The Game Changers

Kat Craig: Power, ethics and building fairer futures in sport

• Sue Anstiss • Season 21 • Episode 7

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“We’re at an inflection point - fans, sponsors and the next generation are demanding better. Sport has to decide what future it wants.”

On today’s must listen episode of The Game Changers podcast, pioneering human rights lawyer and Athlead CEO Kat Craig explores how sport can change the world, yet why it too often simply replicates its worst injustices. 

Kat offers a compelling blueprint from a world-leading voice: how to move from statements to structure and build safer, fairer sport for everyone.

Driven by what she calls an “allergic reaction to injustice”, Kat charts her path from frontline human rights legal work to a decade inside the sports system, and explains why she founded AthLead, to turn athlete voice, sport-for-good strategy and rights-based governance into meaningful, lasting culture change.

Kat doesn’t shy away from hard truths. Sport’s centralised power and insularity, she argues, create blind spots that silence those most harmed by discrimination and abuse.

We also dive into athlete activism in a polarised era where authenticity matters more than ever, and why better gender balance has the potential to transform sport at every level.

Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.

Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers

Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media

A Fearless Women production

Kat Craig:

I think we're at a really complicated time societally. That pushback, that research that came out recently, that young men even in the UK, a significant percentage thought gender equality had gone too far. I don't even know what that means, and it's terrifying.

Sue Anstiss:

My guest today on the Game Changers is Kat Craig, a pioneering human rights lawyer and CEO of Athlete, a consultancy helping to drive systemic, transformative change across sport. Passionate about sport as a platform for change, Kat works with athletes and organisations across the globe, helping them to use their voices to challenge injustice and inspire progress. A much respected thought leader for safeguarding in sport, Kat co-authored the UN Women Handbook Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls in Sport, and has been recognised by her peers for her transformative work, receiving the Sport, Industry, Integrity and Impact Award and the Celia Brackenbridge Award for Services to Safe Sport. So, Kat, what first drew you into human rights law and how does sport become a part of that journey?

Kat Craig:

Hi, Sue, and thank you so much for having me today. I'm delighted. I'm an avid listener, and it's a real privilege to be here with you today. And we always have such wonderful conversations. It's nice to do it in this context. I think I was blessed from quite a young age with a really diverse friendship group. I grew up in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, actually, which is a really multicultural city. And from a young age, that meant I was exposed to quite a lot of the social inequities that that diverse community faced. I remember at school, one of my teachers said I seemed to have an allergic reaction to injustice. I don't think it was a compliment at the time. And now I'm a little bit older with the benefit of hindsight. It was a crowded state school, so I do feel for them. But I think that was always sort of in me, and I'm really pleased about that. And I then contemplated lots of different careers, came to sport in quite a roundabout way. I've been working in sport for 10 years, but I did a degree in social anthropology and development studies, which is kind of international relationsy. And I think that gave me a lot of time to reflect on the historical and global context, how the world works, how we organize ourselves and society. And that's always been something I'm really interested in. I remember taking a course in gender and culture and looking at how other societies organize in a matriarchal or a matrilineal way and how that impacted how power was distributed. So I think I've always had a real interest in social injustice as a whole. And then eventually I did a postgrad in law and became a human rights lawyer in private practice. And I think, in terms of sport, I played sport from a young age, poorly, on all accounts. Lots of different sports, team sports, individual sports. Was never brilliant at it, but always loved it. Overall had a pretty positive experience in sport. And about 10 years ago, at the time I was working for an international human rights charity as the legal director, and it just felt that the world was increasingly divided. It was just pre-Trump round one, pre-Brexit. And when you want to create positive social change, you have to always look at the context. What's the world around you doing and saying? What's the direction of travel? And it felt at the time pretty clear to me that kind of adversarial litigation was not going to bring this increasingly fragmented community together. And so I looked to the place where I'd always found community in commonalities and shared experiences, and that was sport. So I came into the sport sector really quite optimistic, hoping to be able to tell positive stories or challenge injustices in a really constructive way. And probably quite naively, actually. I really didn't understand the sector at the time terribly well. But I was fortunate to find some fellow travellers early on. And, you know, here we are 10 years later, I think very pleased with having made that decision.

Sue Anstiss:

I was going to say, has it enabled you to do those things you felt it would do as a place where you had found community? Yes and no.

