Ignore the voices and get active

That was the message from Jennie Price CBE, Chief Executive of Sport England, as she received an Honorary Doctor of Letter from the University of Brighton.

Speaking at the university’s graduation ceremony at the Brighton Centre, Ms Price told graduates how the common excuses given by women for not getting active were: “I haven’t got the time, I’m terribly busy or I can’t fit it in, it’s very expensive.”

But the real reasons for many were much deeper. Little voices in the head say: “I’m not sure I’m the right size, I think I might be a bit big in these clothes, I’m not fit enough, I look ridiculous in those clothes, I’ll look absolutely ridiculous by the time I finish, and I don’t belong here where the sporty people are.”

Ms Price has led a This Girl Can campaign which has won numerous awards and has been called the best campaign of its kind in the world for encouraging thousands of women into sport and exercise.

Passing the baton - Sarah Hogg presents Jennie Price with her Honorary Doctor of Letters

She said the purpose of the campaign was to tackle the issue of judgement, how women think other women judge them, how they think men judge them and, most of all, how women judge themselves, “that little voice in your head saying can you really do that.

“We wanted to say that women come in all shapes and sizes and it really doesn’t matter whether you are brilliant at sport or whether you are a bit rubbish at it. Actually most of us are rubbish – I certainly am.

“That is absolutely fine – the key thing is you are a woman and that you are doing something.”

She told graduates: “When someone says to you perhaps you can’t, perhaps you are not quite good enough or that little voice in your head is saying you can’t, you shouldn’t or you don’t belong, the thing I would really love you to take from today is that you can, you may and you really, really do belong.”

Sarah Hogg, the University’s Director of Sport, presented Ms Price with her doctorate “in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the promotion of diversity within grass-roots sports”.