The Lionesses

Last night I watched the Lionesses in their highly contested match against Holland, which sadly they lost. I am a big fan of the Lionesses; they are so skilled, fit, and athletic, motivated and play as a team for each other. During the Euros I was on the edge of my seat, especially in the final. It was the same in the World Cup. Although they lost in the final, they can feel very proud of their achievement in that competition.
I started to think about women’s sport over the years and how much things have changed. When I was young, women did not play football. It was the preserve of men and boys. More recently when I watched women’s football on TV it was okay but not a compelling watch as now, with highly professional players on both sides. It is not just football where the change has happened. Women play rugby union and league, for example, to very high standards.
In athletics, as late as the Olympics in 1964, the longest race women could enter was the 800m. It was thought that if they ran a mile they would collapse or something. This week Tigst Assefa broke the marathon world record for women with a time of 2.11.53, less than 10 minutes slower than the men’s world record. She was running 5 minute miles.
The Lionesses and women marathon runners are one example of how the status of women has changed. In astronomy and space exploration, for example, many women play leading roles as scientists and engineers in universities, at NASA and in other space agencies. There have been amazing women in astronomy in the past. In the 18th century, Caroline Herschel, the sister of William Herschel (the man who discovered Uranus and doubled the size of the known solar system) was a brilliant observation astronomer in her own right.
In the early 20th century, Edwin Hubble would not have demonstrated that there are other galaxies beyond the Milky Way without the work of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who made detailed studies of hundreds of photographic plates of distant stars and discovered the relationship between luminosity and period in variable stars. This showed how far away they were, some way outside the Milky Way. More recently the wonderful Jocelyn Bell discovered the first pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star. Her boss (a bloke) was awarded the Nobel Prize on the back of her discovery. Now we have many women astronomers.
There is still a long way to go for women, with the scourge of domestic abuse and violence, along with sexual harassment and worse. At least more abusers are being dragged into the light now.
Some glass ceilings are also being broken. The world is a better place when men and women have equal status and opportunity. The Lionesses are part of this process. I will be cheering for them at their next match, for football and other factors.

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