Kat Craig:

I think the way that we as people in sport perceive the sector is very much based on our own paradigm experiences. It's one of the key challenges, actually, I think, in making change. So as a sector, for better or worse, it's quite insular, right? We um recruit from within our own ranks, former athletes, then start working in sports governance. I love that. I think that's a great thing. But the reality is that those who persevere or stay in sport tend to be the ones who've had positive experiences, who devote leadership and community and and were able to thrive. And that by its very nature excludes others who fall by the wayside side, who had negative experiences, who were discriminated against, who experienced abuse. And so coming into sport and understanding across those different stakeholders a little bit better how people come to be in sport, the love that they have, the pride they have in their sport, and sometimes the blind spots that that creates has meant that yes, I do think I found a space where I've had the opportunity to work with unbelievable people in a way that I'd never imagined and create a change that I'm really proud to have been a small part of. But I think there's quite a long way to go. And I think it is a challenging sector to work in, certainly as a woman. And as I say, I think I was a little naive coming into the sector as a kind of respected human rights lawyer who'd had all these accolades, and really absolutely nobody cared because it's a very relational sector, right? Unless three different people will vouch for you, nobody will give you the time of day. And lawyers are quite understandably distrusted. But you know, I always feel that being a human rights lawyer is a bit different. It's not a big paycheck kind of job. And so, yeah, there was a bit of learning on my side for sure, in terms of how I positioned it and yeah, finding good people, finding your tribe, finding your your group who of fellow travellers, ultimately I'm very pleased with the decision. I wouldn't wouldn't change it for the world.

Sue Anstiss:

That's good to hear. And you I have heard you say in the past of sport being such a driver of social change, as you've alluded to there, but also a reflection of deep inequality. So what do you mean by that?

Kat Craig:

Sport is a mirror of society. If you look at it from just through the gender lens, I work on a range of different human rights issues, but let's look at it through the lens of gender. We've had this incredible few weeks of women's sport where we can challenge stereotypes. We've seen research coming up recently, again reiterating that girls who play sport have a greater chance of taking up leadership roles. But because it's a microcosm of society, it also mirrors all the social issues like inequality and discrimination. And similar, but not the same, the struggle for equality and inclusion and all of the backlash and the tensions that come from that. So I think it it can be a huge force for change. I think we still have some way to go in understanding that sports governance structures are very centralized. It's a centralized power base. And in every single area of human rights I've ever worked for 30 years, when you have centralized power bases with a lack of diversity in leadership and a lack of voice and counter movements, there's always going to be an exploitation of vulnerable members in the community, right? So I think there are intrinsic risk factors connected to how sport operates that we're still coming to terms with. And again, you look at those paradigm experiences, there's a bit of unconscious resistance sometimes for those in sport because, and I share that, right? There are sports that I love and that I'm really proud of, and you have those blind spots because you don't want your memories of watching games or playing sports to be tarnished by these quite dark sides of sport. So there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance that I think we're still working through as a sector. But there are many, many people who are challenging that and changing that.

Sue Anstiss:

I love that. You're only I love always love talking to you because it opens my mind to things. But uh, yeah, there's so much true isn't that whole slightly slightly defensive of the things that we love and not wishing someone else to to shine a light perhaps on that. And I do want to talk to you more around uh the governance piece and organizations, but but first of all, I'd like to take a little bit to chat about Athlete and and the kind of story behind your founding that as an organization. So back in 2016, I think it was. What what gap did you see in the landscape that no one else was filling that that required that?

Kat Craig:

