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Forget the gender divide, sport is sport

Kyah Simon after scoring for the Matildas against Brazil. (Photo: AFP)
Roar Guru
24th June, 2015
51

The Matildas doing so well in the FIFA Women’s World Cup has brought out some of the best and worst in sports opinion.

As a sports fan, I sometimes fail to grasp how toxic some people can be towards to women’s representative sides when compared against the men’s.

One of the major points that always gets dragged up is the money divide between men’s and women’s. I will split this into two categories for readability of this article.

There is funding the team receives from the governing body, and money received from sponsors. At the end of the day, the current Australian sporting landscape is the men’s representative sides in the mainstream sports.

I state mainstream, as it’s predominantly the four football codes in State of Origin, AFL, Wallabies or Socceroos. That’s where the viewers are, and that’s who the sponsors want to be seen by. Companies don’t sponsor teams purely out of the goodness of their hearts, it’s a business decision.

The other form of revenue is from the governing bodies. I separate this from specifically government funding, as sporting bodies do have alternative sources of income. This is one area again that comes down to a business decision.

Again picking on the four football codes, money comes in from grassroots; which are predominately men’s at this stage of the sporting lifecycle. So that’s where the governing bodies want to reinvest in, keeping that flow coming in.

However, the main crux that frustrates me is when punters compare the women’s competition directly against the men’s and call it inferior. The Matildas and the W-League have been compared against the Socceroos and the A-League. It’s not really a fare comparison at the best of times, the W-League is a part-time competition, and most players study or work part-time to pay the bills.

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I doubt the majority of A-League players are working part-time at local restaurants to pay the rent. And the Matildas and Socceroos are always going to be different, because they play different styles of game against different opposition.

I remember reading one stupid comment on Facebook, where someone stated that the Matildas would be thrashed if they took on the men. Besides being inaccurate (the Matildas play warm-up games against men and win), it’s a pointless comparison of the two. Women and men play separate competitions, so I could use the same argument to pull two random teams from different competition tiers and rip into them.

One comparison I do laugh at is women and motor racing. How does gender in any way affect their ability to drive a performance car in a race? When they are in the car, you wouldn’t know who was driving unless you follow the sport closely enough to translate the number to the driver and make an opinion based on that.

The argument that they are worse than the men is ridiculous. Firstly there isn’t that many do make the comparison, so it’s a hard pool to crack.

Put 48 blue marbles in a box, and two pink marbles. Chances are, the first marble will be blue. This analogy is meant to represent that in a straight everyone is equal; the balance of probability is that the best driver is probably going to be a lad purely because there is so many lads to potentially lead.

We, as Australians, love our sport. If the women’s game isn’t your thing, then don’t watch it. I’ll support an Aussie in nearly any sport they play, regardless of gender.

When I watch our hockey teams play, I don’t see the men’s playing superior hockey to the Women, I see my national representative team playing the sport they love. Same as when I watch the Southern Stars play in the Ashes, I see 11 Aussies taking it to the English.

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Will there be a shift that sees an equalisation of the women’s game to the men’s across all sports? Probably not in my life time. But the mindset that the women’s game is inferior to the men’s is past its use by date.

Celebrate sport for what it is, support your local team, your state team, your national team. If one team isn’t for you, then move along to one that is.

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