The Unseen Athlete is a platform dedicated to tackling sexism and promoting gender equality within the world of sport. Recognising the persistent challenges faced by women and girls in sport, it strives to shed light on the hidden realities that too often remain overlooked.

Through highlighting these challenges faced by women in sport and addressing issues that deeply matter to me, The Unseen Athlete aims to inspire meaningful change where women are celebrated in an environment without fear of discrimination or harassment.

Having grown up immersed in sport, I have experienced first-hand both the opportunities and challenges that come with being a woman in sport. From navigating expectations surrounding performance and body image to witnessing issues such as injury and representation, these experiences have shaped my understanding of what often goes unseen.

The Unseen Athlete was created in response to this - both as a celebration of female athletes and as a platform to explore the realities that are frequently overlooked.

'It Was So Normalised': Rebecca Adams on Sexism, Sport and Online Abuse

By the time Rebecca Adams landed her first role at Sky Sports News, she had already accepted that breaking into sports broadcasting would require resilience. What she hadn’t anticipated was quite how normalised the culture she was entering would feel, or how long its legacy would linger.

“In my very first job, the boss of the production team would openly talk to the guys in the team about which of the presenters they found most attractive,” she recalls. One comment, in particular, stuck with her: “Oh I fancy such and such because she’s got the perfect boob to waist ratio.”

“It was just normal chit chat,” Rebecca says. “The other girls and I would roll our eyes, but it was so normalised.”

That normalisation extended beyond crude remarks. Informal power networks – football kickabouts on days off – doubled as editorial meetings. When Rebecca and other women asked to join, they were told bluntly: “No, girls don’t play football.”

If the newsroom offered one kind of exclusion, social media introduced another – louder, more direct, and often more personal.

Rebecca’s first experience of online abuse came after interviewing Andy Murray. A comment read: “This girl is a twat and she shouldn’t be allowed to interview anyone.”

“I was really upset by it,” she admits. “But now I just laugh because I think it’s hilarious.”

This shift, from hurt to humour, has become a survival strategy for many reporters to stay immune to the abuse hurled around this cut-throat industry.

As audiences grow, so too does the platform for criticism, and female broadcasters like Rebecca find themselves subjected to abuse that goes beyond professional critique.

Her response is pragmatic: block, move on, don’t engage. “Do something better with your time,” she says.

But not everyone can brush it off so easily. Terms like ‘diversity hire’, ‘token’ and ‘tick box’ are still thrown around at women in the industry. Moments that should mark career milestones are instead undermined, with achievements questioned and legitimacy challenged.

Despite everything, Rebecca insists the industry is changing, albeit unevenly.

“There is more awareness that women want to work in sport,” she says. “We are just as if not more capable of working in sport broadcast than our male counterparts because we feel the need to prove ourselves.”

Substantial change, Rebecca suggests, will require more than representation. It demands a shift in attitudes, both within media institutions and audiences.

Breaking With Tradition: How Eccles Rugby Club Challenged 125 Years of History

For something experienced by half the population and a routine part of female physiology, menstruation remains strikingly absent from public conversation – especially in sport.

Despite growing discussions surrounding mental health, injury prevention and athlete welfare, the menstrual cycle is still treated as an awkward afterthought in many sporting environments. For female athletes, that silence has consequences.

For 125 years, Eccles Rugby Club championed white shorts as part of its playing kit. But for many of the women who wore them, they were a source of silent anxiety.

Following concerns raised by female players over period anxiety and discomfort, the club has abandoned its long-standing white shorts in favour of navy – a decision that players say has transformed their confidence on the pitch.

“It’s made me feel better about myself,” says Sarah Williams, Eccles Ladies team manager. “I don’t have to worry about if I bend over in a scrum and I’ve leaked, no one is going to know.”

To outsiders, the change may appear cosmetic, but players say its psychological impact has been profound.