Yeah, I I was always really interested in this intersection between sport and society. Frankly, I'd been working at the front line of human rights in conflict zones, some of the most horrible things that people can do to each other. And I was pretty close to burnout. And uh, having had a broadly positive experience in sport and seen how it can really build communities, I was keen to create a space where we could really lead with that. And in the US, there was this movement forming around athletes speaking out on key social issues. Colin Kaepernick, remember Serena Williams read that beautiful poem, um, Still I Rise, the Maya Angelou one. And I went over to the US, I did a postgrad in sports philanthropy at George Washington, and saw that there were these, you know, every rookie MBA player would set up a foundation, for better or for worse, frankly. And social change making is an art. There's a talent to it, there are pitfalls and opportunities. And I saw a real gap to try and help athletes be really thoughtful about what their power, privilege, opportunities were, well beyond their checkbook, and to speak authentically about issues that they cared about. And so that's how we started. That's not how we finished. We did some amazing work and and still work with individual athletes on a range of issues, but as is often the case, kind of life got in the way a little bit, and within weeks, I think, of formally setting up athlete, I got a phone call, funnily enough, from an actor called David Morrissey. He used to be in various things. Uh, and I'd worked with him in the previous charity I worked with, and he said, Have you seen this stuff in the news of all of the men speaking out about abuse in football? And it was the group of men that ultimately founded the Offside Trust and various other organizations, and he said, They really need some advice on how to tackle this. It's a tricky issue, they're struggling. Can you help? So, um, one of the early pieces of work that that we did, alongside perhaps some of the easier social issues around kind of, you know, children's rights or how you grow potential in young people, was working with the offside trust, who are the very, very courageous men who finally broke the silence after decades of abuse. So that's where it where it started. And I'm I'm very grateful for that opportunity. I learned an awful lot. And over time that just transformed into gaining better insights into the working sport. Like I say, I came into it naive. I think it's really important when we do social change work that we're agile and that we're constantly reflecting on opportunities where the change-making opportunities lie. And so now Athlete has effectively three pillars of its work. One is around athlete voice, and we've worked with amazing athletes, Johnny Wilkinson, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Vanessa Wallace, who's an amazing Paralympian, who really early on in my career was very kind in bringing me along to things. Molly McCann, the UFC fighter now boxer. Um, but that's part of our work. We have a team that works specifically around sport for good, so sport for development and how we strategically use resources to challenge social issues. And then the third pillar is really around helping sports bodies to think about their human rights obligations, think about environmental, social, good governance issues, and how they can bake that into the structure of sport to try and build a new generation of governance and sports bodies that don't do this as a side project, where you just kind of have a charitable foundation, but really do a body scan of the whole organization. How do we think and feel about ourselves? How do we want others to speak about that? Who are all of the different stakeholders in our environment? How do we bring them along in that conversation? So it's been it's been quite the journey, so it does it's really interesting, isn't it?

Sue Anstiss:

Because I still often think of you as that early iteration. And I imagine the working, and yeah, I of course I also know the work that you're doing with the organizations, but I feel the the organizational work, the more the infrastructure, feels like it'll have far more impact potentially long term than working with individual athletes as a business. Is that how do you measure the kind of impact of that different work you're having in those different pillars?

Kat Craig:

Yeah, I hear you on that. I've always struggled a little bit with this micro-macro. Because if you look at how social change has happened historically across different countries, cultures, issues, timelines, the voices of those who were impacted are really the lightning rod for change. And it's very difficult as someone who has experienced a human rights abuse to then also advocate for it. So allyship, I think, is really important, and working with athlete allies is a really interesting part of our work. But I think it has to start there, and I think you have to a little bit be at the coalface to have a really deep understanding of what the issues are. It has to start with the experience of people and understanding where things have gone wrong. It's a diagnostic approach. And without doing that part of the work, it's very difficult to understand how to create systems change. So it's a bit of a kind of contraction and expansion exercise. You have to zoom in and zoom out, and that can be quite challenging. And I think in sport, which is quite a hierarchical structure, you know, there's a lot of governing bodies who just because of the nature of the work aren't always haven't got their ear to the ground. I think the two seem at quite opposite ends, but in practice they're really interconnected in a way that we can't we can't unpick and we don't want to unpick. So the two feed into each other actually in a quite a nice complementary way.

Sue Anstiss:

Do you think that activism of athletes is is a bit of an expectation, especially when they have that high profile now, or does it still take great courage for them to stand up and you know speak out publicly?

Kat Craig:

Well, I think that was one of our big learnings is that perhaps firstly, not all trends in sport that start in America translate to the rest of the world. And we work globally, so we've seen it's really a country-by-country basis. The way that people respond to athlete activism or athlete advocacy or athlete philanthropy is different. I think in the UK it is really challenging. I think it does require a lot of courage and a lot of thought. The best example I have of this is Marcus Rashford. And I didn't have anything to do with the work that he did, but I can't fault it. I think it was a flawless campaign. He had an authentic connection to the issue. He spoke about it in very manageable, palatable ways. Also, it was child poverty. I mean, you know, how you can take issue with someone trying to feed children who are going hungry. And he was really thoughtful about his advocacy. It's also wrong to expect Marcus Rashford to solve child hunger, right? So it was right that he was engaging with public bodies and institutions. And he got slated for it on various occasions. Now, that's partly the British press and the racism in the British press and our love of, you know, really building people up and tearing them down. But I think that's a real case in point around doing everything right as an athlete and still facing really serious blowback. So I think it is complicated. It doesn't mean that athletes shouldn't do it, it doesn't mean that athletes don't want to do it, it doesn't mean that athletes can't do it, but it is a matter of really considering carefully those key factors, right? Is there an authentic connection? What is the scope of an athlete's change-making power? One of the things that we see all the time is there not being enough scope. I always say to athletes, strategy is about what you say no to, not what you say yes to. And then thinking about the risks and the storytelling around it. So no, I think it requires great courage. I strongly resist this narrative that athletes have a an obligation to give back. I'm really not convinced about that at all. But I think for those who do want to advocate and stand in solidarity or offer their allyship, there are lots of small acts that we see from different athletes that make a massive difference. So there's still a space for it. But we live in an increasingly polarized society where we've slightly lost the ability to hold multiple truths and to have constructive disagreement. And I think it would be wrong to suggest that athletes, you know, can't fall victim to that. So it's a it's a tricky space, but an important one.

