Women and Equalities Committee
Oral evidence: Beyond participation: Routes into sport for girls and women, HC 176
Wednesday 17 June 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 17 June 2026.
Members present: Sarah Owen (Chair); Alex Brewer; Dame Nia Griffith; Christine Jardine; Kevin McKenna; Rebecca Paul; Rachel Taylor.
Questions 67 - 114
Witnesses
I: Alison Hughes MBE, International Tennis Federation/Grand Slam Official, International Tennis Federation; Sian Massey-Ellis MBE, Premier League Assistant Referee and FIFA Video Match Official; Lisa Rivers, World Tour Judo Referee, International Judo Federation.
Witnesses: Alison Hughes MBE, Sian Massey-Ellis MBE and Lisa Rivers.
Chair: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Women and Equalities Committee. Today, we are holding an oral evidence session on routes into non-playing roles in sports for girls and women. We will hear from Alison Hughes MBE, gold badge chair umpire at the International Tennis Federation and Grand Slam team; Sian Massey-Ellis MBE, Premier League assistant referee and FIFA video match official at the Professional Game Match Officials Ltd., and Lisa Rivers, judo World Tour referee. I am really excited to be able to hear what you have to share with us. We have had some really interesting inquiry sessions so far and I know that this will be equally as interesting. Thank you very much for coming. I am going to hand straight over to my colleague.
Q67 Kevin McKenna: Thank you all for coming. I am slightly intimidated by so many competent referees and umpires. I just want to understand from each of you how you got into officiating in the first place.
Sian Massey-Ellis: I was 14 when I started refereeing; I actually wanted a paper round because I wanted some money to go out with my friends. My dad was a football referee and he said, “Why don’t you become a football referee?” I said, “Can I?” and he said, “Well, why not? Let’s take you to”—back then what was—“10 weeks in a working men’s club to sit the laws of the game.” That is how I started. I was always quite sporty and to be honest, quite bossy, and he led me down that path.
Lisa Rivers: I was slightly younger actually; I was 10, and I pretty much started judo and refereeing at the same time. One of my coaches was also a referee, and she held a refereeing course at our judo club and just said, “Right, I think it’s a really good idea to come along and learn the rules,” and so on. Then I went on the mat and had a go and really enjoyed it, and I found that that was probably the route that I was always going to take from quite a young age, if I am honest. So I carried on through the sport and carried on competing. I never enjoyed competing that much. I competed up to a national level but refereeing was always something that I did, all the way through from 10 and continuing up to now. It was always the direction I was going to go in.
Alison Hughes: I started when I was at university. I played tennis, I used to coach tennis, and I worked in a tennis club, so tennis was basically my life. For me, it was another way of being involved in tennis. I started in 1992 and just worked my way through the system, and now it is my full-time job.
Q68 Kevin McKenna: What barriers did you hit along the way?
Alison Hughes: I can say that I definitely hit barriers, being slightly older than most officials when they first joined. I felt a bit more secure in myself as I was at university, but there definitely are barriers. But I have been involved in the tennis world throughout so I have grown up with it. I was lucky that I had the support of some very strong men and very strong women behind me to help me go through.
Q69 Kevin McKenna: Did any of the rest of you hit any barriers, particularly ones just related to you being a woman?
Lisa Rivers: Personally, no, I came in at quite a good time within world judo certainly, and within British judo. There were some fantastically strong women that had come before me: two or three of them had gone right the way through to international level. I had always seen that that was the direction that I could go in as a woman. I always took that characteristic strength to be something that I could aspire to.
I really just followed that pathway, with those in front of me leading the way, and I took a lot of guidance. Similarly, I had a strong coach. My husband is also an international referee, so I had the support of family and my parents all the way through as well. I did not really hit any barriers along the way, other than the same sort of barriers that everybody hits.
Sian Massey-Ellis: There are probably a few. First, the perception of women match officials is that they are not as good as men; they have to almost be better than everybody else to be recognised coming through the pipeline, so that probably is a barrier. Then there are probably some logistical barriers. When I would turn up at a pitch there were signs that said, “No women past this point,” so those were barriers that I had to overcome. And when I turned up to matches, we would sit as a team and I would always be the tea lady—“Oh, are you going to get the tea, love?” You kind of have to laugh off those barriers, I suppose, and just say, “No, I’m the referee for today. I am Sian Massey-Ellis, it is nice to meet you.” Again, trying to prove that you are good enough to be there is probably a barrier.
Abuse is openly one thing that all match officials face, particularly in the sport that I do. There are those challenges of trying to be strong and always having a come-back line. Those are the kinds of barriers to getting into football and staying in football, and they are things that you get a bit of a thick skin to.
Q70 Kevin McKenna: LGBT people have told us that they are always having to come out in new situations and, over time, they suddenly realise it is quite psychologically wearing. Do you have something like that where every time you are hitting that misogyny and sexism you think, “Why am I doing this again?” Does it have a burden?
Sian Massey-Ellis: Yes, there is that emotional resilience piece that you really must have as a match official. A lot of the points I have written down in preparation for this are about support networks that we can provide for match officials. We have a lot more psychological support than we ever used to have. There is also teamwork that comes with refereeing. I know that you look at referees and you think they are the one with the whistle in the middle of the pitch and you don’t think we work as a team, but actually, that team ethos can really support that mental resilience piece.
Q71 Kevin McKenna: You all talked about mentors, family support and things like that. It sounds like you are all lucky in different ways in having different people around you that were very supportive. Has that ever been formalised, particularly for people starting their careers in officiating? Are there formal programmes now, or should there be?
Alison Hughes: There are certain governing bodies within tennis. The ITF and the Grand Slams have a development group, as do the ATP and the WTA. There are mentoring programmes, especially internationally but also domestically. I am sure there is one throughout the whole of tennis. I came through it and we are still in the process of doing a mentoring programme throughout.
Lisa Rivers: The ethos is that judo is more than sport. Women are relatively under-represented within those types of fighting sports anyway. There really is a family feel to coming through, whether that is your club or how you are as an official. When we go abroad, the refereeing team will always support each other. It is very different depending on which country you come from. Certainly, if you come from Britain, the officials generally know each other. We work in the same group and the groups come through together, so we support each other. Within that, there are always going to be different factions and different little groups, but for the most part, officials will come together and support each other all the way through it.
Sian Massey-Ellis: When you first pass the course in refereeing, there are referee associations that you are linked up to in your local region, and they are the people you would go to as a first point of call. Further up you get the core programme, for example, which creates that inclusive environment where female match officials can join together. It used to be at the top of grassroots that you would get involved in those, but they have introduced that at a lower level, so you get that inclusive environment earlier.
It might be really beneficial for female match officials to have a one-to-one or a point of contact as soon as you start refereeing. Even if you have simple questions to ask, such as “What should I wear to this occasion? Should I turn up in my kit or go with a tracksuit? Are there changing rooms?” Sometimes you just need to ask those questions. It might be worth having a person who is a point of contact as soon as you pass the referees course, so that you have a point of contact to ask those questions to.
