While the first advert (which I blogged about 18 months ago) focused on positive body image and just being active, Sport England say the focus has shifted for the second wave of the campaign, to a message about mental well-being. It's okay for life to get in the way of exercise, they're saying. It's okay to need a break, and it's okay not to be brilliant at something if you just get out there and do it.

By using a Maya Angelou poem, "Phenomenal Woman", and including more older women in the film, the direction of the new campaign is very much on encouraging women of all ages to get involved in sport.

From within my personal social media bubble it seems to have got a good amount of traction, although given that I tend to follow sporty women that's to be expected.

The launch got a decent amount of coverage in the media too, but the key question will be whether this phase of the campaign works.

According to Sport England the first phase definitely did. They say 2.8 million more women are "more active" as a result of #ThisGirlCan, although it's slightly unclear as to how that stat was worked out. Participation in sport figures show that 200,000 more women do regular sport than before the campaign launched, a meaningful rise of 2.9 per cent.

So that's all good. We're getting more involved in sport at the grassroots.

But I'm still not seeing much development at the elite level or any sign that media coverage of women's elite sport - which ought to help inspire girls to get involved in something - has really increased. The women's Six Nations rugby championship is being screened on Sky, which is great if you have Sky, but not terrestrial television, and during the coverage of the men's Six Nations there hasn't been much mention of the parallel women's competition.

A quick scan of sports pages online reveals the usual lack of women: the BBC had a tiny picture of runner Laura Muir and a story about the England women's football team; women on The Sun's sports pages were "curvy beauties" photographed with Usain Bolt at a Trinidad carnival, singer Mariah Carey, and an appalling strip of 'Sports in Briefs' featuring women tangentally linked to sport in bikinis; The Guardian had the #ThisGirlCan video near the bottom of the page. It's just endlessly depressing.

So while I love the new #ThisGirlCan advert - the diversity in it, the explicit messages about fitness and being a strong woman - and really hope that the positive effect continues to grow, I still think that it's only half the story. Am I being hopelessly optimistic to expect that one day we'll have both grassroots participation and equal celebration of our amazing elite female athles

The decision has been imposed on FISA by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which is seeking gender parity across the whole Games by Tokyo. Rowing has, since 1976, had eight men's events and six women's events at the Olympics. In 1996 the men's coxed pair and coxed four and women's coxless four were replaced with the lightweight men's four (LM4-) and lightweight double sculls (LM/LW2x) for both genders.

In Rio there were 550 athletes from 69 countries, including 11 making their Olympic debuts, competing at the rowing regatta. Rowing is the third-largest Olympic sport, behind athletics and swimming, and crucially the IOC do not want to make it bigger. The sport's quota is already seen as on the large side for the number of nations which take part, especially given its lack of appeal as a spectator sport and the high cost of a rowing venue. Therefore FISA had its hands tied when it came to increasing the number of women's events.

The IOC is also on record as being against weight-restricted sports, outside of the combat sports, and FISA president Jean-Christophe Rolland told the meeting in Tokyo that the IOC's starting point for Tokyo 2020 was "zero lightweights". In other words, the 'alternative proposal' put forward which replaced the men's four with a lightweight women's four (thus increasing the number of lightweights at the Olympics) was just not one which the IOC was likely to accept.

There still seems no guarantee that lightweight doubles will be maintained for Tokyo, although a good argument for them is that lightweight doubles, like the single sculls events, enables a number of countries to participate who otherwise might not qualify any boats at all. Some countries, particularly in Asia, really struggle to find athletes who are physically big enough to compete with the top rowing nations like GB and Germany - although some lightweights did pretty well in the singles in Rio, such as the young Mexican Kenia Lechuga Alanis who made the B final and then won bronze in LW1x at the Under 23 World Championships.

So in the end the FISA congress voted to replace the LM4- with a women's coxless four.

Cue celebration across the rowing community for this vote in favour of gender parity? Erm, nope. Cue quite a lot of social media posts focusing not on the gain for women but the loss for lightweight men's sweep rowing, particularly (and unsurprisingly) from many of those negatively affected by the decision.

Admittedly in recent years the quality of racing in the LM4- has been outstanding, with close races common, and the event brought South Africa a historic gold medal at the London 2012 Olympic Games. But unlike the light 2xs, I'm not sure the case can really be made that as an event it increases universiality - the number of nations taking part in the Olympics.

All of the nations racing the LM4- in Rio had crews in other boat classes. In Rio and in London it did help increase the number of nations winning medals as neither Switzerland nor South Africa won another rowing medal. But in the six Olympics in which the LM4- has featured Denmark has won a medal every time, including three golds, and only eight other countries have won medals. (A total of 11 countries have won LM2x medals and 10 have won LW2x medals).