Sue Anstiss:

And looking more broadly across sport, what are some of the biggest human rights challenges that the the sector and sport generally is facing today, would you say?

Kat Craig:

I mean, gosh, all of them, right? I mean, all of the kind of thematic issues. Again, sport's a mirror of society. I think gender is a big piece, um, because I think it's a big part of the solution. I think if you can create gender equity, then things will significantly improve in society and in sport. There's endless research that shows if you have women making sensible decisions, or if you have women, they'll make sensible decisions. Women and men together working collaboratively, you'll have sensible decisions. But again, I think there's a lot of value to be added in terms of thinking about all of the unintended consequences of sport that go beyond those blind spots that we have, right? Everything from trafficking of workers and athletes as workers, gender, race, mental health issues, all of those things, freedom of expression, I think are still all issues that we're trying to tackle sensitively and appropriately in sport. I would come back again to kind of powers and systems. It's it's valuable to tackle those individual issues, but we don't operate in a microcosm. Um, we're connected to society. I saw Comic Relief launched a brilliant fund recently around violence against women and girls. Mary Arps was the face of the campaign, and there's been real pushback uh for her as well, which I was really surprised about. But, you know, that's the world that we live in now. So I think connecting all of those things is really important. Trying to understand the power base in the systems and how sport operates is really important. And I think that can feel very overwhelming, which is giving you a very vague big picture answer. Uh, and that's partly because it's a big picture problem. But I think where the challenges sit in operationalizing that is having a good grasp of all of those issues and how they're all interconnected, right? Both with each other and within and outside of sport, and then kind of breaking it down in manageable steps. I think that's something that I've learned over time that's really helpful is you have to have this big picture view, but just like individual athlete training goals, or over the course of a season, you know, I coach a team and sometimes we break it down into six-game chunks, or sometimes you're in the middle of the game and you've conceded and you just need to stabilize for five or ten minutes. So finding a cadence within all of these big issues of when we push, when we consolidate, and how we have a big picture view of all of the different component parts that need to be resolved, but don't become overwhelmed by the magnitude of it, I think is really important. And I'm not sure if that's answered your question, Sue, because I think there are there are these endless issues in society and in sports. So I can't, I don't, I'm not a big fan of kind of attributing a hierarchy of suffering, partly because I think it's quite personal, but also because I think these issues are all interconnected and ultimately it is the unequal distribution of power when you have people with power who don't understand, it doesn't even have to be nefarious, right? Some people in power just don't understand the experiences of those who aren't in power and then build systems and structures that are unwelcoming or unsafe. And so until we start tackling that, all of these other societal issues are a symptom of that.

Sue Anstiss:

And how do you begin? I feel we're trying to might be trying to solve everything on a one-hour podcast, but how do you begin to solve some of those? That the I mean you've got the kind of major systemic working with maybe major events at the Olympics and World Cups and international federations. So how can they be made accountable for human rights? Is it about the actions they take? Is it about governments imposing? Is it the involvement of the voice of sponsors and fans? What what what's your approach in that space?

Kat Craig:

