives like Run, Mummy Run and Jog Scotland actively reaching out to young carers or mums, or are those women actively coming to the initiative of their own accord? A lot of the time, it seems to be word of mouth with women and bringing friends along, so specifically with trying to engage mothers, we found that it was all about a change in lifestyle and creating an environment where you could bring your children along with you or there was a place for your children to be cared for. One of the gyms that we looked at in Edinburgh actually has a play area next to where the gym classes are so that you can see your children from where you are engaging in physical activity and know that they are being cared for. Run, Mummy Run encourages women to come with their prams and just walk around. It is the social aspect rather than necessarily the physical activity, so it is being outside, it is taking in nature and bringing your children along with you. We found that it is really important for encouraging young women because if they see activity at a young age, they are more likely to engage with it throughout their life. You have obviously managed to find some really good examples of gyms and organisations that are doing a good job in managing to get young women to engage. How do you think that we can share that learning and encourage other organisations to adopt that best practice that we found? I think that from a lot of the engagement that a lot of those organisations want to share their information, they want to share the things that are working. Having spoken to those organisations, I encourage that conversation further. How do you propose that you could take examples of good practices and implement them through policy? Do you think that that would be possible? I cannot speak to in-depth on the policy side of things because my understanding is very top level, but I think that we need to look more to local authorities and encouraging them to implement changes that affect their communities. It is wider policy for the whole of Scotland as well, but it is very much from what we have learned that it is about a more individual experience or a community experience rather than all young women feel this. I think that there is a lot that could be done for encouraging community-ledge experiences as well as helping those organisations and institutions that already exist to reach out to those communities that feel left behind. Katie Heath, on that point, we saw that a lot of those initiatives rely on charity support or volunteers to give up time. We could do it with some local authorities maybe providing monetary support to build on those and be able to reach more women. We think that a lot of issues surrounding illness, low self-esteem and loneliness in Scotland, which are all pretty important topics right now, could be encouraged. Perhaps not as some of that funding could be helped through sport and physical activity, so we are just looking to see if maybe there could be an area there. Laura Natureston With some of the other evidence that we have heard in relation to women that are still at school, body image came up a lot. Obviously, because you are dealing with older women, that turned out to not really be as big an issue, which is great that women are hopefully getting a bit older and realising that it is not the end of the world and that is not the point of their exercise. I am just wondering from speaking to these organisations whether there is a way to apply it to younger women to get them from A to B quicker. Jan Hyswell I think that the way you can do that is having more role models across the board. This is something that a lot of the other panels have touched upon today. It is having role models vertically but also horizontally. Vertically, especially for a younger demographic, if they are engaging on social media quite frequently, then it is really important to see really powerful independent female athletes doing their thing. Maybe it is for aesthetic reasons but also to show their power essence. I think that we have seen some of the pushback in some of the stronger, more prominent female athletes on social media. Also, as you transition off social media into the older demographic of young women, we want to see communities and more engagement and more support at the local level. I hope that having role models across the board, both within your local area, your community and your peers, and having someone that you can relate to in real life can help that transition from offline to online. Do I have any other questions for this panel? I was just wondering why you do not think—like you were saying, like these bodies that you talked to—like they have all this research that they really want people to listen to. But why do you think that it has not been heard already or engaged with yet? I think that one of the main issues is that people have not been talking about young women's relationship with sport until very recently. I think that it is a topic that a lot of society has just put on a shelf and said that it is never going to change, or that they have not even realised that there is an issue to address because girls just do not like sport. The very damaging rhetoric that has permeated society from a granular to an institutional level has resulted in a lot of young women going unheard for years and years and years. Even those women who have grown up in that environment might not even realise that they have been wronged in this being the case. With the likes of us shouting about young women's participation in sport and how important and vital it is, we are allowing for a lot more internal reflection for organisations and individuals. Now that that conversation has started, I think that we are going to see a lot more people bring their own expertise and experience to the table and share willingly, because people do want to make that change. They just did not realise until they heard the conversation start that they could even participate in it. Is there anything that you think that already existing organisations such as gyms or even school PE could do to be more inclusive to women and girls? I think that one of the things that came up along a lot of the different organisations that we spoke to, but specifically in the women in sport, why are women reluctant to run a report by Parkrun? They talk about how, to get women engaged, they find that if the organisations sort of values align more with women's values, so Parkrun specifically focused on community, volunteering and sort of family-led, it's a cross-generation, that's a way of engaging. And actually it's the values behind the organisation and behind the activity that can have a positive impact. I think that Katie wanted to say something too, and then I'll go to Amy and Janice. I was just going to talk a little bit about the relationship from school onwards and that the community-driven aspect also brought up a lot of things around gender-specific classes and feeling a bit more comfortable in a women-led community and that perhaps the women who later on in life were attracted to a more female community and that that might be something that we could encourage maybe more in sport at school to try and make young girls more comfortable to participate when they can see other people around them. Amy King? I think that another part of this that's really important is the emphasis for single