International Women’s day

My awareness that girls and women were excluded from certain activities or industries happened at a young age. At junior school, in the 1980s my friend and I became acutely aware that as girls, we didn’t seem to have the same opportunities as the boys in our class. In one particularly audacious move, we noticed a ‘male chauvinist pig’ greetings card in a shop and gave it to our year 6 teacher after he had informed us that we weren’t allowed to play football at school “because we were girls”.

I have no idea what our teacher made of that card. I’m presuming he was somewhat offended, but I also hope that he saw the desire in these two young girls to fight for inclusion and call out the injustice they felt.

Growing up, I often imagined myself as a mum of a daughter whom I would encourage to seek out inclusion for herself and other girls in her situation and take action when she felt she was being discriminated against because of her gender.

Today, I am the proud mother of two sons, aged 10 and 12. I have to admit that for a short time I mourned the idea of inspiring a daughter to know her worth, fight for inclusion and work with other girls and women to lift each other to greater heights.

But two things quickly dawned on me. Firstly, I have opportunities every day to support girls and women both at work and in my personal life. We all do. And when I say “we all do”, I mean everyone. Because the second thing I realised was that one of the most important things I can do in my role as a mother to support inclusion and embrace diversity, is to educate my sons through my words and my actions. Talking to them about inequality, history and the progress we have made; making it clear what behaviour is and isn’t acceptable; encouraging them to call out discrimination when they witness it; and supporting them in building relationships based on respect, support and kindness – embracing other people’s diversity in full.

So, I would like to continue to #InspireInclusion in 2024 and beyond by using my role as a Joint Managing Director and as a Mother of two sons. And you’ll be pleased to hear that I did eventually take up football 5 years ago. I wonder what I could have achieved had I had the opportunity to begin my football journey aged 10? [Sidenote: probably not a lot based on my skill-level after 5 years of training, but it would have been nice to have had the chance!]

Katherine Lee, Joint Managing Director