I think big problems need big solutions and everybody needs to be part of it. So I think there's a role for everyone to play in that context. And I think we are seeing progress. So I think we're seeing a shift. Take safeguarding again as a kind of paradigm topic or a theme to look through. So lots of people working on safeguarding. There were very there were brilliant academics and researchers and sports governing people working on this for decades. But we've seen a real change in the last 10 years, right, with the Sport2 movement, the Me Too movement. So I think it starts with an awareness. And again, that's why working with athletes is so important and working with people who've experienced abuse, you know, whether it's officials or fans, is so critical. And from awareness, there's a kind of correlated step which is different, which is recognition. I think that's sort of where we are at the moment in a lot of change-making processes in sport when it comes to human rights. So there's an acknowledgement and a recognition in sports bodies that there is a problem. Whether that's a deep understanding differs. It's really not a homogenous sector, right? There's so many, it's only sports, big ones, small ones, rich ones, poor ones, well-run ones, poorly run ones. And then it's the kind of getting past that little bit of defensiveness that we've touched on. Those are the phases that we're in, that kind of understanding, listening, trying to find ways of working together and gelling as a team. And then it's when you can really start building solutions. And that that's an iterative process. I think we've got a slight tendency in sport as well, is to see things as a one and done. And it's not, right? It's a it's just you have to bake it into the day-to-day work that you do. And that's actually in practice. There's a couple of sports bodies I've worked with that I've really loved working with, who really lent into it. You can mainstream it in a way that's really quite manageable. I'm not saying there's no cost associated. I'm not saying that you don't have to create change in culture, but it's definitely doable. So it's that kind of transition from awareness to recognition. We're seeing policies and processes coming in. Where I think we're really still falling short is that wholesale cultural change. That's a big, a big challenge that I think many listeners will also recognize and have come across in different guises working as women in sports. But there are there are sports bodies trying to do the right thing. I'm also a big fan when you're looking at change of kind of segmenting your audience, right? So you'll have early adopters, champions, allies, the people who, and I saw that with athlete. I've seen that every stage of my work. Someone will hear about what we do and go, this is amazing. This is exactly what we need. Gosh, we really need this specific expertise. Then on the other end of the scale, there's people who want to preserve the status quo at whatever cost. The worst versions of that are sports administrators in senior positions who are themselves abusive, right? But there's a whole fragment there that wouldn't be abusive, wouldn't be discriminatory, but categorically refuse to create the change necessary to fix it. So that's the other extreme. And then there's the big chunk in the middle, and that's the really interesting chunk, right? So the people who are kind of undecided or who perhaps haven't had the opportunity to understand that they are inadvertently part of a system that excludes people, that is unsafe for people. I mean, I'm I'm not a big fan of dealing with the ones all the way on one side of the spectrum. I think that's a little waste of time, right? There's the kind of return on investment there is pretty slim. But that middle chunk, I've really learnt over time to engage differently with them. I was quite judgmental. You know, the passage of time helps with these things and you see more context. And so I was really good at dealing with the people who were all aligned with me, as many of us are, right? Those are my my people, and that was really easy, and we could work really well together and create incredible change. But it's actually that middle chunk that's really, really important, who are perhaps undecided, but willing to listen if the message is conveyed in the right way and willing to reflect. And we need to be a bit kind of compassionate and kind and patient with how we then go through that process. And understanding that has made it much easier to work with sports bodies who show a genuine intention. I mean, that's my that's one line I don't cross. I don't work with people unless I really test to see whether they want to create change rather than it be something performative, because my time is precious to me. And, you know, I don't want to be a fig leaf. I don't want to be part of a system where they're just trying to kind of go through the motions. And I think some people are still in that space, but there are increasingly people who who are approaching this in a really thoughtful way, and that's that gives me incredible hope.

Sue Anstiss:

And I don't I won didn't want you to name specific organizations where you have seen that change. But I just wonder from those that have engaged and are willing to listen and act, are there specific traits or what are the traits could you identify? Is it about the having absolutely the right people at the very top? Is it a historical, cultural, what's the what's is it about having women around the table in senior roles? What can you identify some of those elements?

Kat Craig:

That's so interesting. Yeah, I think I can. And they're different. If I think of I won't name individual organizations, although I'm sure some of them wouldn't mind, but the ones where I've seen success, I definitely think lived experience is key in different forms. So if you have people in organizations who have persevered in sport, despite those negative paradigm experiences, they bring a really important perspective. Generally, diversity of thought, identity is key. Almost all of the organizations where I've seen real change, there have been women with a degree of power. I think one of the green flags for me is organizations that are willing to be a little bit more transparent. That's a big piece, right? Honest and show a bit of humility around where things have gone wrong. I think it's interesting in sport because you have this. And I'm going to butcher it, and I'm really sorry to all of the listeners who know this. Quote better than me, but it's something like plant the seeds of the tree under whose shade you'll never sit, something along those lines. Yeah. And there's a short-termist nature of sport, sport leadership, everything from kind of coaches and managers and players, short kind of elite performance careers to kind of short tenure in positions of power. That means that there is a short-termis nature in sports bodies. And at the same time, there's a real fragility in recognizing things that predecessors have done wrong. So things can have gone wrong in your organization when you were not in charge of it. But you still have to acknowledge that people were harmed by the institution and that you're now part of the institution, the associated payroll and status and all and security. And so I think organizations and individuals within organizations that show a willingness and ability to hold those two things and to be nuanced, right? Yes, it wasn't me, but at the same time, I realize that the organization I represent has caused harm or has or has done things suboptimally. Let's put it that way, right? We can do better. So recognizing that we can do better, being transparent about progress that is being made. And there are several organizations I've worked I work with now who I had very long conversations with. I mean years, where people said, Can you come in and do a workshop? And I'm like, well, let's have a let's rewind a little. Tell me about some of the things that you're seeing in the organization that you don't like or that you want to address. And then just having to go back to them and go, Yeah, workshop's not going to change this. If you can find someone and they're like, we'll pay you. And I was like, No, no, I know, but the workshop's not going to fix it. And then we'd go back and there'd be another kind of short-termist solution. And I go, well, that's also not going to fix it. Because I think these are the underlying causes. And then eventually they will come back and go, actually, we've tried all of those things. They didn't work. Can we now have this kind of reflection process around how the culture of the organization facilitates some of these problematic aspects? But I think, yeah, a willingness to learn, a bit of humility while also being proud of the change that's happening. I think that's really important. We should really commend people. It's quite difficult within some organizations to champion change. I think we have to show empathy and support for that. And then a transparency in the steps that they're taking are pretty key. I think if you don't have that, trying to think if there's an organization that didn't do that and still had made lasting sustainable change. And I can't think of any. I don't know if you can.

