We cannot be what we cannot see

Olympic and Pan American Games athlete Lisa Ross reminds us how we all contribute to progress:

I recently revisited my contribution in 2019 to Lyndsay Doyle’s incredible #superROLEmodels project, which highlights women in sport – at all levels and in different disciplines.

I know that for years I had an unconscious bias towards male coaches, in large part as this was my reality coming up through sailing and sport. It took me a long time to recognise and work on addressing my biases.

Working with Kathy Foster in the lead up to the 2004 Olympic trails was the first time in my sailing career that I worked with a female coach in high performance, an experience which helped me believe there was a place in sport for me after my Olympic career was over, and that women could be coaches at the highest level.

I love that as a sport sector that we are embracing challenging the status quo, both at the individual and organisational level.

We cannot be what we cannot see.

With the explosion of coverage of women’s sports recently, we need to continue to push to ensure that we have representation across sport. Not just men coaching men and women coaching women, but equality in all aspects of our programming and leadership.

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