Q72 Kevin McKenna: Last thing from me: once you have gone through that and you are on your officiating career, what opportunities are now there for women? Can you get the gigs in officiating? Are they there, or is there an extra challenge and hurdle just to get those early positions?
Alison Hughes: Judging by the number of women we see at the top level in tennis nowadays, it has improved. There is still a way to go, but we are definitely seeing more and more officials at the top level. We have had six or seven of us umpire Grand Slam men’s finals, myself included, plus the gold medal match in Tokyo for the men. We are seeing more and more women doing men’s matches. It used to be that you saw women doing women’s matches and men doing men’s matches, but there is definitely much more of a crossover nowadays within tennis.
Lisa Rivers: Judo is an amateur game, really—this is not my full-time job. One of the barriers is whether you can commit that sort of time in the pursuit of something that you love, apart from anything else, and whether you are able to have either a career or a family that can support you to have the time and financial dedication to chase your dream.
Once you get to the international level, you have to be selected to get on to the World Tour. Only a certain number of referees across the world are selected for the World Tour, and generally you have to get to the top of your continental level and then you are recommended to go on to the World Tour. From there, you are selected for however many events. There is a ranking list as to which events you get to in order to get to the Olympic games, the World championships and the big senior tournaments. It is not always in your gift, to be honest. Whether you get to those top events is somewhere between performance and whether you have the ability to get there, are driven in that direction and have the technical expertise to be at the top.
We do not differentiate. You will do a men’s fight and a women’s fight and then you have to be selected to do the finals—it is done completely on your performance on the day, and whether you are male or female is completely irrelevant. Whether you do the men’s final is all down to your selection and your performance on the day. Once you get up to the international levels, it is completely black and white and completely fair, from that side of things.
Sian Massey-Ellis: There is a real commitment in refereeing to improve the numbers, especially in the women’s game. Further investment is needed to professionalise women referees within the women referee structure, especially with the development of the Super League. Within men’s refereeing, it is still a real challenge to have female representation. There are still a few barriers that we really struggle to get through. The funnel gets smaller as you go through the pyramid, does it not? The bigger pool of match officials at the bottom will allow that to funnel through. For me, it is about removing those barriers to that progression.
We have a lot of steps to make it through in English refereeing, from grassroots level right up to the Premier League and international level, and they are doing a lot to remove the necessity to go through every step. It used to be that you had to do a season on every league before you could get promoted. They are now working really hard to remove that for both males and females to allow the progression to go through faster.
The big barrier that we as females face in the men’s game is the fitness test. It is a really big one, and it is difficult because the players are getting fitter, so we need to get fitter. That comes with the emotional piece, too: the females really struggle to pass the men’s fitness test. We did a piece of work with the Elite Referee Development Plan, and the funding that came with that to allow female match officials to come through the structure, but then we lost a lot due to the fitness test. There should be a more holistic approach to the fitness test. We have gone that way with regards to the decision-making. It is not now all black and white on accuracy of decisions; it is more to do with communication, leadership and all the other attributes that require you to be a top-level referee. The fitness test is something that the girls really struggle with, and there should be a more holistic approach to it. You would then get a lot more females coming through.
Chair: Before I hand over to Rachel, who has a supplementary question, I have some questions for you, Lisa. I spent over a decade doing Kyokushinkai karate, so I know what you mean when you say about the fighting sports having a family-style element to them and that it is bigger than just sport; it is your lifestyle.
Lisa Rivers: It is.
Q73 Chair: When I was growing up and competing there were very few female officiators, if any—I cannot remember a single one. In judo, have you seen the numbers increase over the last few years? I know Kevin asked about interventions, but what do you think could bring more women into officiating fighting sports, such as martial arts or boxing?
Lisa Rivers: No, I have not really seen the numbers increase, if I’m honest. It is the same. The funnel gets smaller once you get up to the very top level. I had some information from British Judo before we came, and it is still really a quarter to three quarters women to men. That is fairly representative of how it was when I was younger; there was only a handful of female referees. Some are still around now and we are not really replacing some of those referees at the rate we probably should be. Saying that, if you look at the percentage of men to women in the sport, is it relatively represented? Probably—so that may be more about how we increase female numbers into our type of full-contact sport, and it carries on all the way through.
Internationally, the feeling has definitely changed. Going back a few Olympic games, there were only one or two women; this time, there were five or six. You can definitely see now that if we are getting five or six women out of 16 referees at the Olympic games, that is a much greater percentage. If you are being seen at the very top, that will naturally encourage women to come through, and that is from every continent. As for how we carry on increasing those numbers, seeing women out there refereeing will always start to bring others through. I watched the coaching meeting last time, and it really is true that if you can see it, you can be it, which is a really good phrase to have in mind.
There are some cultures that need to change. There are certainly cultures in the fighting sports that are changing and being addressed. The opportunity now is that everybody can get to the top, whereas before it felt like quite a closed shop and no one would ever get through. It does not feel like that now; it feels attainable. Trying to pull people through the game is going to be a big thing. It is a really positive thing to show young girls coming through that it is not just competing or coaching but that there is something to be achieved through refereeing, officiating and being able to stand there and show another element of the sport off. There is something quite honourable in that as well. A lot of them think, “I need to be an international athlete,” and then, “If I do not have that, then I need to be a coach,” but it is about showing that you can become a high-level official and that that is a really good route to the top as well. That is really the only way that I can see us carrying on through.
Chair: We need to get more young girls into it, keep them, and show them that they have options. To anybody watching: if you are thinking about a full-contact sport, it is the best fun you are ever going to have.
Lisa Rivers: It really is, yes.
Rachel Taylor: I will disagree with you on that, Chair. I will stick to my non-contact sport. I was very pleased to be able to play tennis this morning for the parliamentary tennis team at the Cumberland club, which was an absolutely fantastic opportunity.
Chair: Did you win?
Rachel Taylor: We did.
Chair: Good.
Rachel Taylor: Welcome to all you, and particularly Alison; we worked together as umpires and line judges, probably from when I joined in 1996 to when I stopped officiating in 2005, which was when your career really took off.
Alison Hughes: Yes, it definitely was. When I first started—I think 1993 was my first Wimbledon as a line umpire—I never thought in 1993 up until probably early 2000s, that it would become my full-time job. I started travelling internationally in 1997, but it was definitely that period that you were talking about, Rachel, that my career started to take off.
Rachel Taylor: At that time, we may have been umpiring some of the same matches.
Alison Hughes: Yes.
Q74 Rachel Taylor: I am sure you would probably agree that back then it was difficult to break through as a female umpire. You would go to a men’s tournament and never be given the same number of matches as the male umpires would.