Sue Anstiss:

Yeah, no, and I wouldn't want to. But no, no, I can't actually. You and I have talked kind of away from here in the past around some of that worrying pushback we're seeing in society post-the-me Too era. And I wonder if your thoughts of that, you know, how that translates into sport, especially when you've already mentioned the importance of more women in those senior roles and that opportunity. So both how how women can have more impact, but also then how that abuse is seen in sport too.

Kat Craig:

Yeah, I think we're at a really complicated time societally. And I think that inevitably reflects in sport as well. Again, I think there are risks and opportunities. And I like to think about the opportunities more than the risks, but no, it's undoubtedly true. There's so much research, it's so clear that that pushback, that research that came out recently, that young men, even in the UK, a significant percentage thought gender equality had gone too far. I don't even know what that means, frankly. Um, it's not like anyway, I don't know what that means, and it's terrifying. And and it's really terrifying to see it in in young men. But I think we've become accustomed to seeing kind of people you pejoratively refer to as dinosaurs. I don't love the term, but you know what I mean. People with outdated views, people for whom a lot of the kind of language that's more inclusive is really quite uncomfortable or alien. But I think when you see it in younger generations, it's very worrying. And and the kind of trad wife side side of it as well, right? The the women who are being co-opted or adopting that. And I think gender equity is one of those key points. Someone once told me that when it comes to gender equity, you need to have one eye forward and one eye back. And I think we definitely need one eye back at the moment because we are at risk of losing some of the progress and traction that we've had. As always, I am the eternal optimist. You kind of have to be in my line of work, but I do think that sport also offers the antidote. In my spare time, I run a community-owned football club called Camden and Islington United. And really from the outset, we baked in gender equity. So equal number, actually, majority of women on the board, women and men coaches, equal number of teams. And it's something that we we have always spoken about really explicitly with all of the players and the coaches, etc. And about a year or so ago, one of our teams, one of the Sunday teams, so a casual team, was playing in a cup, and it transpired that the opposition that they were due to face not only had a really derogatory misogynist name, but also had been posting really upsetting content, derogatory misogynist, verging on criminal content of young women when they were out and about, and had tagged our Insta handle in it. And the process that flowed was long and quite arduous. But the really pleasing part of it was having spent so much time with young men, it was the young men who alerted us to it. They, of their own volition, said, we are unwilling to play against a team that speaks about women this way. There are women running our club, there are women coaching our teams, we have, you know, equal number of male and female players in the in the club. They play together on kind of vibe sessions, and they said, This is not what we stand for. This is not how our community holds itself, and we refuse to play against this team. So they boycotted the match. The league was awful, absolutely pointless. League was awful. We lodged a complaint with the amateur FA. We boycotted the match, and we were actually in two different cups against the same team. So it was really disappointing because it was kind of the big culmination of building up this team and playing well. And the boys and young men, and they were all in their late teens, early 20s, they were brilliant. Susie Rack wrote an amazing article about it. I don't know how, but it kind of got top news globally on The Guardian. It was the number one football story globally on The Guardian for about 24 or 48 hours, kind of above Messi and various other transfer news. So there's an appetite for these stories. The men were willing to speak out. What was really interesting about it, so they boycotted the games. Eventually the amateur FA intervened. They disciplined the team and then forced the games to be replayed. We won both of them, which was obviously a joyous moment. But what was really interesting is when the story came out, I got contacted by lots and lots of people saying, I can't believe this still happens, which I thought was a little naive, but good that at least the story brought it to their attention. How is this able to happen in football? This is awful. Gosh, I'm so sorry. What was really interesting was that after that there was a second wave, which was when Lad Bible and various other accounts got hold of it. Because we made national news, we were on the television, etc. Our players were being interviewed about it, and then came the backlash. This is what happens when you let women run football. I bet they were all just effing, ugly women who were complaining about it. The game's gone. All of this stuff. When we had been dragged into a situation, and there were photographs of intoxicated women being upskirted, in compromising positions, saying that they'd slept with these women, they're kind of on a public Instagram page, all of these women being outed. It was absolutely vile. And that was the backlash. And even a year later, some troll on Instagram, the women who'd commented on it, going, Thank you for standing in solidarity with us. This is why we play for Camden and Islington United. This is what football should be like, all of these things. And he was making derogatory comments. So I think it's a perfect little story of where we as an industry in a sector see ourselves, where these things are allowed to happen. If you work hard and build clubs and environments where everybody takes their responsibilities seriously, you can build allyship, but the institutions and those in power are a little out of touch, right? So that first wave of reactions, which is this is appalling, how can this still happen in football? And then the counter-reaction, which was very much on the side of those who are being disrespectful, misogynists towards women. So it's a bit of a kind of a parable, I think, for where we are. And I think part of it, it's a very long way of saying, I think it's really important that we engage with young men and boys from a really early age, that they see women in leadership roles, that they see their role as allies, and that we bake this into the way that football and other sports are managed. I'm sure it happens everywhere.

