This Girl Can

Inspiring women to get active

This Girl Can believes that there’s no right way to get active – if it gets your heart rate up, it counts. And we want more women to find what’s right for them.

The campaign celebrates active women who are doing their thing no matter how they look, how well they do it or how sweaty they get. We want to challenge the conventional idea of what exercise looks like and reach out to women of all backgrounds and ethnicities who feel left behind by traditional exercise.

In doing so, we’re aiming to inspire more women and girls to wiggle, jiggle, move and prove that judgement, time, money and energy are barriers that can be overcome.

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To learn more about This Girl Can, click the button below to visit the website.

This Girl Can website

A campaign based on facts

Campaign summary

This Girl Can was born from a desire to tackle the fact that despite increases in the overall number of people being active in England, women persistently remained less active than men.

We knew that we had to address the gender gap and the reason behind it; and we knew we had to do something different.

Our This Girl Can Campaign Summary document tells the story of This Girl Can, and the insights which sit at its heart.

The downloadable document also includes results from the first two phases of the campaign, as well as a summary of the latest developments in the campaign.

In January 2020, This Girl Can's new TV ad premiered, once again showing the raw, unfiltered reality of women exercising in whatever way works for them.

And in September 2020 an updated ad launched, highlighting the inventive ways in which women had kept, or got, active during the challenging times of the coronavirus pandemic and the increased barriers to activity that came with it.

Campaign Summary

Download the file - 3.32 MB

The videos audio only contains an excerpt of the song ‘Offence’ by Little Simz, each lyric in this transcript plays over a quick cut montage of different shots of different women.

Lyrics: Me again, allow me to pick up where I left off

A woman runs across a large pale green field, breathing heavily, she comes to a stop.

A female swimmer puts on her swimming cap and pulls up her swimsuit in a changing room.

A woman walks through a well grown park with her baby in a chest baby carrier.

Lyrics: The biggest phenomenon and I’m Picasso with the pen

A mother and daughter run down metal stairs outdoors.

A woman pushes her bed out of the way to make room for an exercise class being conducted over Zoom, she chats to the others on the call.

Lyrics: They just wanna talk that stuff until I hit them with the realness

The swimmer is lowered into the swimming pool via a hoist.

Lyrics: Figured I should say some’, but you don’t wanna hear me vent

The running woman continues running through the field.

A young woman lays in bed with a hot water bottle on her stomach.

Kids run around the house whilst a mother puts her on facemask before exercising.

Lyrics: You can talk bad all day long, I will never be impressed, dunno what I did to make you feel that you be earnin’ my respect

The zoom exercise class is now in action and the woman stands by a yoga mat doing high kicks.

The mother and daughter are now curling kettlebells on the bricked floor below the metal stairs.

The runner takes off her shoes at a rocky beach and wanders into the shallow waters.

Lyrics: I followed the white rabbit, got a couple carrots I know that I got bad habits , tryna find the balance, I’m in the store like, I wanna have it I gotta have it.

The swimmer swims widths of the pool.

The zoom class ends and the woman planks on the yoga mat, she holds, then hits the mat.

The mother & daughter laugh with each other on a sofa.

Lyrics: You are not the toughest or baddest, my pen is the maddest, I’ve probably ended careers and it’s never out of malice

The woman on the yoga mat jumps back into it and performs punching situps.

The mother & daughter perform pushups on mats in their living room.

Lyrics: May aswell get a birthday cake and it ain’t even my birthday, ‘cause when I switch then they wanna say that I’m a-

The woman with kids stands in a park, her child runs to her to hand her dumbbells. She lifts the child and then squats with him on her back.

The runner is now in an urban setting, running past houses.

Lyrics: You’re not listening, you’re not listening, I said it with my chest and I don’t care who I offend, uh-huh.

The video quickly cuts through all of the women again before ending on the mother doing squats with her child, the This Girl Can logo appears over them.

Go Where Women Are

Our Go Where Women Are insight pack has additional insight on engaging women and girls in sport and exercise.

The review explores our current understanding of women, their relevant motivations, barriers and triggers to getting more active, and what this means for sports and exercise activities and initiatives.

Insight - Go Where Women Are

Download the file - 1.55 MB

Join This Girl Can

Does your organisation want to help us encourage women and girls of all shapes, sizes, abilities and backgrounds to get active? If so, we’d love you to become a This Girl Can supporter.

Whether you run a class, club or leisure centre, or are just on a one-person mission to help women you know and care about find their way to get active, there’s something for you in our This Girl Can Supporter’s Toolkit.

To access it, simply sign up by visiting the This Girl Can website.

Be a supporter

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