As a small heavyweight rower myself (165cm, and somewhere around 67kg when I was training properly) I appreciate the reasons why we have lightweight rowing. It can be tough to compete against people who are half a foot taller and several kg heavier. But small heavyweights have shown they can do pretty well at international level too. Helen Glover is a good example - she's not that tall or heavy and yet she applies her power so efficiently that she can beat much bigger people. She and Heather Stanning are dwarfed by the Danish bronze medallists in pictures from the Rio podium.

There'll definitely be some lightweights out there who are good enough to ditch the diet, put on a few kilos and be competitive with the bigger guys. The world best time for the LM4- is only 5.5 seconds slower than the best time for the M4-. A greater margin separated the gold and bronze medallists in the M4- in Rio.

The M4- semifinals and the LM4- final were run on the same day in Rio, 11 August. I can't quite remember what the weather did that day but with two hours between those events, the Swiss LM4- gold medallists would have been fifth in one of the M4- semis and second in the other, based on time. That shows that the lightweights' more technical way of rowing, where you have less raw power but often a far-better power-to-weight ratio, could potentially make those boats as fast as those crewed by the guys who are basically big and strong. It would be great to see the Danes, for instance, have a 4- in the mix with the Aussies and the Brits.

Nevertheless several people with more knowledge of these things than me have voiced concerns about the impact on both lightweight male sweep rowers but also women. Martin Cross, who is both an Olympian and a good journalist, says getting rid of the LM4- will reduce the chances for smaller, young rowers coming out of university. Certainly there are athletes out there - I've definitely met some of them - who would probably never have got to the Olympics without the LM4-, because they're too small to compete with the big guys or just aren't natural scullers.

Another issue which Martin raises is that there isn't an awful lot of depth in the W4- at the moment. This is a valid point; there isn't. But in the past it's been the case that giving an event more prominence brings on the competition. I hope the countries which currently have decent women's 8s are not suddenly going to abandon the 8 because of the 4-, and maybe some countries which can't muster a decent 8 will have enough women to make a good 4- and because of the Olympics they'll actually nurture that crew.

Just like I've met men who wouldn't have got to the Olympics had they not been in the LM4-, I know women who didn't get to the Olympics because they missed out on the 10 sweep places available for women - phenomenal athletes, who deserved a chance, but there just weren't the seats there.

What has surprised me about the reaction to the vote is the general negativity to it. As noted, FISA really didn't have much choice given the IOC's views, yet several lightweights have described the result as the "wrong decision". Conversely, there hasn't been an awful lot of vocal support from female rowers, with a few exceptions:

Great news for the W4-. I suspect this'll become fiercely competitive in the next 3 years. https://t.co/YaylSkQjkX

— Sarah Winckless (@Sarah_Winckless) February 11, 2017

Historic day at @WorldRowing #FISACongress gender parity voted through for @Tokyo2020 proud to be a rower @WomenSportTrust @Womeninsport_uk pic.twitter.com/BvBZ9MqrX5

— Guin Batten (@guinbatten) February 11, 2017

As women perhaps we need to be more outspoken about stuff like this. We can acknowledge that it's a shame to lose an event, but we need to be louder about the positive impact for women. It is 2017 and gender parity is not something we should be arguing over. While acknowledging that the decision is the end of a relatively short Olympic era for lightweight men's sweep rowers, it is the next step in the long battle to make sure that women's sport is valued and nurtured as highly as men's. And that, to my mind, is vital.

One of the reasons I wanted to coach was that I feel quite strongly there aren't enough women's coaches around. I found a statistic here from 2012 which suggests 30 per cent of all coaches in the UK are female, dropping to 18 per cent of qualified coaches. I imagine this will skew heavily by sport, with more women coaching sports attracting more female participation such as equestrian, netball and gymnastics.

In rowing men definitely outnumber the women. In 17 years of competitive rowing I've had four female coaches and at our club currently there are four of us, including our junior head coach. To put that into context I think there are at least eight men coaching right now for us, including our three professional senior coaches.

During my swimming years I had a few female coaches, most notably the remarkable Pat who coached younger swimmers alongside her husband Adam. She's pretty much retired from coaching now but can still be found in the lanes of York's pools! I seem to remember a roughly equal number of male and female coaches at swimming when I was a teenager and looking at my club's website now the majority of their coaches are women - apart from the head coach.

Pat in swimming, and more recently Pauline at rowing, have both been big influences on me. They've devoted enormous amounts of time and energy to the sports they love over many years and show that you can succeed in sport regardless of age and gender.

A straw poll of friends on social media suggests that some sports have plenty of female coaches. Equestrian, gymnastics, netball and lacrosse seem to come out well and most of my female friends had had female coaches in several sports over their careers.

Other sports fare less well. A couple of friends are fencers, and they say women are not well-represented as coaches in fencing. Two male rowing friends only ever had one female coach across a fairly long career. A friend who has played football and golf to a serious level says she has rarely had female football coaches and never had a female golf coach.