Sue Anstiss:

And for those working in this space, and especially those young women, what advice would you give to them for kind of balancing what is understandable indignation or where the especially where the world's going right now, against almost being more practical and solutions-based in their actions? Because sometimes you just feel like you want to th throw your hands up and not walk away from it all, but I it the the kind of frustration of of where we are, where we see the world going today.

Kat Craig:

I think it's a really good question. And I don't ever throw my hands up and walk away, but I do sometimes kind of want to kick something quite hard. And look, that that righteous indignation, as you, as you rightly called it, I think is a really important motivator. I think it gives us an energy to really kind of keep going. Personally, what I've realized is particularly around issues of violence against women and girls and gender equity, you know, the stats are clear. Discrimination, harassment, abuse, those are all things that we'll either have experienced or we know people and love people who've experienced them. So I think we have to recognise this is part of the work I do around kind of trauma-informed coaching and trauma-informed responses from institutions, is really recognize what that does to us physically when we engage in that space. And there's a lot of work that I think we can do where we care for ourselves and each other. I think that's really, really important. I know that when I engage in these issues, I have a kind of a triggered response, right? Talked all the way at the beginning about that allergic reaction to injustice, and that is what it is, right? It's an involuntary, acute reaction that I feel in my body when I see or or hear about things happening. Actually, being a coach has really helped me with this, and just really understanding what that does to me, and that if I'm in that triggered response mode, part of my brain just doesn't function in the way that it usually does. So I think in the moment, before we can build solutions, we have to understand that, you know, if I go into an organization and we're talking about cultural change, how do we make this organization more thoughtful, more inclusive, more purpose-driven, frankly, more commercially ready for the next generation, which is very different than what it looked like 20 years ago, where we have fans and consumers who want different things. I'll go into these organizations and sometimes someone will say something that I find really unpalatable, right? I think for us to be able to build solutions, we have to understand that allergic reaction that we have. We have to manage our own emotions. So that's on a very interparation, like on a personal level, on a very individual level. Make sure that you've done that work, whether it's healing or self-actualizing, so that you can you enable yourself to shift from a reactive kind of brain to a thinking brain. And that's when you can also start empathizing with people and understanding where they're coming from. And look, there are certain people that I have absolutely no time to empathize with. But when we talk about those three categories of our audiences, the kind of early adopters, the strong detractors, and that middle ground, if we are going to make change, we have to be able to have constructive dialogue with each other. That is the only way that we're going to get forward. Now, there's lots that institutions have to do, there's lots that individuals have to do, but for us as women, I think we will be more impactful if we give ourselves the best chance at success to switch from that allergic reaction to a thoughtful, intentional, constructive reaction. I for me, I had to do a lot of personal work around that. And that really only came, I want to say last 10 years, possibly the last five years. I'm just able to navigate those situations a little bit more thoughtfully, really trying to understand where other people are coming from. Again, I think we haven't talked a lot other than kind of the pushback to the Me Too movement about what the political environment is that we're operating in. I keep coming back to this piece where we're so polarized, there has to be an antidote to that. And I think being compassionate with ourselves and within reason with others is part of that. Without compromising our ethics and our morals, but just not being too judgmental, I think, is is critical while also being judicious in how you spend your time and energy.

