The skills you learn related to sport are important—such as time management, discipline, the idea of setting goals and achieving what you want—and can be transferred to the business world. Women and girls should play sports because it gives us the tools, the mindset, the language to build our confidence and overcome any self-limiting believes. It helps society see women and girls as being strong to overcome these barriers.

Additionally, the science seems to say that neurologically girls experience a dip in self-confidence when they are in their teens—you can’t avoid it. Whatever the reason for it, sport is one of the simplest interventions because of the neurological connections that physical activity has in building the brain. There is research that says that girls who play sport are less likely to want to change their body image, they feel more confident, are less worried about living up to other people and have a more secure sense of self that they can go and pursue what they want.

If it wasn’t for sport, I would be a different person. I’m an only child and, for me, sport was the place where I found my friends, where I learned to support other people and where I learned a lot of those social and life skills. And now sports give me a sense of purpose and motivation to continue to advocate for more opportunities and access for other women and girls.

My sport is ultimate Frisbee. I was familiar with the sport from college, but I started playing regularly when I moved back to Hong Kong. I had wanted to find a group of friends and I was on the Classifieds pages on AsiaXpat.com and scrolled through all the way from ‘A’ down to ‘U’ where there was an ad for ultimate Frisbee. I decided to check it out and the people were awesome. I think that’s very often how sport is—you find a tribe, and that’s why you stay with a sport.

If you have exposure to a Western mindset, it’s quite normal to play sports. But if you grow up in Hong Kong, there’s still a lot of, “Don’t get too tanned”, and “Don’t play such a rough sport” and “Play sport but also study hard”. And the word “sport” doesn’t always have the most positive connotations. When people think of sport, they think of competition and aggression, and sometimes that turns people away. But in the past few years, the word sport has become broader—it’s not just team sports or individual sports. You are now incorporating the idea of movement and physical activity. And, fundamentally, people understand that sport is good for your health.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard women describe themselves as “not sporty”. I started hearing it so much, that I started thinking about what it means to be sporty. Why do so many of us describe ourselves as “not sporty”? I think one of the reasons is due to stereotyping and the way women and girls think you need to be in order to play certain sports. For example, you might think of a rugby player typically being broad or wide; a ballet dancer or gymnast as being slim and light; a swimmer as being tall and broad-shouldered. I think it’s because of these misconceptions around how you physically need to be in order to perform in a certain sport that leads women to describe themselves as “not sporty”. But there are so many different sports out there. This inspired me to write a book, Sporty Girl Journals, to address what it means to be sporty and to help young girls realise that they don’t have to be a certain mould to be sporty. That’s also our belief at WISE—we don’t focus on one type of sport. For us it’s really important to expose participants to different sports to help women and girls find what they like.

I think parents are starting to understand that children are different and you can’t push everyone in a certain direction. There are different pathways and sport is one to consider. The sports industry has started growing in Hong Kong; people no longer think of sport as just being an athlete or a coach. It’s an industry like any other—you can do marketing, you can be a doctor, a physiotherapist, a scientist—and parents are no longer as afraid of letting their children explore it. Not so long ago, unless your parents were athletes or very progressive, the thinking was that you were an athlete because you were not academically inclined and that the sporting world only offers short careers and unstable jobs. But attitudes are changing. Sport is not just about health and wellbeing. It's a lot of other things. And as Hong Kong athletes continue to get results and the government invests in sports, there’s hope for further change.

WISE is still small. We only hired our first full-time project manager this past year and I still volunteer my time and have always had another job. I don’t think our work will be done in five years. I don’t know whether our work will ever be done. But I hope that we can continue to be an organisation at the forefront of promoting sports and physical activity as a tool to empower women and girls.

A resource for women to become their best selves, Front & Female celebrates trailblazers and tackles timely, provocative issues through inspiring content and events. Join the community by subscribing to our newsletter and following #frontandfemale

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