Alison Hughes: Yes, there were a lot fewer of us as well, but you are right that there were barriers that you had to break through, and you had to prove that you could do the job. Both you and I had the same character. We are very strong women and we managed to show that on court and off.
Q75 Rachel Taylor: Do you think that was different on the international scene? Was the first Grand Slam men’s final that you umpired in the UK?
Alison Hughes: No, it was in the US.
Q76 Rachel Taylor: Do you think they are better at treating female umpires more fairly in, say, France, the US or Australia than they are in the UK?
Alison Hughes: I wouldn’t go that far. There were a few British female officials at the top level at the time. There were not that many of us travelling full-time but we were still heavily involved. I remember doing a men’s quarter-final in the years previous to that—I cannot remember when, off the top of my head—and coming off court and being really proud as a female to have been able to do that. I was also lucky to be selected for the US Open final but it never went through my head that being a woman was the reason why I had never have done one in this country compared with being abroad.
Q77 Rachel Taylor: Something that has concerned me is the pipeline of officials coming through. Is that going to be more challenging now we do not have line umpires at the major events?
Alison Hughes: Yes, it will be more challenging. Internationally speaking, we have what we call the Advantage All programme, which is run by the ITF and it is heavily involved in, throughout the national associations. I think it has 74 female ambassadors throughout the world who are trying to bring young females through. We are trying to build the ITF. I am pretty sure—not 100%; I can follow up on it—that the LTA, the UK, are involved in that programme. As I said, I will confirm that. It is starting and has been in process since 2019. It is an initiative that is taking off. We have put more females through it and we are there to support, help, mentor and build them up. We also have advantage or travel grants nowadays so that hopefully they can become more and more involved.
Q78 Alex Brewer: Thank you all so much for coming in. I would like to ask you, Lisa, about the coaching that we know you do alongside your refereeing. Sport England data shows that while many women volunteer as coaches in sports clubs, they are under-represented in roles that lead progression, such as coaching. Why do you think this might be?
Lisa Rivers: I don’t really know to be honest. I am from a club that certainly has quite a lot of female coaches. It is something that it has promoted, not particularly over the male coaches, but again the more girls that see women coaches, the more likely they are to come into clubs. We need to try to get more female coaches leading clubs and leading the way. British Judo is pretty good at that; certainly when I look around at the big clubs, they nearly all have either a female lead or female coaches. We have female coaches within the national set-up and right the way up to the top of British Judo, so women are relatively well represented at all levels within British Judo. As always, there can be more. For others to see women leading the way is the only way through.
I volunteer as a referee and as a coach. Alongside my job, judo occupies my everything: if I am not at my job, I am at judo. I might pop in home every now and again but that is just to change the suitcase over. That is the way I have chosen to do things. I am hoping that girls seeing that there are opportunities to do what you love and to do it at a high level will promote others and lead the way.
Q79 Alex Brewer: Within judo, how close do you think we are to gender parity on coaching? When you say there are women at all levels, is that anywhere near 50%?
Lisa Rivers: I genuinely don’t know. It depends on what level we are talking about. Competitive judo really only represents 10% of the membership, or something along those lines, so it is quite a small amount. When I go to competitions, it is not 50/50 among competitors because there are still more boys than girls, but there are female coaches leading the way in British Judo. Some clubs will have male coaches and some will have female coaches; I am not sure that it matters.
When I talk to the membership of my club, they don’t mind whether they are coached by a male or a female coach. Good is good, and at the end of the day, they want to be taught by the best coach. Ultimately, it shouldn’t matter whether you are taught by a male or a female coach, and having both is better in some ways. We have a sport that is weight and size dominated, so there are some techniques that I cannot demonstrate and I ask my young, fit athletes to do it. There are other things that I can show better than them. It is about promoting the best people for the job, not and necessarily about whether a male or female is better.
Alex Brewer: I would love to be in a world where that was the case in all areas.
Lisa Rivers: We all would.
Chair: It will happen.
Q80 Alex Brewer: Do you have a view, professionally or personally, on how judo compares with other sports in the area of women’s coaching?
Lisa Rivers: I don’t, I am afraid. I will be honest: if it is not judo, I am not watching it.
Q81 Alex Brewer: Understood. What is your view on the impact of female coaches in the participation of women in the sport? Do you think it makes a difference for girls and young women coming into judo to have female coaches?
Lisa Rivers: Yes, I absolutely do. I very much believe that if you have female coaches, it will promote girls to come into the sport. We have gone to the lengths of having the ability to set up girls-only, which has allowed us to access a different section of the community from what we were seeing two or three years ago, especially near to Gatwick where I live. It has allowed others to participate in the sport who maybe would not have done otherwise. Because it is a contact sport, it would not have brought some athletes into our game. It has opened that up for them.
Having female coaches and the opportunity for girls to be able to see women performing at a good level opens the horizon for them coming into the sport, maybe more so than for boys seeing men in that role. In fighting sports, there is still, at some level, an attitude about where you should send your boys: head into boxing or wrestling. We certainly have people who bring boys and then their daughters will come and join, and inevitably they are sometimes better than the boys, or at least will definitely take on the boys. For some of them, learning to be able to work with girls and women and to work underneath a female coach is not a bad thing. Again, that just helps with respect across the board and allows people to come through sport seeing the way things should be and demonstrating the way things should be within society.
Q82 Alex Brewer: Having female coaches leading to more participation of girls would, one hopes, lead in turn to more female coaches, as those girls and young women progress through the sport. Are there interventions that are more effective than others in increasing women’s access to coaching opportunities and progression?
Lisa Rivers: Yes. Advertising, using social media, and being able to really promote what we do and how we do it is the best way to open up everybody’s eyes to the fact that women can participate and progress all the way through. Being able to show off and celebrate some of the excellent things that we do in our sports is the best way to show others what we can do. I did some research, as I said, and pretty much everybody came back and said, “Why do we not show off what our girls do and what our girls achieve?” That is the only way to open everyone’s eyes to how far athletes can go. We tend to still celebrate men’s achievements over women’s. I don’t know why that is, but it still seems to be the case in sport across the world.
Alex Brewer: Not just in sport, by the way.
Lisa Rivers: Okay, fair enough. It should be that good is good and, at the end of the day, achieving something is a major milestone, no matter who is achieving it. We should be celebrating that as much with our girls as with our boys.
Q83 Chair: Sian, I am going to talk about representation in officiating. What are the most significant barriers preventing women from progressing into senior roles at the elite sport level?
Sian Massey-Ellis: The main barrier is fitness and the support that we get with that. We are very much treated like small men and our GPS data and so on are set to men’s limits. There is a need for change within fitness situations. I always say that women are just different types of flowers. They need support in a slightly different way, with different needs for watering and sun. Sometimes, particularly in that area we need a little extra support in, we do not have females with lived experience making the decisions. If we have more females in decision-making positions, when they make those decisions they think, “How will this affect our females?” The management of those structures in the women’s game is definitely changing since we have gone slightly more professional in the women referees department.
