University rowers make a splash for women in sport

Women's rowing has come a long way since the first boat races on the Thames in 1833, when the wives and daughters of fishermen would compete for purses of sovereigns.

When the historic Oxford and Cambridge university Boat Race starts this weekend, it will be the first time the women's rowing team has raced along the same stretch of the Thames on the same day as the men.

It has taken the women's team 88 years since their first race to gain total parity with the men's competition, with Saturday's race also marking equality of the sexes in sponsorship and television coverage.

Helena Morrissey - chief executive of sponsors Newton Investment Management, a BNY Mellon investment subsidiary - emphasised the women's race was being held with "the money split equally and [with] complete equality".

Ms Morrissey - who is also head of the 30 Per Cent Club that aims to get more women into British boardrooms - had refused to listen to arguments that women's eights were not physically capable of negotiating the swirling tides and twisting bends of the course along the river between Putney and Mortlake in west London.

Holly Hill, number six for Cambridge, said Newton's financing had "lifted the sport and given us the chance to play out our challenge on the biggest stage". She said Sport England's This Girl Can campaign, which aims to get more women into fitness and sport, and the move of women's varsity rugby to Twickenham stadium in December, had also helped.

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Robert Gillespie, chairman of the Boat Race Company, said that, in setting up the dual event on Saturday, the backers had been on "a journey . . . outside the realms of traditional sports sponsorship."

Curtis Arledge, chief executive of investment management at BNY Mellon, said it was an easy decision to sponsor a quintessentially British sporting event for five years. "It's beyond a sport, it's a history and a heritage."

For such a historic day, organisers hope drama is confined to a titanic struggle between the 32 athletes. In the 70th women's boat race on Saturday, Cambridge lead the tally by 40-29, but Oxford have won 11 of the past 15 races.

In a reminder of the fickle fortunes of the river, Oxford university's women's crew had to be rescued by the Chiswick RNLI lifeboat last week during a training session in which their boat was swamped in excessive wind against the tide.

Whatever the outcome, the day will be remembered for student women racing the same gruelling course an hour before the men.

However, most moves towards equality in the sport surfaced more than 40 years ago. In the US, a federal law, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education programme or activity.

In 1976, Yale University's women rowers took action in protest at the lack of facilities. For instance, the men's team had new boats, a locker room and hot showers while the women had make-do boats, no locker room and their showers did not work.

The team stripped off their sweatshirts in front of Joni Barnett, Yale's director of women's athletics, with the press present, to reveal "Title IX" written on their backs, declaring: "These are the bodies Yale is exploiting."

American Daphne Martschenko, seven in the Cambridge boat this year, said: "It was a moment that defined history, and shaped the lives of women who were to come afterwards in sport in the US."

The women's race is at 4.50pm and the men's at 5.50pm.

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