Designing Sport for Women with Katee Hui

What is Hackney Laces?

A community club for girls and women that provides opportunities on and off the pitch. You come for football, but you stay for the community.

What led you to start Hackney Laces?

I grew up in Canada and where I lived everyone was encouraged to play sports. When I moved to the UK, I was so surprised by how gendered sport was here. There were sports that were seen as socially acceptable for women and then ones that were for men. 

As a soccer/football player and coach, I would constantly get approached by girls in my local area asking if I knew of anywhere they could play. I couldn’t find a spot easily, so I decided to put on sessions in the park near my house. Soon, a couple of girls turned into a dozen and then we continued to grow from there! It’s been 9 years now and still going strong.

What have you learned along the way about designing sport to include women? And, what does it take to successfully design for women?

Don’t design the conventional & traditional way
“How can you not hold trials?” traditional football teams ask me this all the time because that’s the way sports teams are have always been created. They don’t understand that Hackney Laces exists so that anyone can come and play.

Cut out the competition
We have women who want to play competitively, we have women who want to play for fun. The competition though is more for self-improvement, people want to improve and progress their own ability more than beat other people. Ex-pro players & beginners can come and play without the pressure of their level. Fun and community are the central themes so the pressure gets taken off. No one is going to lay into you if you mess up a pass.

Create collective ownership
Because the club is designed with our users’ needs & wants, the rules are set collectively. We involved our members in our decision making processes. I know this key to our success – because we have two sister clubs for Hackney Laces that function the same way and it’s no coincidence that we have the largest number of women Football Association qualified coaches in the country and more than 400 women & girls taking part. It’s because we take our users into account.

Why do women decide to join Hackney Laces and why do they continue to engage on a regular basis?

Most join because they want to learn how to play and be a part of a club. As the culture evolves here and women’s football is getting more exposure, air time and sponsorship, there’s a lot of women and girls wanting to see what it’s all about.

Once they’re in they stay with us because they recognise the value it adds to their lives. Aside from playing, it becomes about being part of a team and there’s value in the development – in the form of failure, success, conflict, achieving collective goals – which comes as a result of being on a team. 90% of the girls that come to us have never been on a team before, and team sport becomes about interpersonal skills & cooperation. All kinds of friendship form, people begin looking out for each other – for example, the older girls start taking the younger girls home on the bus.

I think there’s also a level of assertiveness that you can practice on the pitch that may not feel acceptable in professional environments. This is also an invaluable learning. The women stay for the community & friendship which enables development in both sport & life.

How do you wish some of these learnings would translate into our world or products/services/experiences that include women too?

I really wish people would be more thoughtful in recognising bias, and the absence of lived experiences. I’m always the first person in a room to ask ‘have we asked the audience what they think’ and so often told that we don’t need to. We always need to check assumptions and think more about the diversity of women and their lives. 

For example, when I first set up laces people I asked the local council for support. I was told that they have already tried to set up sessions at a spot called Mabley Green, but that no one would show up. That led them to believe that women are not interested in football or that there is no interest in women’s football. So, I asked my members why they didn’t take part in the Mabley sessions. “The pitch isn’t well lit,” they said, and “it’s only on one bus route.” Lack of light and the lack of people around because of no public transport made them feel unsafe. It’s not that they didn’t want to play, it was that the environment wasn’t adequate and that was a barrier. Did anyone ever ask the women about this? No. They concluded no interest in women’s football without ever creating a safe space for them to play in.

What are some misconceptions about for women?

That we are a homogenous group
All women’s experiences are different and there’s a distinction between designing for common shared experiences than making the assumption that we all have the same taste and preferences. Some women like flowery things; some like stripes. 

That women want the same things as men, and this is a sign of equality

I see this, for example, in sports uniforms. For football clubs, the women’s kits are the same as for men, which is seen as a sign of progress & equality – mostly because they might have the same sponsors. However, many women dislike white shorts because of the fear of menstruation leaks. Yet 10/13 clubs in the women’s top football league have white shorts, matching their men’s teams. I hope this will begin to change and there are some examples — ironically, Lewes Football Club, the first team to pay its women the same as men, also made the conscious decision to create a kit for their women’s team that had black or red shorts.

What are some examples you’re seeing in the world that you feel are truly designing for women?

  • Clue app - finally tech that helps track your period and let’s you know what your hormones are doing throughout your cycle

  • Liv bikes - bikes designed for the women’s body 

  • Thinx - period pants (the first innovation in feline hygiene since the invention of tampons!)

  • Sweaty Betty - they really get that we are different sizes, shapes and heights. And that pockets are important! 

  • Top knot - finally a baseball hat that accommodates a pony tail at any height. So simple but so impactful.


About Katee Hui

Katee Hui is a senior strategist at Pentagram with 13 years experience, specialising in creativity and social impact. She’s worked in Corporate Responsibility at Sainsbury's, and at agencies including Nice and Serious and FutureGov. Katee is the founder of Hackney Laces, a mentor at Bethnal Green Ventures and a Global Trustee at parkrun. For her work with Laces, she’s been recognised as Point of Light by the UK Prime Minister and in 2018 she was awarded BBC Sports Personality of the Year for London.

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