If the world has witnessed anything in the past few months, thanks largely to the Matildas incredible performance at the FIFA Women’s World Cup, it’s that women’s sports can no longer be ignored. And it’s a momentum Chloe Dalton wants to keep going.
“It was just this amazing thing to witness,” she tells WHO. “People weren’t watching women play soccer. They were just watching the Matildas play and be really good at what they do.”
In her new book, Girls Don’t Play Sport, Chloe recalls kicking a rugby ball around during the half-time break of her brothers’ games as a kid when she was told she should join a team. “Girls don’t play rugby,” she replied matter-of-factly.
Little did Chloe know then that just 16 years later she would go on to win an Olympic gold medal playing Rugby Sevens for Australia. “I’ve got an older and younger brother, so a lot of my competitive instinct was forged in the backyard,” she says of growing up.
However, Chloe admits it was watching Cathy Freeman at the 2000 Olympics that changed the course of her teen years. “I just was so amazed at her ability to carry the weight of a nation on her shoulders and win the gold medal,” she says. “So I decided that I wanted to win my very own Olympic gold medal in that moment.”
Not only has Chloe done just that, but she is also now a triple-code athlete – having previously represented Australia in the WNBA and is now a fixture in the AFLW. But it’s her platform, The Female Athlete Project, that is helping Chloe change the way we see women’s sport.
“I had started to become really frustrated. I was like, ‘I just want to find out information about women’s sports news.’ So I started searching the podcast channels and I couldn’t find a dedicated source of information,” she explains of how the platform came to be in 2020.
“So I wanted to start, originally as a podcast, to share the stories of female athletes, because I think we have such an incredible range of athletes who achieve amazing things on a daily basis. And then it just has really grown from there.”
Now with over 14,000 followers on Instagram, the platform also inspired Chloe to pen Girls Don’t Play Sport – a fierce manifesto for supporting female athletes that explores how we got to this point and where we need to go next to embrace their untapped potential of women’s sport.
“It’s a really cool opportunity to be a voice in the women’s sports space,” Chloe says. “I found sharing my own stories was actually quite cathartic in a way. I was reflecting on a lot of things that have happened to me that I haven’t necessarily talked about a lot. And then I have also had the opportunity to share the stories of some incredible other athletes.”
Backed up by Chloe’s solid research, the book shines a light on the factors hindering the progress of women’s sports on a global scale, including issues of representation, equal pay, opportunity and respect.
And while some of the statistics (like how 50 per cent of girls drop out of sport by the age of 17) and stories are both sad and startling, they are also a reflection of how far we’ve come.
“I think it’s a really special moment to recognise the progress in this incredible time that we’re in for women’s sport,” Chloe adds. “I’m so thankful to be a part of this momentum and I’m really looking forward to the future.”
Girls Don’t Play Sport is available now, buy it here.
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