Heather Watson served up a three set thriller against Serena Williams at Wimbledon. Meanwhile the English women's football team lost narrowly to Japan in the semi finals of the Women's World Cup after defender Laura Bassett scored an own goal. An initial outburst by online trolls criticising the team as useless has given way to kudos and sympathy for the Lionesses from leading feminists to male football stars. What this highlights is how far women have to go to be taken seriously especially when it comes to sporting male bastions like football. Women also lose out in terms of earnings when you consider the sponsorship and salaries enjoyed by male footballers, basketball players and the like.

At TWF, we think it's time to close the gap. For this to happen, we need to invest in training for girls at the local and national level, we need more media coverage of, and sponsors to take a greater interest in, women's fixtures and female sporting role models, and we need to reverse stereotyped views of women's sports as boring. Countries should heed the example of the US which has had laws since the 1970s prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded educational activities such as high school sports. The US women's soccer side has appeared in four World Cup finals and won twice.