“Mummy, why do they keep women’s football a secret?”

Indeed.

My seven-year-old asked me this question at bedtime a few days after the men’s Euro 2020 final.

I find the choice of the word ‘secret’ really poignant. It saddens me on many levels.

For her, she sees a world where the nation stops for men’s football.

It’s the national game.

In her brain, that literally means the men’s game is the ‘national game’, not the sport itself.

I find it hard to know what to say to change her mind. Is she wrong?

As a seven-year-old, she’s figured out that women’s and girls’ football is shoved to the side. It’s an add-on at best and forgotten about at worst.

Secret indeed.

Secret implies there is something to be ashamed of. We spend years telling our children not to keep secrets, separating secrets (things to feel ashamed of, or that someone might be asking you to hide) from surprises (birthday treats and things to feel excited by because of the anticipation of not knowing).

Women’s football, for her, isn’t a ‘surprise’; it sits squarely in the secret camp.

Since that bedtime question, we’ve also had the conversation about why some of the players from the men’s England team were treated dreadfully and subjected to disgusting racism after the game. I recognise that, to an extent, I got to choose the timing of this conversation, and others like it, whereas many seven-year-olds woke up the next morning living the reality of this kind of racism every day. Her wide, little, brown eyes looked at me and just said, ‘That’s not fair.’ No, sweetheart, it’s definitely not fair, and we need to keep asking big questions and trying to figure out how we can turn those questions into actions that make the world a better place for everyone.

There are some big life lessons in these seemingly innocent questions and I hope I’m able to help her understand that things like sport can be a tremendous agent for change, provided we set it on the right course.

As a parent, I struggle with that phrase, ‘you can be anything you want to be’. I get setting lofty ambitions for my children, but am I peddling an untruth like I have done for years with Saint Nic? Can you set your sights on something you can’t see? Can my seven-year-old imagine a life equal to that of boys and men as she grows up, given the lessons she’s already been confronted with? When she thinks women’s football is a secret, could she ever engage with it now in the hope of making it a fulfilling sport for her?

We urgently need to change the way we showcase, talk about, televise, demonstrate, write about, applaud and celebrate women’s and girls’ sport. We owe this to the seven-year-olds out there who are led to believe there is something to be ashamed of in being a girl.

No more excuses, no more justifications, no more secrets.

Now more than ever, we need to build on the diverse stories, highlight the firsts, and showcase the role models so that all our children grow up seeing a little piece of their future selves in our sheroes and heroes.

So, for all the seven-year-olds out there (and the grown-ups who want some inspiration), here are some firsts to remind us all that you can’t be what you can’t see.

Jean Hornsby (1979) – the first Black player to represent England in netball

Tanni Grey-Thompson (1988) – the first British wheelchair racer to win a Paralympic medal

Mary Phillip (2003) – the first Black woman to captain England in football

Michele Payne (2015) – the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup

Sky Brown (2021) – Britain’s youngest ever Olympic medallist

Alice Dearing (2021) – the first Black woman to represent Team GB in Olympic swimming

Helen Glover (2021) – the first mother to compete for the GB Rowing Team at an Olympic Games

Quinn (2021) – the first openly transgender and non-binary athlete to win an Olympic medal

Smriti Mandhana (2025) – the first Indian woman to score international centuries in all three formats of cricket

Postscript…

Six years on, as we gear towards the Men’s World Cup, things have changed, sort of... The dial is moving, slowly but visibly. For my girls, though, much of that progress came too late. The football available to them then was limited to the point of near absence, however hard I looked for it. Football, at least, has the infrastructure and financial muscle to accelerate the visibility of the women’s game. Many other sports do not.

If you’d like to continue the conversation, do get in touch. I’d love to reflect on what comes next, together.