How Wimbledon became the surprising face of progress for women’s sport

British tennis player Heather Watson is one of the first players to have openly welcomed this year’s rule change at Wimbledon, which sees female participants in the tournament no longer being required to wear white undergarments. Watson has described it as a “forward-thinking” move by the All England Club.

I’m not sure it’s “forward-thinking” as much as tennis “catching up” with a period-awareness movement that’s been happening for some time now across all of women’s sport.

But that’s not to say it’s any less welcome or worthy of praise. After all, we’re talking about a sport which has long struggled to overcome its propagation of gender imbalance. It took more than three decades after the founding of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) for all four Grand Slam tournaments to even agree to give male and female players the same prize money.

So it’s not hard to see why Watson, who has been vocal about her period anxiety when playing – and other women in the tennis world – are welcoming this historic move.

White was initially chosen as the colour for tennis kit because it avoided the appearance of sweat patches, compared with other colours. The colour has since been synonymous with the Wimbledon tournament. But, unlike other Grand Slam tournaments where players are now able to wear other colours, the All England Club still requires players to wear “full whites”. And the rules are strict: skirts, shorts and tracksuits must be completely white, except for a single trim of colour “no wider than one centimetre” down the outside seam.

If, like me, you played tennis as a child or adolescent, you would have been introduced to the world of white kit from a young age. And as a girl, until you reached puberty, you probably never thought about it all that much. But, with the onset of menstruation, it’s very suddenly unappealing to be bolting around a tennis court with spectators watching you while you’re on your period.

I have strong memories of playing in tennis tournaments as a teenager with strict white dress codes and choosing to “double up” my period protection by using both tampons and towels in case of an embarrassing leak. In fact, I seem to remember doing this even when playing other sports like hockey, netball or athletics, where we were required to wear shorts or short skirts.

The fear of the leak isn’t unique to when a girl is wearing white kit; most sports require your body to move and react in ways and directions that mean you can’t always be certain period protection will suffice. White kit just exacerbates the worry.

As well as helping players feel less anxious, could these kinds of measures also help the worrying number of younger girls dropping out of sport? After all, a survey carried out in 2021 revealed that one in four girls drops out of sport in adolescence, citing fear of period leakage.

This is one of the reasons why the conversation is happening across women’s sport: tennis isn’t the only sport in which women are required to wear white kit.

England test cricketers have spoken about their anxiety around wearing whites while they’re on their period and this spring saw the culmination of discussions between the Lionesses, the FA and their kit supplier Nike, which means players will now be wearing blue rather than white shorts for both home and away matches in this summer’s World Cup.

In fact, that particular conversation went one step further and led to the addition by Nike of a “leak protection” liner, designed to further ease worries for players during performance while on their period.

I’m glad to see things are changing for women and girls in sport and that their health and wellbeing is being accommodated for and prioritised. With decisions like this one from the All England Club, conversations around periods and sport will hopefully move permanently out of the locker-room and into the public domain.

If worries about period leakage or menstrual discomfort are reasons for someone to drop out of a sport, then perhaps these moves alongside hearing women like Watson talk openly about periods will convince them otherwise.

Gemma Abbott is a trail and ultra-marathon runner