Jenny Lakin, the ladies vice-captain, said: “It just takes that edge off, that nervousness. You’re never going to get rid of it completely, that’s just the nature of being a woman. But not panicking as much on gameday is really helpful.”

The push for change began at the club’s annual AGM, where one female member stood up and voiced what many had thought for years: ‘why were women still expected to wear white shorts?’

“If it wasn’t for that one woman we wouldn’t be where we are today,” Sarah recalled. “We’d still be walking around in white shorts and feeling uncomfortable.”

The response from the club has been overwhelmingly positive. In a show of solidarity, the men’s team also adopted the darker shorts.

For many players, the change has lifted the burden that they once had simply accepted as part of the game.

“I think it just shows that we’re being listened to, we’re not being ignored anymore,” says Karen Barrass, ladies player.

“It helps bring awareness to the fact that we can be athletes and women at the same time. It’s a big part of the life we have and there’s no reason why we can’t do both,” she said.

What may seem like a small practical adjustment is, in reality, emblematic of a broader cultural shift: one that recognises that women’s sports cannot continue to operate to standards built around male bodies.

And Eccles are not alone.

Across women’s sport, organisations are increasingly abandoning white kits in recognition of athletes’ concerns. In 2023, Wimbledon abandoned its long-standing all-white dress policy, allowing women to wear dark undershorts - a change widely welcomed as a practical and overdue step forward.

Football has followed suit. Several women’s teams, including the England Lionesses, have publicly declared they will no longer be wearing white shorts, placing comfort above convention.

This change signifies an important step in the right direction for women's sport, highlighting how women's concerns are being listened to and acted upon.

Emma Linley: Reclaiming Strength After Bulimia

After decades of battling an eating disorder, the strongwoman athlete explains how strength training transformed her relationship with food and her body

By any external measure, Emma Linley represents strength.

A competitive powerlifter in a sport built around discipline and physical resilience, Emma embodies the kind of athlete often celebrated for pushing the limits of human performance. Yet, behind the visible displays of strength lies a more uncomfortable truth about elite women in sport.

Eating disorders are often stereotyped as illnesses confined to fashion runways or aesthetic sports. But research increasingly shows that disordered eating is deeply embedded across the sporting landscape – particularly in environments where muscularity and strength are prized.  

While around 1.6% of adults in the general population experience eating disorders, among female athletes that figure rises dramatically, with some studies suggesting rates as high as 42%. More concerning still, up to 70% of female athletes may engage in disordered eating behaviours, often including food restriction, compulsive exercise and repeated attempts to lose weight.

For Emma, strength training is more than competition. Its community, identity, and- perhaps most significantly- recovery.

For decades, Emma says, recovery felt impossible.

“I’d always wanted to stop. I tried therapies. I tried all sorts of things, but nothing kicked in. Nothing made me want to do it.”

What changed was not a therapist or medical intervention, but rather the practical demands of performance.

“My health wasn’t a good enough reason, weirdly,” she says. “Just being thin was the reason. And now it’s like, no- I need to be strong enough in my legs to pick things up. I need to be strong enough to get things over my head.”

Female athletes face heightened vulnerability to eating disorders due to pressures surrounding body image, weight categories and performance optimisation. In many environments, restrictive eating is normalised as discipline rather than recognised as dangerous.

Yet, Emma’s experience demonstrates how sport can also offer a framework for rebuilding relationships with food, when the focus shifts from appearance to function.

“It’s knowing what your body can do,” she says. “It’s pushing your body beyond what you thought you could.”

The Cost of Recovery:  Ella Humphrey and the Hidden Reality of ACL Rehabilitation

Ten minutes into her first pre-season friendly, Ella Humphrey went up to volley the ball. As she landed, she felt her knee buckle.

“It just popped,” she said. “Instantly, I knew it was probably my ACL.”

A scan later confirmed her fears: a complete rupture of her anterior cruciate ligament, the dreaded injury and one increasingly synonymous with the women’s game.