The environment and support that we get at grassroots football helps to keep those match officials retained at the elite level. It is about “see it, be it” as well—the more we have, the more people think that they can do it. The progression structure is getting better. The ability to trial match officials gives the decision makers a little more confidence to say, “We are going to give this girl a go,” rather than it being a yearly pathway. That has been a really good, significant change.
We need to create an environment where females feel they have a voice in the room at training camps. Times have changed in the last 10 years that I have been part of the professional game—I have been around a long time. When I first started, I did not really feel I had a voice in the room and now I feel I do. We have created an environment where match officials feel they can challenge and fight for those opportunities and really prove themselves.
Q84 Chair: Sian, when representations have been made to organisations such as the FA, what is its reaction? Is it receptive? Does it understand that there is a problem that needs to be solved or is it very much kicking this down the road?
Sian Massey-Ellis: It is kicking it down the road. I genuinely think it wants to change in order to allow females to progress, but this can wait for another day rather than it being top of the table. There is a passion to want to do it, but there is not enough listening going on. When we raise things, we raise them for the good of female match officials, not because we are being a pain.
Q85 Chair: We have seen a wider audience get behind women’s football, which is fantastic to see. I have seen that my six-year-old does not bat an eyelid that women are playing football on the television, whereas I still get really excited. What do you think needs to be done to see this as a priority?
Sian Massey-Ellis: The girls who are there need to keep banging on the door, keep fighting the fight and find their inner voice. Now we have come through the ranks, there are a few more of us who have a say, but we need representation on leadership boards to be the next generation. The lived experience really needs to be in decision-making situations.
Q86 Chair: Does there need to be an expectation that women should be on the boards?
Sian Massey-Ellis: Yes.
Q87 Chair: Alison, how accessible are officiating careers in elite sport for people from diverse backgrounds?
Alison Hughes: In this day and age, anybody can become an official by following the pathway that we have. Obviously, we have fewer females at the lower entry level. I am not sure about the diversity numbers. I can find out some information and get back to you—I am not 100% sure, especially not in the UK, I have to admit.
Q88 Chair: What about women from diverse backgrounds getting involved in football and judo?
Sian Massey-Ellis: We still have relatively low numbers but we have an excellent programme now called BAMREF, which has created an inclusive environment. I believe some targets have been set with regard to diversity on the lists, which is a good starting place, but it has to come with a support package. The BAMREF and CORE X programmes that the FA and the PGMOL run are creating those supportive environments. I mentioned earlier that you need to feel included in those rooms, and those particular programmes give people from diverse backgrounds the ability to have people around them. We have also nominated people from diverse cultures to sit on an inclusion sub-committee so that they can link into the board that way.
We can also be inclusive in the little things. It was pointed out that we have a training camp but we are not providing halal food, which is a really simple thing that we can change. It is about making sure we have a prayer room. When we have a training camp, especially with females, is there an accessible toilet and are there supplies in there? We can make changes with little things, and working together and communicating effectively is how we can make sure that changes ensue.
Alison Hughes: The LTA has instigated a female and ethnically diverse group this year to try to get some more information, and for disabled individuals to be able to access grant funding. I know that that has been put into place this year, but I will try to get some more information for you.
Chair: Thank you.
Lisa Rivers: In judo, the numbers are relatively low. When you go down to female ethnic minority officials, the numbers certainly become very small, if any. I would say that people are not excluded in any way, but ultimately, it is about who chooses to come through: the route into judo officiating is completely open for everybody. People can elect to go on courses and that is encouraged all the time. I am not sure that we particularly go out and actively recruit from any different kinds of backgrounds. We are looking for anybody who wants to come through. We will then push anybody who wants to come all the way through, no matter what. When you look at the top group of referees across the world, it is probably an issue that still needs to be worked on.
Q89 Chair: Sian and Alison, how effective do you think those initiatives that you mentioned are, or is it too soon to tell?
Alison Hughes: Looking at the number of females that are coming through from the Advantage All programme, there is a way to go but they are on the right track. They are trying to increase the numbers. It has been in place for three years and we have seen an influx of females. It is great that we are able to bring the awareness, empower them and mentor them.
Sian Massey-Ellis: It is probably a little too soon but over the last few years we have definitely already seen an increase in both females and in our BAME culture. To increase the talent pool, we probably need to make children aware that there is a path to officiating. I was a schoolteacher in my previous life, and even when I started refereeing, I would not naturally signpost people into officiating. You automatically signpost them to playing. When children ask, “Is there a local club I can play for?”, I know straight away where the local clubs are. But why are we not signposting in school and maybe making it part of the curriculum that children learn how to be referees or umpires early on? Giving every child the opportunity to be a match official at a game, even in a miniature way, is a good idea because the skills are so transferable. Match officials are leaders, good communicators and really good decision makers. All those skills can help in every walk of life. Integrating it into the school curriculum and signposting can really help us increase our talent pool and allow it to go through the pyramid.
Q90 Chair: That is a really interesting point. It is not just about playing sport but about all the other roles that go on around it. I don’t think children are aware of it, and importantly, I don’t think parents are either. Is there any work going on to educate parents in this and to support their children through it?
Sian Massey-Ellis: No, not that I am aware of. It is on the FA website and so on. I was delivering a Youth Sports Trust event on Monday and I was talking about refereeing. Someone asked, “Well, how do I get involved in refereeing then?” That should not have to be a question. How you start playing football is clearly signposted—to the local football club—but the signposting for how to get involved in refereeing is not there. Maybe we can do some more work around media and getting out there to show what we do to enable people to get into it.
Q91 Christine Jardine: Apologies for having to be elsewhere at the start of the meeting but thank you all for being here. I want to talk a wee bit about access to high-profile work. There has not been a lot of research, but it seems to indicate that there is not much career progression for women referees and officials. Do you think that female officials currently have equal access to high-profile matches and progression opportunities within each of your sports?
Alison Hughes: Going back to when I first started tennis to nowadays, we have progressed. We now see women umpiring the final rounds of both women’s and men’s events, the quarter-finals and semi-finals, leading up to the finals. As I said, that could always increase, but there are definitely more women doing the high-profile men’s matches now than 15 or 20 years ago. There is still a pathway and it is about getting the younger ranks to come in and build that pathway up.
Lisa Rivers: As I said, judo is an amateur sport so it is quite open—good is good whether you are male or female. There is a ranking system and it is about getting through that to the international level. Once you are at that international level, it is on you.
