Why sport is a vital goal for women

Even Gordon Brown is urging a cultural change that allows girls to see sport and physical activity as aspirational - something that is most definitely not the case now.

Many girls enjoy games such as netball and hockey at school but as soon as they leave often all sporting activities stop. This is a shame.

The statistics show that campaigns of this sort really are needed.

There has been almost no change in the level of women's physical activity in the UK for the past 20 years, with 80 per cent of women doing too little exercise to benefit their health.

Twice as many men play competitive sports as women and six out of 10 women prefer exercising alone to team sports. Is this because sporty athletic girls are seen as unfeminine and female team sports a little too sweaty and "butch"?

I suspect that early experiences at school (don't we all have memories of terrifyingly masculine PE teachers hurling medicine balls at us?) have a greater impact on how girls perceive sport, and this is backed up by some evidence.

Research has shown that nearly a quarter of women say that PE at school put them off sport, two in five girls felt selfconscious about their bodies in PE lessons and a quarter of women hate the way they look when exercising or playing sport.

I remember having to play in "skins" (meaning top off) as one team colour as opposed to "shirts" (top on) and absolutely hating it, feeling terribly self-conscious, but I suspect getting small boys to run around with their tops off is forbidden now. I did go to a public school, after all.

This has got me thinking about the way we doctors sell the idea of exercise to our patients. I tend to say "join a gym" as an automatic response when discussing weight loss, as this is the London thing to do.

Talking to my colleagues has confirmed that this seems to be the standard advice that most of them give. But is the gym quite the same, and does it have the same benefits as a team sport? I favour the mindless gym as my own choice of training.

I work out admittedly a little excessively and go about five times a week, which means I like to think I am pretty fit. But I suspect my speed, agility, balance and endurance are actually very poor.

I lift weights in the main which will make me strong but that's about it.

Playing sport would certainly redress this imbalance. So this idea has struck me as rather a good one, and perhaps something we should be suggesting more - and gym membership a little less.

The benefits of sport go far beyond simple weight loss.

We know that women who play sports do better academically; they have improved learning, memory, and concentration, giving active women an advantage.

Sport teaches teamwork and goal-setting skills; important in business where teaming up with others to meet goals can be the key to success.

Some benefits of sports are immediately obvious - such as improving fitness and maintaining a healthy weight, but women who play sports are less likely to smoke and have reduced chances of getting breast cancer and osteoporosis later in life.

We also know that women involved in athletics feel better about themselves, both physically and socially, and playing sports can help deal with stress and fight depression. I don't know why I didn't think of it before.