For Ella, however, the devastation of the diagnosis was only the beginning.

What followed exposed a reality faced by many women playing outside the elite tiers of the game: if there is any prospect of returning to the game, they may have to fund the surgery themselves.

The NHS waiting list was just under two years, and so Ella turned to crowdfunding and set up a GoFundMe, relying on public donations.

“The women’s game has grown so much, and our support off the pitch hasn’t matched that,” Ella said.

Female players are now training and competing at far higher physical intensities than ever before, but many still lack the medical and recovery infrastructure routinely available in the men’s game.

“Men get ice baths, massages, recovery sessions, medical teams,” Ella said. “A lot of women just rock up to training and leave.”

It isn’t uncommon for players in tiers three and four to juggle football with full-time employment, working 9-5s before training in the evenings.

“People’s bodies are tired,” Ella said. “The football quality is increasing but I don’t think the recovery is matching it.”

The consequences are becoming increasingly visible with the sport’s ACL crisis.

Inside Powher Gym, Where Women are Redefining Strength on Their own Terms

It’s a Monday evening at Powher Gym in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle. There is a buzz in the air; plates clattering against machines and the sound of women cheering one another through final reps. There are no furtive glances across the weights room, no self-conscious hovering by machines, no sense that anyone here needs permission to take up space.

For founder Libby Rush, that atmosphere is precisely the point.

“It’s about having a space where you can do your own thing without feeling overly observed,” she says.

Powher Gym was created to fill what Libby saw as a glaring gap in the fitness industry: a women-only space with serious strength- training equipment, not simply a token female floor stacked with treadmills and light dumbbells.

Despite decades of rhetoric about equality and inclusion, gym culture remains heavily catered towards male needs. Research into the UK gym culture has repeatedly found that women report feeling intimidated in strength-training areas and often alter their behaviour accordingly to avoid confrontation or scrutiny.

Women are increasingly opting to train in environments where they can squat without being stared at, stretch without being sexualised, and learn to lift without unsolicited male coaching.

That desire is not irrational. According to a 2023 survey by RunRepeat, 56% of women report experiencing harassment in the gym, ranging from staring and unsolicited advice to inappropriate comments and unwanted physical contact. More that 9 in 10 said they never reported it.

Separate research by Ukactive and This Girl Can found 42% of women have experienced sexual harassment or intimidation in gyms, with the figure rising to 83% amongst women age 16 to 24.

These figures help to explain why the demand for women-only spaces are skyrocketing across the UK, and why, for many women, they are not viewed as a luxury, but rather a necessity.

“At Powher, everyone is in the same boat,” Libby says. “You can make a bit of a fool of yourself, and no one is going to judge you for it.”

That sentiment is echoed by members.

One member, a PE teacher who joined following repeated knee injuries, says the environment has transformed her relationship with weight training.

“I’d never entered into weightlifting before,” she says. “This is the perfect place to start. No one judges you. Everyone helps everyone out.”

The demand for spaces like Powher Gym reflects more than a fitness trend; it points to a broader reality beyond specialist equipment or tailored programming. It provides something more fundamental: an opportunity for women to occupy space without an apology.

‘They Don't See How Tough You Are’: The Women Redefining Muay Thai

For much of its history, Muay Thai existed as one of sport’s most rigidly male domains. Steeped in centuries of tradition and spiritual belief that barred women from competing, it was long viewed as a preserve solely for men.

Yet inside gyms across the world, the old orthodoxy is being dismantled – punch by punch, round by round – by fighters such as Eirinn Fenton.

The competitive Muay Thai athlete is part of a growing generation of women reshaping a sport once built without them in mind. Across the UK, women now account for 31.7% of martial arts participants, according to the British Martial Arts and Boxing Association.

In doing so, female fighters are increasingly redefining conventional ideas of femininity in combat sports, challenging assumptions about what strength and womanhood can look like.