There are really good opportunities for men and women—certainly within Europe—to climb the ranking list. If you are a good referee, whether you are male or female, that will be recognised. If you are lucky enough to get on to the World Tour and into the top group of 50 referees from across the world, again, whether you are male or female, good is good. Women are represented more in Europe than they are on other continents, where they still need to keep coming through. Because of the way that judo is, once you are on to that top level or on to the World Tour, there will be men and women competing on the same day and in the same competition. There is no difference whether you have a male or female referee; at the end of the day, a referee is a referee. A man would not be automatically selected for X event; it would be the best referee on the day. We are assessed through the tournament and have to qualify to get to the finals; the best officials on the day will get to the finals. As for which final they get, that is up to the selectors. We have both men and women as our supervisors and as our refereeing directors, and females are well looked after once they are into the top level.
Of course, the route to get there is challenging, just as it is for athletes and coaches. It is competitive. As I said, there are always going to be more men than women in fighting sports. To a degree, you have to be an athlete—not at a high level, but to compete for certain grades—and you have to be at a certain level to qualify for the international stuff. You have to follow your sport all the way through; you cannot just start as a referee. You have to get up to high dan grades to referee at the top level and you have to be able to get on the mat and demonstrate things at every event. You have to be able to do judo to be able to referee judo. That is a good thing because no one can say, “Well, you haven’t done judo before.” Some of our high-level referees are former Olympians. There is no demarcation between men and women once you get to the top level.
Sian Massey-Ellis: It is changing. If you had asked me nine or 10 years ago, I would probably have said, “No, women are not being given the same opportunity to do games as men,” but it is changing now. For example, I was on the Premier League for a number of years but I was not given the opportunity to do a men’s international match for quite a few years. We talk about male allies all the time. The referee I was working with week in, week out was going on international fixtures and not taking me. We work in teams: there is a referee and his two assistants who he works with regularly. He was going away and doing international games, and I was not being appointed to those fixtures. It took him to say, “Hang on, she worked with me on Man U and Liverpool last weekend, yet she can’t come with me on an international stage?” The FA then had to go and ask permission from UEFA and FIFA to say, “Can we appoint this girl?”
That was a long time ago and it has changed now. I went away on many men’s international games, and I suppose it took that breakthrough to see that it was allowed. Again, I echo what Lisa said; it is a performance environment, so the top games still go to the best referees. Because there are fewer females operating in the men’s elite game, it is difficult to get those appointments, but I don’t feel that there is a barrier any more in terms of, “You’re a female so you can’t do it.”
Q92 Christine Jardine: Leeds Beckett University highlighted that unless it is done carefully, you get perceptions of tokenism. Have you experienced that, or do you think sport is getting over it? We have now seen women refereeing international rugby matches. Are sports getting away from the perception of tokenism?
Alison Hughes: Yes, tennis is. I agree with both Lisa and Sian; we are evaluated throughout the tournament and it does not matter whether you are male or female; the best person for that event will do the higher-profile finals and semis. I personally have not experienced any tokenism, and I don’t think it is seen as a problem in tennis.
Lisa Rivers: It is the same for judo.
Sian Massey-Ellis: It is partly about the culture of the organisation. We have a group called the ERDP—the Elite Referee Development Plan—and there is a substantial pressure to put female match officials through that. The difficulty is that some people say, “They’re only here because they’re on the ERDP. They’re only here because they’re part of that funding pathway.” We have to be very careful to make sure that we are good enough to be there and it is not just about numbers and ticking a box, but that comes with creating a positive environment. Once the performance metrics are shared and clearly outlined, that stereotype or myth can be removed.
Q93 Christine Jardine: Are there organisational changes that you think would help in outlining the judgment of how people progress? It sounds as if judo has a well-established organisational progression. Do you think other sports could learn from that?
Lisa Rivers: Yes, always. The IJF and EJU have well and truly set out a pathway for women coming through. In a sport that is predominantly seen as a fighting sport and therefore probably aimed more towards men than women, that has been a really important shift in mindset during my career and over the last 10 to 15 years. When I look back at the beginning, women were fighting for their place. There was a feeling that women had to be better than men. I am not saying that feeling is not out there still; it definitely is. When I was young and coming through the ranks, the message I was always being given—even from colleagues who were ahead of me—was that if you wanted to be the best, you had to be seen to be better than the men. But when I reached that level, that was not the feeling I had; ultimately it is about your own feeling and your own perception.
Once I came out and went into refereeing in Europe a lot more, I felt that it was a much more inclusive environment, and that good was good. That is what you want to see, certainly once you come up to world level. I look at the other women from across Europe and the world and they are the best in the world. I would say that, at the moment, women referees are better than some male referees from across the world. There is no demarcation; they have not been offered a place on the World Tour because they are a woman but because they are the best and they genuinely deserve to be there. That is a really positive thing that judo has worked hard to get through, and it will filter down, but obviously the next thing is to promote participation to girls.
Q94 Christine Jardine: Alison and Sian, is there anything either of you would like to add?
Alison Hughes: In tennis, we have a system of going up the ranks, and it doesn’t matter whether you are male or female. We definitely need to get more at the lower levels to be able to move them up through the ranks, but the progression is there for females. I recently had a conversation with a tennis player who lives close to me; she did not know what she wanted to do and had never heard about going into refereeing, chair umpiring, or officiating in general, so I pointed her in the right direction. I said, “Have you thought about this, this and this?” and she said, “No, I’ve never done that.” She has gone away and thought about it and now she wants to become involved. It is about getting the word out there that women can do it. We have a lot more mothers nowadays and some are travelling with their young children at a tournament; I did not see that when I first started. I saw mothers who had children but the children were at home and the mother was working. Nowadays we see young mothers who are travelling and have a family; they are able to do both. To see that progression over the years is good but we have to have things in place to do it.
Sian Massey-Ellis: Our progression pathway has positively changed. There is not a specific year at every level now so you can go through quickly and you can go up and down. That is good because sometimes you get to a level and you think, “Oh, this is really tough; I need to come back down and learn my trade before I’m ready to go up again.” That moving up and down, that fluidity really helps, alongside now having a separate women’s pathway, which is a real positive. Many female officials do not want to operate in the men’s pyramid, which is absolutely fine. Having separate pathways creates an environment where they can just do women’s football where they feel they belong or are more comfortable. Don’t get me wrong— there are people who want to do both and people who just want to do men’s, and it is calculated so that they can do whichever pathway they want. That is a real positive.
Q95 Chair: On the pathway between officiating men’s games and women’s games, would it be helpful to get away from the idea that the men’s game is seen as career progression so that the women’s game is where progression can happen as well?
Sian Massey-Ellis: The pathway has only changed in the last five to seven years. Now that people can just do women’s football only, it is coming to fruition. It has taken that long to get from grassroots at the bottom of that pathway right up to the top. You are now seeing girls going through the women’s pathway and straight on to the international list; that is the next step up. We are coming to the point where we will see our first female who has not done any men’s football going on to the women’s international list.
