What you looked like mattered within the world of professional sport, marketability is important. You experienced Nike's policy of dramatically cutting pay during pregnancy. Most of the people in charge of athletic marketing budgets are men. And they have persisted in passing down these ideas from the 80s and 90s which is that female athletes are for the male viewer. We don't get to just exist based on what we can achieve and how we play.
International Women's Week on Intelligence Squared. Equality is no longer enough, women need equity - that's the message of former US 5000m champion, Lauren Fleshman who joins us on this episode of the podcast to speak about the vital need for the world of sport to be reimagined for women. In conversation with host Sophie Penney, sports journalist for Reuters and The Athletic, Lauren looks back at her own career to examine the damaging mental and physical effects of young women being trained in line with the physiological development of a male body, the financial realities of being a professional female athlete, and what it means to be a successful athlete.
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