Following Sport England’s Active People Survey in 2014, it was decided that more needed to be done for women in sport. It was found that there were two million fewer women participating in sport than there were men. It was also found that over 75% of women aged 14-40 wanted to do more exercise.
The overriding reason for this disparity was found to be fear of judgement which Sport England sought to change through the launch of a new advertising and social media campaign called This Girl Can.
The campaign aimed to increase participation and remove the stigma through the portrayal of positive role models and to quash any fears over ridicule of their appearance or ability. 36% of the least active school girls felt that their body was on show during PE, making them enjoy the subject less.
It was time for change.
The first set of adverts aired in January 2015 and extended to cinema, outdoor and social media. The use of multiple platforms meant that numerous audiences could be met, accounting for the generational differences in consumption of media.
The next wave of advertising came in 2017 when Sport England released This Girl Can: Phenomenal Woman. The campaign developed the previous message and expanded to use women of all ages as well as giving advice for the return to sport after pregnancy. 81% of mothers with children under fifteen admitted to preferring spending time with their families over exercise.
Through this, the This Girl Cam campaign was able to increase activity in over 148,000 women in the first nine months. By the end of the 2017, the gender gap was decreased from 1.78 million to 1.3 million. The campaign has also been credited in 2.8 million women becoming more active as of 2017, a number which has undoubtedly increased in the four years following.
Another campaign launched in 2020 to further the impact and allow people to remain active whilst in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic created further barriers to women becoming and staying active, so the campaign was updated to find and share new ways to stay active while confined to closed spaces.
The multi award winning campaign was ground breaking in the use of social media to push activity and generate an online community.
A tailored Twitter algorithm allowed the advertisements to be shown to women who tweeted about wanting to be active and be more involved in sport. The use of #ThisGirlCan also meant that those involved could easily find others doing so and those discussing the campaign.
The use of a hash tag has since become more widespread and used by almost everyone wishing to share an opinion on a topic, examples including #ThreeLions for the England senior national football team and #HalaMadrid from Real Madrid.
The team behind This Girl Can also developed and released an app to allow people to create their own This Girl Can poster using their own photo, further showing the sense to togetherness they wish to bring and the feeling that sport is for everyone.
Not without controversy, the campaign was criticised for the use of ‘girl’ which was seen by some to discredit and ignore older women. The body types portrayed was also a point of criticism with the so called ‘new sexy’ being the same as before but with more sweat.
These critiques were answered through the use of more body types and more ages in images and videos, as well as refraining from Photoshop to edit images and leave natural bodies on show.
It cannot be argued that the This Girl Can campaign has not had a lasting positive impact on not just women, but the nation as a whole. The UK population was estimated at 66 million in 2019, meaning that Sport England’s efforts to improve activity in females lead to 4% of the country’s population becoming more active.
Needless to say, a massive impact has been made and the goals set out from the beginning have been met with flying colours.