One friend commented that "the better you got and further you progressed, the more likely you were to get a male coach", and as you go up the levels towards more elite sport the numbers of women do seem to drop off. I downloaded the Team GB media guide for Rio 2016, which says that out of 241 officials at the Olympics, 49 were women (20.3 per cent). But of those 49, only 13 had the job title 'coach' - out of 122 coaches in total. Women were more commonly in Rio with Team GB as physios, team managers, performance analysts and so on. A huge number of sports had no female coaches on the team, including athletics, and sports like rugby sevens and hockey employed men as their lead women's coaches.

Equestrian had three head coaches, including Di Lampard; Amanda Reddin headed up the women's artistic gymnastics team and Tracy Whittaker-Smith the trampoline team; and both synchro swimming coaches were female. These were the only women to hold the 'head coach' title for GB in Rio.

But the question is, does it matter? Aren't men just as able to coach a woman to success in sport as women? My most successful rowing seasons were all when I had men coaching me, and one friend who has competed at a very high level in several sports points out:

Whether I respected [my coaches] or not had nothing to do with being male or female.

Turn the question on its head, however, and you have the sort of reaction Andy Murray got when he appointed Amélie Mauresmo as his coach. He was the first tennis star to choose a woman as his coach and found himself having to defend the appointment in the media. Meanwhile swimming star Adam Peaty has been coached by former Olympic swimmer Mel Marshall since 2009. In a 2015 interview Peaty said:

With a male coach you can have a good argument I think but with a woman I think you just really negotiate.

He picked up on the fact that men and women tend to have different styles and approaches to life and therefore often different approaches to coaching. Interestingly another friend noted that she'd had a female coach when she was coxing a male rowing crew, and that the coach had taken a very laddish approach to the task. My friend thinks she might have achieved the same outcomes had she not tried to be 'one of the boys'.

Peaty and Murray have both commented on the more thoughtful, philosophical approach which women can bring to coaching and I think that's something which needs to be recognised. Women are often told to 'man up' when they're participating in sport - and I've probably used the phrase myself - but while promoting a tough, take-no-prisoners attitude to competition you have to also recognise that women bring different baggage to sport.

One of my current squad members notes:

Sport has always been something you had to 'man up' to do; male coaches have always positioned themselves as the voice of reason attempting to control a 'gaggle' of girls who just want to chat etc. subtly reinforcing gender norms in a performative environment to which young girls especially, will respond and play along.

I think you have to recognise that, for instance, women are prone to showing our emotions more; not necessarily being more emotional, but allowing those emotions to surface. I've often got emotional when selection decisions have gone against me (sometimes my emotion was justified, sometimes it wasn't!). I haven't always found my male coaches have responded helpfully to that emotion. I'm not saying female coaches should be kind fluffy bunnies and always be positive when it's not warranted, but I do believe in trying to listen to my athletes and respond to their queries, help them understand why decisions have been made and support them if they're upset. Push them on the water, support them off it.

Male friends responding to my straw poll have recognised this, acknowledging a different approach is needed when coaching women and girls to when they coach men. Maybe women are better equipped to deliver this. Equally, in the little coaching of men I've done I've found that my normal style of coaching doesn't work as effectively.

Perhaps the most important factor in trying to get more women to coach is the need for role models. A friend who is part of a mostly-female gymnastics coaching team notes that they tend to lose boys after a few years, looking for a male coach. Personally I've respected the achievements of the men who have coached me, but I know I'm more likely to respond to someone who has trodden the same path before me. As a woman, that person will be female.

That doesn't mean I'm arguing that only women can coach women's sport, and only men can coach men's, but I do think we need a better balance across all sports, and we need more women leading coaching teams at elite level to be the role models for those athletes who retire and could, perhaps, move into coaching. Where's the incentive or the examples for our top female track and field athletes to stay in their sport and pass on their knowledge to the next generation when all they see around them are male faces telling them what to do?

Obviously there are other barriers to encouraging women to coach, not least the fact that many amateur and professional athletes retire from sport when they have children. But I've seen men juggling coaching with childcare successfully - barriers are there to be overcome, not to accept.

There is also a cultural element to this. It looks as though we're especially bad at encouraging women to coach in the UK. US Athletics, for example, had a whole team of female coaches for their women's team in Rio, led by four-time Olympian Connie Price-Smith. The US women's soccer team (the current World Cup champions) are coached by a woman.

However even as I was finishing this blog post I stumbled across a new initiative designed to address the lack of female participation - and female coaches - in tennis. Spearheaded by tennis coach Judy Murray, She Rallies kicks off this weekend with a female coaching conference. Murray's got the support of the Lawn Tennis Association behind her. This, it seems to me, is exactly the sort of thing more governing bodies should be encouraging. By tackling the dual problem of fewer girls playing a sport and fewer women coaching it, they might just bring about the sort of change which most of us would love to see.

Many thanks to all my fabulous friends who contributed insightful thoughts and comments on this topic!