Chloe Birch interview: Fighting for equality for women in sport and for medals on the badminton court

The badminton star from Sheffield is trying to enact change from within.

When she felt the culture she was in at the National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes was not maximising her potential, she spoke out, initially to the detriment of her career.

When she recalled the barriers that she encountered when first stepping into the elite environment, she started doing something about it to ensure the girls that followed did not face the same obstacles.

“Being from Yorkshire, I’m not particularly quiet about these things,” the 27-year-old two-time Commonwealth Games medallist tells The Yorkshire Post.

The urge to speak out first arose before the Tokyo Olympics. She believed the environment being fostered at the national centre was not conducive to a successful performance.

So together with her doubles partner Lauren Smith, and another Yorkshire athlete in Marcus Ellis, they aired their grievances to the Badminton England hierarchy.

The governing body responded by taking away their coaching.

“That was a really difficult time,” says Birch. “Myself, Marcus and Lauren had had conversations with Badminton England and we didn’t think it would get to the point where we weren’t allowed to be coached by anyone at the national centre.

“Especially for me, I tried to do what I thought was appropriate, went through the right channels, tried to have conversations with the right people, tried to show evidence of what had happened, tried to show things weren’t right.

“So to then be removed from coaching for three/four months in the middle of a massive tournament block was a really big blow. We’d sometimes be sat having conversations with the interim chief executive about what was happening the night before we were supposed to be playing at 10am the next day.”

Birch took herself away from what was becoming a stressful environment and returned to Loughborough University where earlier in her career she had retreated to when she didn’t feel comfortable in the elite environment.

“By January 2022 I was training at Loughborough University, which for me was quite a good time, I enjoyed taking that step back from the intense environment. It was nice being in a place where everybody was just enjoying their badminton,” she says.

“It helped me at the start of last year, it was another support system for me.”

What was happening in Milton Keynes was slowly eroding her love for the sport.

Birch had been a prodigious talent during her childhood in Sheffield. She attended Silverdale School, won the Michael Vaughan Award there for sporting achievement, played at Abbeydale Badminton Club from the age of eight and represented Great Britain at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival at age 17.

Upping sticks and making the move to the National Badminton Centre in her late teens seemed like the sensible next step.

That’s when she first realised that a female athlete is treated differently to a male.

“Starting out as a kid, I was lucky with the coaches and environments I had surrounding me in Sheffield, but as I progressed into elite sport I definitely felt I was treated a bit differently to some of my male counterparts,” she says.

“And it made me not want to be in that environment. One of the reasons I went to Loughborough University to do a degree was because I didn’t feel comfortable in that environment.

“I could go to Loughborough to get a degree and also train in an environment I was comfortable in. I was a lot happier there.

“I have been treated differently because I was a woman speaking out rather than if I was a male speaking out. I’ve felt that for as long as I’ve been associated with the national badminton centre.

"I used to get told I was speaking out too much, I was being too negative, when I was seeing other people saying the same things and having such different things said about them.”

It didn’t stop Birch then, and it hasn’t stopped her now.

Last year, amid a season when she lost and regained Smith as doubles partner, took on a new mixed doubles partner and tried to win a Commonwealth Games gold medal, Birch began influencing change from within.

The ostracised three were welcomed back into the Badminton England fold in early 2022, with conditions from themselves that they would have a representative on the board to give them a voice.

Changes were made among the staff and Birch now reports confidently that the environment is a lot more professional and welcoming, while admitting that ‘change doesn’t happen overnight’.

“We’ve definitely taken steps in the right direction, I think there’s more steps to go, I think people are aware of that, but we’re being heard, we’re being listened to,” she reports.

But she also wanted to do something about it herself.

“I might not be active on social media, I might not be promoting myself that way, but behind the scenes I’m trying to do a lot of work to make this sport better because I really care about it,” says Birch.

“I was recently involved in a UK Sport programme on social change, my topic was trying to get more women into the elite environment and making them comfortable.

“It was a six-month programme, we got seminars from leading experts in the world. I felt like I got loads out of it, especially to push forward on some of the topics I really want to change in badminton, and within sport, mainly the female aspect of it, female mental health, coupled with having more female staff within elite environments.

“Across a lot of sports in the past we’ve put women into roles and said ‘okay we’ve got someone in the environment now that should make everything better’ but actually nothing has changed.

“The woman has then been blamed, when actually it’s the environment that’s failing because the women cannot thrive because of the culture.

“I did a lot of research into it, spoke to a lot of people from retiring athletes, coaches, physios, all these people that are involved in elite sport day to day, how they feel in these situations and how we can get the best out of them and how they’ve been made to feel in an environment they didn’t feel comfortable in and how we can change that.

“There are so many people that are so valuable that we lose, especially females, because these centres are run by male-dominated teams which can be difficult for women to have their voices heard.

“For me, going forward, how do we get the culture right, how do we get the right people in the environments, and more females who are allowed to thrive and that are allowed to have the inputs they believe they can. Instead of their voices not being heard.

“That’s why I’m so passionate about wanting it to change at the badminton centre because it can be done, we can have an environment where we’re a mixed gender sport and we treat everyone the same.”

Amid it all, Birch is trying to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

Together with Smith, they put a turbulent 2022 behind them to win a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham last summer.

“With Lauren coming back into the women’s team we only had six weeks training prior to Birmingham, so to get into that final, to get a silver medal on home turf with friends and family watching, was a huge achievement for us,” says Birch.

She is also developing a new mixed doubles partnership with Ethan van Leeuwen, a national champion five years her junior.

“It’s good for me to learn other skills associated with mixed doubles but also trying to mentor him into the senior game and the big tournaments,” continues Birch, who will play both ladies and mixed doubles at the Yonex All England Championships in Birmingham from March 14-19.

“I’ve always enjoyed playing two events, hence why I played singles and doubles for such a long time.”

And then, with a more professional set-up now surrounding her in Milton Keynes, the Sheffield star who is not afraid to speak her mind, is targetting Paris.

“I wasn’t sure where I was going to be in 2023, but I’m very happy we’re back playing, back building to Paris,” she says.