This Girl Can celebrates women’s activity during COVID

September 18, 2020  

The UK's This Girl Can campaign released its 2020 edition celebrating the inventive ways women have stayed active during the pandemic. Aimed at reducing the gender gap in activity levels, the new campaign focuses on inspiring women to get active in the way that best suits them. 

With the pandemic causing further physical, financial and time barriers to get active - and leading to increased anxieties - This Girl Can wants to inspire women by using real-life stories of how, even in the toughest of times, women have still fitted activity into their lives.  

Their research shows that women have a clear appetite to get active again, with 52% reporting that, since the outbreak, they've found new ways to get moving. Women are also placing great importance on being active and are very aware of the important mental health benefits it can bring. 

“At the beginning of lockdown there was a sense there was a right way to do it. A feeling like we should all be starting new hobbies and getting very fit,” said Kate Dale, Campaign Lead for This Girl Can. “We’re back with This Girl Can celebrating the fact that there’s no right way to get active – there never was. Just like there’s no right way to do lockdown. 

Launched in 2015, the campaign looks to close the gender gap around activity levels between men and women and is built around the insight that a fear of judgement – of not being good enough, of not looking the part, or of prioritising the wrong thing – is the unifying barrier preventing women from being as active as men. 

The refreshed advertising features women from the original ‘Me Again’ campaign, as well as some new faces, and shows them fitting activity into their own lives, in their own way, in their own time.

The new film includes 35-year-old Katy, who founded ‘Blaze Trails’ during lockdown – a community of walking parents and children. Also, Aneesa, a 43-year-old mother of two from south London, who lost her income at the beginning of lockdown and started running HIIT and dance sessions over Zoom – through which she’s met an entire community of new women. 

The stars of the film will appear on the Instagram feeds of leading social influencers and commentators, including fitness YouTubers Lucy Wyndham-Read and Tally Rye, and journalists Poorna Bell and Bryony Gordon. They’ve all given space within their channels to share the women’s stories and drive conversations around women’s experiences of keeping active during lockdown. 

And, as part of the Great British Week of Sport (19-27 September), This Girl Can and ukactive will be bringing an evening of music and fitness to social media on Saturday 26 September.