Sue Anstiss:

Also true. Will you run for a prime minister or something at some point, please, Kat? And you talk positively. I'm I'm a bit like you. I'd like to look on the the positive of, but but the last decade and that we've seen some positive shifts in different areas around sport and human rights. So where do you see things evolving in in the next decade? Are there areas that that specifically need more attention that we're not paying attention to right now?

Kat Craig:

Yeah, I think we're absolutely at an inflection point. The good news is I'm really, really confident that there is a movement of people, many of them women, that can influence that inflection point. It it feels like a moment in time for me. And the benefit of age means that I've seen these ups and downs at various stages. But I feel that there is this opportunity, there is a willingness among some leaders to be a little bit more courageous. I think that's a critical piece. There's lots of evidence now that shows that you can, again, look at it from the safeguarding perspective. You can have great policies, you can have education, you can put really great safeguarding officers in place. But unless there's buy-in from leadership, it's really difficult to change. So I think it's really important that leaders step up and are courageous and consciously depart from that short-termist view. I think we are holding the future of sport in our hands at the moment, and it can really go one of two ways. I'm really optimistic about the next generation, I have to say, it gives me such joy and hope, particularly working with young women, but there are some amazing young men out there as well, who have all of the passion and energy, and you and I have spoken about this in the past as well, kind of are better at putting boundaries in place and have higher expectations of everyone around them. And that's just so wonderful to see. And I think there's a lot to be hopeful about when you look at, as I said, younger consumers, younger fans. There's a direction we're going in. That inflection point I think is also commercially relevant. So we've seen changes, right? If you look at the Yorkshire cricket racism scandal, their major sponsor left because not just because it happened, but because they handled it so badly. There was such a lack of transparency and process, et cetera, in responding to that. And I think there was a study published just this week from Amnesty International and someone else, where they looked at 10,000 people in 10 European countries, 75% of whom said they wanted companies held to account for human rights violations, for environmental degradation. That may not feel like it to leaders in sport, but that is the direction of travel. And I'm really not convinced that that's going to go away, even though we're in turbulent political times. I think there is a next generation coming up and through that will make those demands. So we're at an inflection point. I'm not saying it's a dead cert that we're going in the right direction, because I don't think that's how progress works. I think that'd be very naive looking at some of the trends. But I absolutely think that there is an opportunity to seize on that for courageous leaders and that we as a movement of women in sport have a critical role to play together to change that. And one of my favorite studies from outside of sport that I always reflect back on, particularly on gender equity, there's a, I think it was a 2012 study around combating violence against women. And it was a 30-year study across 70 different countries around which factors would predict strong and effective policies on violence against women. And they looked at everything, all the things that I think would matter, right? What's the political leaning of your government, how many women there are in legislatures, what the GDP of the country is. And none of those things were as important as one single factor. And it was autonomous feminist movements. So when we as women, and I don't really mind if you call yourself a feminist or not, I think if we as women understand that women face particular risks and have a seat at the table, and that if we have that seat at the table and we support and uplift each other, positive change will happen. That is the key factor for social change and gender equity across countries and across time. So there's an inflection point, if we stick together, I am eternally optimistic that we can influence that tipping point and build a collective future of sport that is inclusive not just of women, but other groups that have been excluded and disenfranchised and harmed. I think that is absolutely possible. I don't think it's inevitable, but I think it's possible.

Sue Anstiss:

I'm really thinking I might have to do a part two episode with Kat Craig. What an extraordinary woman she is. If you'd like to hear from other trailblazers like Kat, there are over 200 episodes of the Game Changers that are free to listen to on all podcast platforms or from our website at fearlesswomen.co.uk. Guests include elite athletes, entrepreneurs, broadcasters, coaches, scientists, journalists and CEOs, all women who are changing the game in sport. As well as listening to all the podcasts on the website, you can also find out more about the Women's Sport Collective, a free, inclusive community for all women working in sport. We now have over 14,000 members across the world, so please do come and join us. The whole of my book, Game On, The Unstoppable Rise of Women's Sport, is also free to listen to on the podcast. Every episode of series 13 is me reading a chapter of the book. Huge thanks to Sport England, who support the Game Changers and the Women's Sport Collective with a National Lottery Award. Thank you also to Sam Walker at What Goes On Media, who does such an excellent job as our executive producer, and thank you to my brilliant colleague at Fearless Women, Kate Hannon. The Game Changers is available on all podcast platforms, so please do follow us now and you won't miss out on future episodes. Do come and say hello on social media, but you'll find me on LinkedIn and Instagram at Sue Anstis. The Game Changers. Fearless Women in Sport.

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Sue Anstiss

Host
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Sam Walker

Producer