Gender equality: next barrier to break

As SailGP returns to UK waters, Emirates Great Britain strategist Hannah Mills says the league has transformed opportunities for women, but believes the biggest breakthrough is still to come. For Mills, SailGP has drastically changed the landscape for women in sailing, but she wants to see it go even further.

Mills believes the league has made “really big inroads” in creating opportunities for female athletes over the past five years, but says the next step is ensuring women are represented across every key performance role on board the F50. “I think getting to critical mass of females on board the F50s is a big one,” said Mills. “Whether that’s with more female drivers, wing trimmers, flight controllers, really starting to see the boats getting towards gender equality on board, I think that would be mega.”

As one of the most decorated sailors in the sport with three Olympic medals, two of them gold, to her name, Mills has witnessed the shift firsthand. When she was growing up, the pathways available to young female sailors looked very different. Today, she believes SailGP is helping rewrite that story. “We’ve made some really big inroads to transforming it for the next generation,” she said.

“There’s still lots to do, but I look at my daughter Sienna, who’s three, and think maybe she won’t want to be a sailor, and that’s fine. But if she did, there would be so many opportunities for her that just wouldn’t have been there for me.”

“I’ve always had this mantra that if you can’t win in the traditional way, you find a different way to win. Whether you’re carrying an injury or you’re ill, you work out how you’re still going to be in with a chance. It’s the same now. I’ve got Sienna and she is everything. But when I compete, I still want to find a way to win. It looks different, but I still have that same drive and motivation.”

That perspective has also changed how Mills measures success. Winning remains vital, but increasingly it’s the platform success creates that motivates her most. “Doing well gives you a bigger voice,” she explained. “The more we win, the bigger platform we have to speak to the media and talk about our sailing, which then segues into talking about the other things you really care about. If I had to pick one, it would be making the biggest difference.”