Sports minister - "Women should try cheerleading and ballet"

Women who feel "unfeminine" when playing sport could take up other activities like "ballet, gymnastics, cheerleading and even roller-skating", the minister of sports, equalities and tourism Helen Grant has suggested. She said that the key to increasing female participation in sport was to give women "what they want".

Grant said there was a lot of work to be done before the public placed female sports stars on an equal footing with their male counterparts. But she said she hoped that the Sochi Winter Games, at which all of Team GB's medals thus far have been won by women, would help.

"It's having a good spread on offer. For example some girls may well not like doing very traditional hockey, tennis or athletics, others might, so for those who don't want to, how about considering maybe gym, ballet, cheerleading? It's not just schools, it's clubs, it's being innovative. Actually looking at our women and our girls and asking, what do they want?" she said.

In an interview with the Telegraph, she added: "You don't have to feel unfeminine … There are some wonderful sports which you can do and perform to a very high level and I think those participating look absolutely radiant and very feminine such as ballet, gymnastics, cheerleading and even roller-skating."

Grant said that the England women's cricket team's succes in their recent Ashes tour – in stark contrast to the men's travails – was seen by very few people. "Unfortunately there hasn't been the amount of media coverage we need if we're going to close this gender gap."

She said: "I think let's see how it goes and to be fair to broadcasters they're looking at it and getting better. You have to give it the chance don't you. Let's see how we do at the Olympics."

But she faced criticism from gender equality campaigners, who said she should not suggest that the "only way for women to get involved in sports is to be girlie and feminine".

Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism project said: "It's actually discouraging for a minister to say this. With our great athletes performing fantastically at the Olympics, we still see media outlets focusing on the looks and femininity, which the comments seem to do too." The athlete Jessica Ennis-Hill, who won gold at the London 2012 Olympics, has previously spoken about having to forget about looking feminine in her teens.

She told the Telegraph: "When you get to 13 or 14 sport is not the thing girls want to do, there are other things happening. Girls in my year didn't want to get hot and sweaty. It didn't appeal to them. It is still the case now but it is changing more and more."

Bianca London, a former cheerleader, said that the sport was not for shrinking violets: "I witnessed legs popping out of their sockets, numerous people passing out through stress and broken arms – it really is that hard-core and there wasn't a pair of pom-poms in sight," she told the paper.

Grant admitted that, while the gender gap has closed from 2.2 million recently to 1.8 million, there was "still a pretty big difference".

"I think we ultimately need a behavioural change. I think we need to get to the point where women's sport is looked on and regarded as equal to the men's game. When we get to that point that's when we get the balanced coverage.

"To get to that point, we need certainly the media to do more, we need more finance, more businesses getting involved through sponsorship and we needs sports governing bodies and others and schools to be very innovative with ways to get our girls involved.

She said that it would be important to consult women on what would help them get into sport; "that can be whether it's a Zumba class or a game of rounders after they've dropped the kids off. That's the approach we need to take – what works for them.

"We're looking at this particular location and trying to understand about local woman, their lifestyles, and what motivates them to getting into sport," she told the paper.

She added: "There's no point putting a sports class on if you know many of the women won't be able to attend because they won't be able to pray. It's looking at everyone's circumstances and trying to find something that lets them deal with the barriers and hurdles and let them participate."