A Tower Hamlets fun run just told girls they don’t belong – and that should shame us all

Growing up playing football in the nineties and 2000s, the hangover of female prohibition still lingered across the grassroots game. It could still be dismissed, marginalised, and actively discouraged by people who insisted it was a "man's game".

Breaking through those barriers required determination, and once they were - for the most part – smashed, we did believed no young girl or woman would ever be told she couldn't take part just because of her gender.

How can it be when the Lionesses and the Red Roses win world cup titles in London that some in this city would still happily turn girls turned away from physical activity?

This was not a male-only event to be clear, this specifically called out women and girls over the age of 12 as though it was no longer appropriate for them to ‘run for fun’.

Beyond the concerns around segregation, there was also no sister event for them to join. What message does this send to young girls in Tower Hamlets, London, or even Britain?

That their bodies are somehow inappropriate for public exercise? That their presence in shared spaces is conditional, negotiable, subject to restriction?

We are talking about the insidious normalisation of treating women and girls as lesser; as people whose rights to participate in public life can be curtailed without consequence. I say not in my lifetime, and not in my city.

The mayor of Tower Hamlets - Lutfur Rahman - defending of this decision makes it worse. When civic leaders validate discrimination rather than challenge it, they give permission for it to spread.

They tell young women that their aspirations matter less than outdated prejudices. They tell every girl who dreams of being the next Ella Toone or Beth Mead that there will always be someone ready to bar the door.

Even worse is that this should happen in Tower Hamlets, when the East End of London has such a rich and proud feminist history.

Sylvia Pankhurst - whose pioneering work in Bow has come to define feminism in the area. The suffragists didn't fight for the vote so that, a century later, girls could be banned from running in a park.

We cannot be complacent. Discrimination doesn't announce itself with fanfare; it creeps in through small concessions, through looking the other way, through telling ourselves that one event doesn't matter or explaining away what we know to be unacceptable. Standing up does matter.

To hear that brave women have been raising this for well over a decade and we are only now hearing their voices is depressing. Every time we allow women and girls to be excluded, we chip away at their confidence. Enough is enough and this cannot happen again.

I think of all the young girls who might have run at Sunday's fun-run, who might have discovered a love of exercise, made new friends, felt the pride of completing a challenge. Instead, they were told they couldn't participate while their brothers, fathers and friends did.

Some of those girls might have gone home believing that was normal, that their exclusion was acceptable.

We owe them better.

Sport has the power to transform lives. It builds confidence, resilience, community. The success of women's football hasn't just been about winning trophies; it's been about changing what young girls believe is possible.

We cannot allow that progress to be undermined by backwards practices, no matter who endorses them.

Emma Best AM is the Conservative London Assembly Member and Leader of the Opposition at Waltham Forest Council

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