Q96 Rachel Taylor: My first question is for you, Alison. I am not asking you to talk about any specific players or specific colleagues but we were all shocked recently by an incident at the French Open: after a match, a player made sexist comments about the female chair umpire not being up to the job and said that the match should have been umpired by a man. Without referring to that player, the umpire or the fantastic way that the tournament director dealt with it, in your experience, how common is that behaviour? Is it on a big scale? Is it growing?
Alison Hughes: Luckily, it is uncommon. With regard to that particular situation—I will not go into details of it—in my 30 years of experience, I have never personally seen or heard of anything similar. Nowadays more females are involved, so the younger generation of players are used to having female officials more than they would have been 30 or 40 years ago. The expectation of having a female or a male is gone; it is about whether you are capable of doing your job.
Q97 Rachel Taylor: Do you feel that the tennis authorities deal with those situations effectively?
Alison Hughes: Yes, I do. We are very well protected.
Q98 Rachel Taylor: Do you think that sort of thing would deter women and girls from umpiring?
Alison Hughes: I would hope not; it was a one-off and not the usual thing that happens. We have a very strict code of conduct on court as to what players can and cannot do. We do not have the same discussions as Sian will have as a football referee because the players know what they can and cannot do on court. Chair umpires handle that as officials and handle it on court. Obviously, we have to step in and do things on court but we have a strong code.
Q99 Rachel Taylor: Do you think that it would deter tournament directors or referees from giving women more men’s matches?
Alison Hughes: I would very much hope not. As all three of us have said, if you are good enough to do the job, it should not matter if you are male or female. I would very much hope that it is not a deterrent to see a woman doing a men’s match.
Q100 Rachel Taylor: Sian and Lisa, in your respective sports, is a female referee’s authority more likely to be challenged than a man’s? If so, how frequently does that happen?
Sian Massey-Ellis: I believe so, yes. In men’s football, there is still a prevalent view that we are not as good as male referees, but that has changed significantly in the 15 to 20 years that I have been involved, especially at the elite level. We get less challenge from players than from spectators. There is a lot of work to do on the culture. I know that our organisation is working on making sure that we go more towards rugby and tennis where the participants are less abusive. We are working hard to try to stamp out that behaviour. We are publicised all around the world, and it is important that we show that it is not okay to speak to people in the way we are sometimes spoken to—that goes for both male and female referees.
When I started, in every game I officiated I was told that I was not good enough to be there because I was a woman, not a man. I think it has changed for the better now. Again, we go back to “see it, be it”. I have been around so long now and I have had to prove myself. I have watched so many situations; now the commentators are fantastic, they will say things like, “Oh, she rarely gets it wrong.” The more we hear of those stories, the more our culture and society believe that females belong and the more females we have making great decisions—as I know they do—the more people will accept it.
Q101 Rachel Taylor: What about you, Lisa?
Lisa Rivers: I agree with what Sian said. It is not something we see a lot of at the top international level. Generally, it is managed incredibly well, and it does not matter whether the referee is male or female; decisions will be challenged purely and simply on the basis that the coach feels they should be challenged. It does not matter who the referee is, but once the decision is made, that is it.
However, once we come down to the national level, it is a real problem. Culture is the biggest part of it. The issue that is prevalent in judo at the moment is around respect from coaches to referees. Respect from athletes, spectators and parents within the game is not too bad, most of the time. Obviously, our matches are quite short; we have lots of fights through the day, so it is not about one match and one incident because it can go on for hours and hours. I went out to the membership to ask how people felt and the theme that came back was that girls and women feel they are challenged, not necessarily by coaches—although that can be the case—but by their colleagues. Where there is a high percentage of male to female colleagues, they feel that they are always being second-guessed. Whether that is because they are younger or because they are female, if that is how they feel, it needs to be looked at and addressed.
I am in a fortunate position: at the beginning, I was fairly well protected. I have now come all the way through and my decisions do not get challenged, but that is because if you make enough good decisions, people will give you the benefit of the doubt. If you make a mistake, you make a mistake. That is the way it is and more often than not your decisions will not be challenged. But for young referees coming through, it is about the way things are challenged as opposed to the fact that they are challenged. We need to make sure that there is a culture of respect that comes all the way through the sport, whichever sport it is. People should not feel put off because they are going to be challenged for hours and hours. That feeling that they are going to be jumped on all the time is what puts people off officiating.
Q102 Rachel Taylor: This might be on or off the pitch, the mat or the court, but in your view, how effective are current safeguarding and reporting mechanisms for officials who face abuse or inappropriate behaviour?
Alison Hughes: The ITF has a hotline and an email address and the LTA has safeguarding measures. We also have a company called Threat Matrix that tracks our social media accounts; it tracks the players as well. So if anything happens, it is not that complicated to report it, as it never should be. You can phone the hotline, send an email and speak to legal people.
Lisa Rivers: It is the same in British Judo. We generally have a senior referee on the day, and everybody is encouraged to think that if there is something they need to report, that person would be their first port of call and things should be dealt with there and then. We also have MyVoice where people can make an anonymous report. We have different bodies within British Judo where people can go if there is something they need to report, and things will be dealt with at that level. There are good options all the way through. You would hope, though, that people would not need to go in that direction because they should not be facing a level of abuse that needs to be reported. It is about addressing that side of things to make sure that, as I said, we can have a culture of respecting decisions and respecting each other on the day. We should not need to report anything but there are mechanisms for when the system fails.
Sian Massey-Ellis: That culture is definitely there at the elite level now; maybe it was not in the past. I can think of one colleague who told me that she tried to report something and was told to have a thicker skin. That was a long time ago and things are different now: any reports are 100% dealt with.
The situation at grassroots level still needs to be better. Clubs already have safeguarding officers or a designated safeguarding leader; maybe there needs to be someone like that for referees, especially when you have multiple pitches, so that the referee always knows they have a friendly face to go straight to on that particular game. If you are a 16-year-old girl or a lad who has been dropped off by their parents to referee an under-12s game, there should always be a point of contact. I was doing some Breaking Barriers work recently, and the coaches and managers were asking, “What can we do to support referees when we hear of abuse from parents?” I said, “It’s up to you to challenge it because a 16-year-old might not have the confidence. As an adult in that environment, you can challenge that behaviour.” Having a designated referee officer at every game would be a good idea. Being a referee can sometimes be very lonely. You are there on your own so if the designated person is providing you with a drink at half-time, it makes you feel included in that environment. But policies and procedures are definitely in place now, which is great.
Rachel Taylor: As you have pointed out, it is much more important when you have younger people coming.
Alison Hughes: In tennis, we have to do a safeguarding course every year, and we also have to do one for any international tournaments that we are working, so we are always up to date with our safeguarding.
Lisa Rivers: We have youngsters coming through with senior referees so the culture is very much about making sure that those youngsters are protected no matter what. I have to say that in the main, coaches are really good when they have youngsters refereeing; anything that gets started gets stopped very quickly in order to safeguard them.
