The Princess Royal said “it used to be a lot of old grey men” running sports but “gradually it is changing”, the founder of a women in sports charity said after Anne formally made her a Commander of the British Empire (CBE).
Dr Anita White, founder of the Women in Sport charity, the International Working Group on Women and Sport, and the Anita White Foundation, was among those honoured at Windsor Castle on Tuesday.
In the hallway of the royal residence she reconnected with the ParalympicsGB chef de mission, who two decades ago was selected for a leadership development course that Dr White was arranging.
Penny Briscoe had also just been made a CBE and Dr White said they had not seen each other since the course.
Describing her discussion with Anne, Dr White told the PA news agency: “We spoke about how sport had changed, how it used to be a lot of old grey men running sport and how gradually it is changing.”
The Princess Royal asked what sports the former captain of the England field hockey team had played.
Dr White, who was left wing, told PA: “I was captain of the England team and we won the World Cup in 1975 and we didn’t get much recognition at the time – that made me aware of the kind of gender divide that there was, and I’ve been campaigning for women in sports ever since.”
The “huge change” she has witnessed in her career has been “at the top level”.
This can be seen in the attention garnered by the Lionesses squad, as well as the number of female sports presenters and women in leadership roles, she said.
Dr White added: “Inevitably there’s still a certain amount of inequality in the way that girls are socialised.
“So they are terribly concerned with their appearance on social media, and not getting out there, maybe missing out on the pleasure and fun and good things that there are in sport.”
“There might be some regression of people thinking, well, because we see women in the media, we’ve cracked it – women in sport has been done and dusted – but of course that isn’t the case,” she added.
Ms Briscoe is the director of sport at the British Paralympic Association and has been selected as chef de mission for Los Angeles 2028.
Dr White said people like Ms Briscoe “ending up in a very senior position” is “exactly one of the things that I continue to work for”.
She added that, during their conversation at Windsor Castle, Ms Briscoe offered to help “in any way she can with future work”.
Dr White said she is particularly working on getting women into high-performance coaching.
Anne said “not you again” as Ms Briscoe collected her medal, the chef de mission told PA.
ParalympicsGB last year finished second in the medal table for the third consecutive summer Games after winning 124 medals – 49 gold, 44 silver and 31 bronze – across 18 sports in Paris.
LA 2028 will be Briscoe’s 12th Paralympics and sixth as chef de mission – a role she first fulfilled at the 2014 winter Games in Sochi.
Paralympic sport “stepped out of the shadows” at the 2012 London Olympics, she said after collecting her honour for services to Paralympic sport.
“I definitely feel like I’ve been part of two eras of para sport, the pre-London era, where we had great athletes, we delivered great performances, but the media hadn’t embraced para sport.
“It wasn’t until our home Games, where every stadium was full – venues, the sport presentation, and the media, every kind of media, embraced para sport.”
She added: “I think the growth of the ParalympicsGB hasn’t just been on the field of play, it’s been what it’s enabled off the field of play.
“So the platform that the Games provides for our athletes to have that voice, to demand changes in society.”
Before joining ParalympicsGB in 2001, she was an athlete and then a coach in canoeing, which took her to the Olympics in 1996 and 2000.
