The fourth SheSails conference for 2024 was a powerful celebration of incredible women. This year’s event organised by Australian Sailing and MCed by Nic Douglass featured many inspiring speakers from the Paris 2024 Olympics and from previous Olympics as part of the theme of Olympic Pathways of World Sailings global women’s sailing festival. The conference live streamed for the first time received over 940 views and at its peak over 500 people tuned in to listen to over 200 hours of their incredible stories.



The following is a reflection of the event by one of the participants, Doortje Hoerst. 

Olympic sailors Breiana Whitehead, Evie Haseldine, and Zoe Thomson recounted their experiences of sailing at the 2024 Paris Olympic event, which achieved an equal distribution of men and women athletes for the first time in history. Pinar Coşkuner Genç shared with us her journey of becoming the first Principal Race Officer at the 2024 Paris Olympics. And Karyn Gojnich and Jenny Armstrong show the continuation of women sailors as part of the Olympic timeline and beyond, starting in 1988. Across these amazing speakers flowed a theme: push. Together, they support our movement, pushing agendas to encourage more women in sailing at all levels of the sport. 

The speakers highlighted how it takes pushing oneself to get better at sailing. It takes incredible drive, passion, determination, and years of preparation to reach that Olympic level. And when the event is finally there, these sailors are pushed mentally and physically, taking on every learning opportunity they can. For women sailors more generally, pushing is part of the sport too. It is not easy to navigate the sailing world as a woman. We need to work twice as hard to convince others of our capabilities. It takes time to build skill to prevent our voice from being carried away by the wind, planting our feet firmly to not be pushed aside. And when we finally manage to get into that position where our skills make up for what we ‘lack’, we can start pulling other women in. We push ourselves to carry others. 

We are all sailors. But women’s bodies pose challenges that are particular to women too: menstrual cycles, menopause, and motherhood all came up over the SheSails conversations. Olympians shared how they stopped sailing during their pregnancy and early years of motherhood. Societal expectations of women and motherhood, and physical demands of childbirth, create challenging conditions for athletes. Acknowledging those differences and particular needs are crucial to expand inclusive support networks that allow women to keep sailing through their lives. It is about finding ways to ensure that a choice between (early) motherhood or sailing becomes an opportunity to be a mother and a sailor. More, it is about supporting women and girls to be sailors in all the diverse and particular ways that ‘we’ are. 

We value the support of our allies in sailing. But when pushing is such a central theme of a SheSails conference in 2024, it also shows that we need to keep demanding more. We need to be creative, adaptive and determined. We need to acknowledge women as requiring specific forms of support. We need allies who recognise our value without any of our extra work. We are women sailors. We never stop learning; we never stop asking questions. We are determined to keep carrying each other. 

If you missed seeing the event you can watch the SheSails conference at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orWAKaUTW5U