gender inclusion classes. From school through gyms, when we have a girls-only class there does seem to be a better engagement with the activity and in promoting that option we open a lot more doors to people because they might start off feeling more comfortable in a women-only class or gym and then when they grow their confidence they might decide to branch out and try different activities and different organisations as well and with school when you allow young women to learn in an environment that is specifically catered for them and their needs they do perform much better that it does not just apply to physical education but particularly in physical education as Professor David Kirk presented evidence at our previous committee. I think that there is a real need to identify where the women-only or the girls-only classes and spaces can be of great benefit. Also having more female experts and women who are actually coaches or volunteers, as a lot of the panellists have said previously, really help in terms of actually having girls and young women recognise that it's possible to be an expert, to be good in sports, particularly sports that may be not traditionally female dominated as well as also including the spaces where all girls are free and happy to participate. It's really important that they see that there are people who are teaching them who understand perhaps some of their struggles because they probably would have faced them earlier in life. Amy King has to have the last one. I do, it's in my bones. The final thing that I'd like to add to all of that is the point on competitiveness in sport and the relationship that a lot of young women have or the negative relationship that a lot of young women have with competitive sport and offering a wider range of non-competitive and competitive sports for young women will almost certainly see an increase in engagement because a lot of young women do just want to do this for fun. They do just want to move their body, they don't want to race against their peers and it removes a lot more of the anxiety around being good at or better at or bad at a particular activity, which seems to permeate a lot of the discussion that young women have around sport rather than physical activity. Thank you very much, panel. That was extremely interesting. Right, we have a few minutes left and I would like to, before I ask Beth Clotten, as vice convener, to do a little summary for us of what we don't panic. That's a very general summary of what we've heard on the way forward. I thought that we could just go round those who are committee members today and ask for a quick comment on what you've heard and we'll start with Ciarra McGuire. No pressure. I just think that it was really interesting and there was so much overlap, which I think we kind of knew when we started our research that there's a lot of overlap in our different research, but it's been good to hear specific examples of what can be done better and what we can do well. Rona Wilder. The thing about women's only classes is really interesting and it would be useful to find out what we could teach in the boys only classes that would encourage them to maybe be less competitive or some education there that means that there's less, when the classes are mixed, that women feel like they can't participate. Maxine Kearney. Yeah, I think it was really interesting and I think we can take back a lot and do quite a lot, so I'm really looking forward to what we can do for this. Becky White. I found it really interesting how all the responses about following the body positive accounts on Instagram, they weren't all like because they were following them, it didn't make them feel entirely positive, which on the surface you think it would. That's really interesting. Amy Leishman. I think the fact that we all spent quite a lot of time focusing on social media and the body confidence issues, we obviously had a lot of questions for each group, but for that specific group there was a lot of questions. It really highlights that just within our group that is a massive issue, social media and body confidence and it's something that affects us all, so I think that's definitely something that we need to take on and look forward to. Lauren Nates. I think I just want to say that I know a lot of the stuff that we deal with is because the nature of the topic is anecdotal and I think it's just great to hear that so many stories and that hopefully people will feel less alone that they're going through this experience, that they're not just crap at sport and that hopefully they're going to benefit from what we're finding out. Siwaith Llywydd. At the beginning of this process I thought I wouldn't really be interested in the topic because I'm not that sporty myself, but having done all this research and spoken about it with each other, I've learned there's a reason why I'm not that interested in sports, so it's been quite interesting to see how sexism has permeated this subject and I'm excited to see what we can do. I think it's been really interesting to see the difference between the barriers facing young women in sports, like the assumptions made about them and the actual evidence that's been gathered and whether they actually coincide. Olivia Kenney. I think it's really interesting about the findings and why it was difficult for women to get engaged with sports with the barriers they faced, but also as well I was really interested in hearing about the elitism aspect of sports and where the pressure starts for the young women not able to come back with the stresses and the female coaches as well helping them get engaged and feeling more of support system to get them through to each levels of competitiveness, that was really interesting to hear. More about the intersectionality aspect of the reasoning on whether the barriers for not participating in sport and what we can do as a community and as nationally what we can do to start implementing resources and organisation to help break down those barriers for women taking part in sports. Beth Cluggan. Helpfully, you all gave a great overview, so I'll just make a few comments. I feel like there's just such a clear message that young women are massively disadvantaged and feeling like they can access and enjoy a sporting life, and I'm really excited to hear what recommendations you all commit with to confront and combat what these barriers are. So well done, that's really great. I thoroughly enjoyed the session. We heard from four excellent panels some really good works being done and some very interesting and thought provoking work has been carried out and presented very well. I'm certain that the committee has loads to discuss before our next and final meeting, which will take place on Friday 31 May. That's when we'll take our final evidence on the issue and then the really hard work begins. It's about agreeing a report on the findings and how very important, how we can best use that report to really try and make a difference because it's quite clear from the work that you've all done that it is time that that difference should be recognised and everyone involved should work forward for it. So thank you very much all of you who took part and it was really good to see that we had some visitors in today listening to the great work that has been carried out. So thank you everyone and this meeting is closed and I don't have a gavel.