For Eirinn, she rejects the notion that fighting and femininity must exist in opposition. Outside of the gym, she works as cabin crew – polished, poised and immaculately presented - a contrast that defies outdated stereotypes of what a fighter should be.

“I’m very feminine in my life at home - I’m such a girly girl,” she says. “But I quite like coming and being a bit of a tomboy. It’s nice to have a bit of both sides.”

That duality matters. In sport historically associated with hyper-masculinity, women such as Eirinn are proving that power doesn’t have to cost femininity.

Her introduction to the sport, however, was initially met with criticism.

“People were a bit like, ‘Why do you want to start fighting? Why Thai Boxing?’” she says. “They didn’t really understand it.”

Yet, that scepticism has not disappeared with experience. If anything, Eirinn says, it has merely changed shape.

“All the time,” she says, when asked if she is underestimated because she is a woman. “Men are a bit scared to partner with women. I don’t think they know how tough you are, and they’re not willing to see how tough you are either.”

Girlz2Goalz: Mia Parry’s Mission to Keep Girls in Football

Despite the rapid rise of women’s football in recent years, one major challenge remains: keeping girls involved in sport as they grow older.

According to Women in Sport, four in ten girls fall out of love with sport during their teenage years, while 43% of girls who once considered themselves ‘sporty’ disengage from sport after primary school.

This is a problem that Mia Parry, founder of Girlz2Goalz, is determined to tackle.

Her academy was created to provide structured, high-level coaching from UEFA-qualified coaches and current players, to bridge the gap between grassroots football and academy-level opportunities.

For the Liverpool Feds player, that mission is deeply personal.

Having progressed through male- dominated football environments and the Liverpool FC academy pathway, she experienced first-hand the lack of structured opportunities designed specifically for girls.

“That’s basically why I’ve done it, because I don’t want a girl to fall out of football like I did,” Mia said.

“They’ve got support around them from their coach and the players they play with at my sessions.”

Research consistently shows that girls’ participation in sport drops sharply during adolescence, often due to a loss of confidence, limited opportunities and a lack of role models.

Girlz2Goalz aims to counter that by creating an environment where girls feel supported and encouraged, ensuring that members have visible role models to look up to.

“Just inspiring them,” Mia said.

“All of our coaches play football, so that gives it a different edge. We want to help them get to where they want to get to, whether they want to get into an academy or just supporting them.”

As women’s football continues to grow across the UK, Mia believes the sport must now shift its focus to retention as much as recruitment.

Through Girlz2Goalz, she is creating pathways, confidence and belief- inspiring the next generation of girls and keeping them in the game.

Breaking Barriers in Wheelchair Rugby: Hannah Bucys’ Story

Across the sporting world, the push for greater equality, visibility and opportunity for women continues to gain momentum. Nowhere is this more evident than in disability sport.

One athlete driving this change is Hannah Bucys, a rising star in Great Britain’s wheelchair rugby programme.

Hannah Bucys’ life drastically changed in 2018, when she suffered a spinal cord injury during a freak trampolining accident, which left her bound to a hospital bed for three months.

Like many athletes facing sudden life-altering circumstances, she was confronted with uncertainty about her future in sport.

Reflecting on that period, she admitted that the injury initially “knocked her confidence,” explaining that as someone who had always been active, her immediate thoughts were, “What is there to do? What can I do?”

During her rehabilitation, however, Hannah discovered wheelchair rugby, a sport she hadn't known existed and quickly fell in love with its fast-paced intensity.

What began as a pathway to recovery quickly became a passion and, eight years on , Hannah has gone on to represent Great Britain in international competition.

Her rise comes at a pivotal moment for female representation in wheelchair rugby. Due to initiatives such as the Women and Girls Talent (WGT) programme, the participation of women in wheelchair rugby is steadily increasing.

This marks a major step forward in promoting inclusivity and increasing female representation within the sport - providing female athletes with direct pathways to compete at the highest level.