by Oliver Brown, Telegraph
Skipper of the first all-female crew in the Round the World Race on her fight for women’s sport and pioneering career
[…] “They don’t understand the rights they are giving away, or how hard we had to fight for those rights. What I wish they would realise is that they stand on the shoulders of giants. It is not just me, but the Maiden crew, the people who got us there, my mother’s generation, my grandmother’s generation. They have all given something to the movement for the 100-plus years since the suffragettes. All have done one or two things that have pushed us that little bit further.”
It is with this in mind that Edwards poses for photographs today wearing a scarf in green, white and purple, the suffragettes’ colours. Accessorising the look are green-and-purple wristbands inscribed with “The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht”: a nod to the 2024 book by Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn, championing women who refused to be silenced in their concerns about Scotland’s rush to self-ID.
In May, tireless work by the For Women Scotland campaign led the Supreme Court to rule unanimously that the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex. That ruling has had profound consequences across sport, with football, cricket and netball rewriting their policies within hours to uphold female fairness and safety. Even Mumbles Sailing Club – Edwards’ local club while growing up in south Wales, and a place that until two weeks ago still allowed men into women’s changing rooms – has had to fall into line.
“I always thought that sport would be the jimmy that forced the whole thing open,” Edwards says. “The problem is expressed so visually in sport, by the sight of a huge man towering over a tiny woman on a cycling podium.
“I know from sailing with men, when I’ve been the only woman on the boat, that the physical, immediate, explosive power of men can be shockingly extraordinary, and they can summon it at a moment’s notice. As women, we know this power dynamic to our cost – that you can be fit and strong, but that the bloke can still pulverise you.” […]