Q103 Rachel Taylor: The Government recently launched a women’s sport online abuse forum to share best practice on tackling the online abuse of athletes and sportswomen. To what extent are there issues of online abuse towards officials?
Alison Hughes: I personally have not been attacked—I am very pleased about that—but I know officials who have received abusive social media posts.
Lisa Rivers: I am the same; I have not been affected personally but I know of colleagues who have. It can be incredibly detrimental to see these comments over and over again. Even though it has not affected me particularly, I look at the comments, and these things—especially the reels and vines and so on—go on forever. I had one where an Olympic champion had been thrown in a very early fight and there were an awful lot of comments. Although they did not bother me, there were young athletes in my club—including my nephew—who had also seen the comments and I could see their responses. I was watching as they were defending me and I was saying to them, “You don’t need to do that; it’s absolutely fine.” But I could see that it bothered them more than it bothered me.
Sian Massey-Ellis: I do not have any social media in my name, purely for the reason that we are very easy targets. We have a more supportive network in terms of that now, but it is quite common to have that level of abuse, especially with our Premier League referees. People sit behind a keyboard and think they can say anything. I believe that we now have some tracking software—I am not sure of the name—that monitors us and makes sure that abuse is picked up and fed to the police. We had a substantial threat last year with one of our referees; the police supported him and monitored his house and family. They work with the local authority to help with that.
Q104 Rachel Taylor: It sounds as if there is already quite a lot in place, but do you think sports organisations could do any more to protect officials and promote a culture of respect?
Lisa Rivers: Ultimately, once it is out there, it is out there. I am not sure that sport or governing bodies could realistically hold on to what the general population decide they want to write. A clip can say anything; a photograph can say 1,000 words in any direction, so I do not think there is a huge amount they would be able to do to stop anything.
Sian Massey-Ellis: I agree.
Alison Hughes: I agree.
Q105 Dame Nia Griffith: I apologise for having been on another Committee at the beginning. I would like to turn to employment conditions. Obviously, you work in a range of different circumstances. Perhaps you could give us a general idea of employment conditions for women working or volunteering in officiating, such as job security, pay and parental leave provisions. These are all things that you would find in other jobs.
Alison Hughes: We are all self-employed contractors in tennis so there is not much more I can add. We do not have maternity benefits or anything.
Q106 Dame Nia Griffith: You are all effectively bidding for the work that you get and acting as contractors.
Alison Hughes: I am contracted for a certain number of weeks a year, but outside of that contract I am freelance, so I am not employed by anyone.
Lisa Rivers: I have a full-time job as well. Judo is a voluntary role, and that is the case right up to the top. I am lucky: I have an incredibly understanding boss who I spoke to when I was invited to go on to the World Judo Tour. I might get two competitions or I might get eight—I don’t know from one year to the next. It is not in my gift; it is up to them to invite me. When I get an invite, I go to my boss and say, “This is what I’ve been invited to and this is how many days I am going to need,” and I take it out of my annual leave. I have a very understanding husband who allows me to go off and pretty much do what I want around the world. But if there are days that I need to take, at the moment I am allowed to take them, and I just go back to my boss every single time.
Sian Massey-Ellis: Up until 10 years ago, we were contracted game by game; all the female match officials in the female game are still contractors. I am very lucky: I am now employed full-time as a match official and have been for the past 10 years. It is an amazing place to be. I have all the support with regard to maternity leave, sick leave and holiday pay as a normal employee would. The difficulty is when you are released from those contracts. We have a notice period at the moment, so it is not too bad. But if you are removed from those jobs, effectively, there is no other employer, unlike if you are sacked as the manager of a football team. You cannot go and play for a different football team—that is it, you lose your job. There are pros and cons but if you asked me whether I would still take the last 10 years, I would snap your hand off. I have loved having this as a full-time job, and being able to really dedicate myself to those commitments has been fantastic.
I was a teacher before and trying to say three days into term, “Can I go to Costa Rica for seven weeks, please?” was hard. People would say, “How am I going to cover you?” There was payback in those situations; a lot of the girls still have to do that. Many of the girls I talk to now are either holding off having children and putting it off to the end of their career, or thinking, “I’m probably going to lose my place on that list by having a child, but I’m willing to take that risk.” For female match officials, it is probably more important that—even if it is not a full-time contract—there is a package of support, especially because it is such an active job that if you get injured, that is it; you will lose your income. There are also so many demands in terms of travel. It is like if you play for a team, but every game is an away game. We travel around the world and up and down the country, sometimes doing double games, and the time commitments really make it a full-time job. I hope that the female match officials will go down the employment pathway soon but it all has to do with investment.
Q107 Chair: Before we move on to the next question, I want to follow up on the post-pregnancy side of things. Sian, you said earlier that you have to reach a high standard of fitness; is that standard expected to be maintained immediately after you come back from maternity leave?
Sian Massey-Ellis: That would be down to how quickly you want to come back. My boss at the time was fantastic. I was one of the first females on the Premier League—in fact, the only female—to have a baby. I was not employed when I had my child but I soon became employed. They were very supportive in allowing me the time I needed, particularly as I had post-pregnancy complications. They got doctors who could support me back into refereeing. I did not feel that I lost my place in my team either, but I know that is a worry for our current match officials.
Q108 Chair: Do you think it would alleviate that worry if this was not done on good will but that it was a standardised requirement for clubs to say, “Here is a progressive path back following maternity?”
Sian Massey-Ellis: There is a written policy now; I was probably part of developing it. When I first came back from maternity, there was only a standard contract like a normal job, with standard leave. I went to them and said, “This doesn’t work for me. I can’t be on the pitch in six weeks’ time. I need a longer period to be able to do that.” I will have to come back to you on the details, but we now have a maternity policy that tells us the number of weeks leave and so on. I think you now get a year before you have to be back on the pitch, so they do give us more time than they used to; I am sure it is written down somewhere.
Dame Nia Griffith: We asked you what improvements you would like to see, but clearly they are already on track in making some improvements. You have described how difficult it was to come back initially but you have now seen structures put into place that are similar to other workplaces.
Sian Massey-Ellis: Yes, that is definitely the case on the employed match officials’ front. There is still work to do with the non-employed match officials, in particular our females: only three females are employed in the men’s game. The females in the women’s game who are not employed—that is all of them—do not have protected status, so they lose those matches and fees. I think there definitely needs to be some work done there.
Dame Nia Griffith: They need a better structure, a better pathway.
Sian Massey-Ellis: Maybe there should be a retainer for the year that you are off so that you have financial stability, or something like that, but more needs to be done for those who are not employed.
Q109 Dame Nia Griffith: Perhaps I could ask all of you about the action you would like to see around employment support and rights. What would make the biggest difference? You have such different structures in your sports that it is quite tricky.
Lisa Rivers: I am not employed in judo in any form. I am a volunteer at my club. It must be said that I am a permanent volunteer as I do a lot of it. The other side is going off to referee. Only a certain amount of funding is available; we are a small sport so ultimately there is only a limited amount of funding for officials. If you want to be competitive, certainly within Europe, and you live in central Europe, you can drive off to different continental events relatively easily and relatively cheaply but we have to fly no matter what, so there are all the associated costs. If you want to be competitive with top officials in Europe and in the world, you need a job that financially supports your hobby. I would not even want to guess at the amount of money I have spent heading off to refereeing events over the last 10 years, let alone the fact that my husband and I were doing it. You just ignore the cost and carry on. This is what we have chosen to do. We wanted to actively pursue being as good as we could be and getting to the top. We are able to meet the cost but a massive barrier to anybody coming in—male or female—is whether they can afford to get to the top. The reality is that they need a job that will support them.
Alison Hughes: Tennis is slightly different. Although I am contracted, my travel is always paid for by the tournament or the governing body so I am not out of pocket in any way. I do not get the benefits of being a full-time employee but I get all my travel expenses covered.
Sian Massey-Ellis: I am just sitting here thinking how lucky I am to be an employed match official. This was a hobby that turned into a career and I have loved every minute of it. The league has a certain pot of money. You could say that it must be directed to female match officials—for example, in the women’s league—to enable them to go full-time. I do not know whether that policy could be created. It all comes down to funding, so it is difficult.
Q110 Dame Nia Griffith: Obviously, it comes down to funding but you have clearly made the point that there is a difference in areas where people do not have your employment status. They are effectively more like volunteers so there is probably a lot of work to do to help them. Do you think that this influences the appointment of females? Technically, discriminating against them because they are female, or have a baby or anything like that, would be illegal in an employment situation. Do you think there is anything of that culture left?
Sian Massey-Ellis: It is difficult to say. Nobody has a contract below the top level in men’s football so it is no different for men or women. When I talk about the barriers that females face and say that they need some extra support, buying them time for support with things like fitness can help, but you would then have a disparity between the men and the women because the men would not get it. It is difficult to find a balance.
Q111 Dame Nia Griffith: Is there anything else that anyone wants to say on employment issues? I can see that the answer is no so we will move on to something more basic. People have told us about not having the appropriate kit and being expected to make do, or that they have not had access to appropriate facilities. Can you give us an idea of how things are progressing? Is it still a problem?
Alison Hughes: We have never really had a problem; we have always had male and female sizes since I started. Some of the kit is interesting but there is not a lot we can do about that. We have always been in a facility where we have had women’s changing rooms or men’s changing rooms because we are either working a men’s tournament or a women’s tournament, so they always have the basics. It would be different for a different sport where there are no facilities for women or no clothing for women. But in tennis, we have been very lucky that we have always had, since I started, the male and female differential.
Lisa Rivers: Trying to find a refereeing uniform that fits is very difficult. There is a standardised kit but it is not standardised, if that makes sense. We do not have standardised outfitters. Trying to find women’s grey trousers can be one of the hardest things. If you manage to find some, you buy eight pairs in all sizes because they will have to last forever. Trying to find a plain women’s black blazer is more of a challenge than you would think; it is probably what I look for most when trying to find kit. School uniform outfitters are the best places for me to find any women’s cut. It is easy to find men’s blazers but they do not fit women. If you are heading on to the international circuit, you have to look the part; that is just as important as playing the part. Everyone should look the same in judo, but they do not.
Sian Massey-Ellis: Huge strides have been made in this area for female match officials. We now have our own supplier and we designed our kit with them. We said, “The men’s shorts are too long,” so they shortened them, and we can try them on. We have various shorts lengths and a women’s fit kit. As you say, Lisa, you want to look the part so that you can feel the part. When I first got on the team, I remember sitting in my hotel room trying to sew my sleeves up because I am so petite that even the small men’s kit used to drown me. I looked as if I had my dad’s pyjamas on. Huge strides have been made in kit. Sometimes we get forgotten, and as soon as that happens, they say, “Oh no, we don’t have women’s-fit shorts. We’ll go to the shop and get some.” It is very much like that but if you have people sitting on those panels, they ask those questions.
There have also been huge strides with regard to changing rooms and facilities. I remember when I first started, I went to a stadium that only had a urinal and I thought, “What am I going to do with that?” Now we have separate changing rooms, especially at the top level, and all new-build stadiums have a female match official’s changing room. Again, they need to speak to us about it because sometimes it is at the opposite end of the corridor and you do not want to keep walking up and down the corridor with just your socks on. There are interlocking changing rooms where there is just a door between each separate space, so once you get changed, you can open that door and feel part of the team. Little things such as that are important; they make you feel included. You are not just given a manager’s office where you have to get in and out of the shower; that can cause safeguarding issues when you are stood outside on your own. Huge strides have been made, particularly in the professional game, and there are real developments. At grassroots level, it is still a bit more of a challenge. It will come with new stadiums but I believe they are thinking now, “We need to create a female match official’s dressing room.”
Q112 Chair: Alison and Sian, I want to come back to the issue of pay. Is there any gender pay gap reporting or disparities that you know of?
Alison Hughes: Not within tennis.
Q113 Chair: So are men and women paid the same, or is it just not reported?
Alison Hughes: I get exactly the same pay as men.
Sian Massey-Ellis: If I do a men’s game, I get paid a men’s fee. The women’s fees are set by the women’s competition but we have seen huge strides on that and the match fees are a lot better than they used to be.
Alison Hughes: It is the same for women and men; whatever tournament we are working we get that rate, whether we are male or female.
Q114 Chair: This is the last question, and I will start with you, Alison. What one piece of advice would you give to young women—or women at any age—who are considering entering a career in officiating?
Alison Hughes: If you are interested in it, give it a go. For me, it has been a life-changing experience. I would encourage anybody who is interested to go for it; enjoy the moment and take as much as you can from it.
Lisa Rivers: I can’t believe I’ve got to follow that! I would say exactly the same. It is about giving someone the opportunity to be part of the sport they love and want to do at the highest level. The avenue into high-level sport is not just through being an athlete or being a coach. Being a high-level official, as I said earlier, comes with the same amount of pride, and you can go in and represent your country at the very highest level. Yes, it takes hard work to get there and it comes with sacrifice, which is the same as for any high-level route, but it really is worth it. If is something that you are passionate about doing and you want to work hard to do it, go for it. That is what I would always say.
Sian Massey-Ellis: I would echo what the girls have said: give it a try because you can fall in love with it just as much as you can through playing the sport. I fell in love with refereeing and have had the best years of my life being a referee. It taught me so many different life skills that I take into every day now, and it made me the person that I am. Just give it a try. Do not reach for perfection because perfection is not always achievable, but as long as you keep trying and you learn from your mistakes, you can be fantastic.
Chair: That is a perfect way to end. Thank you so much to all three of you for sharing your expertise, knowledge and experience today; we are all grateful.