The Roar
The Roar

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Don't let laziness keep you from loving women's sport

27th August, 2015
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Expert
27th August, 2015
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Why do I know so little about women’s sport? It’s an interesting question, with quite an uninteresting answer, that being: I’m lazy.

But if my own sloth and apathy is to blame for my shameful lack of knowledge of the female half of the sporting world, I can possibly offer the mitigating factor that the world makes it so damn easy to know about men’s sport.

Men’s sport is served on gleaming platters to me. I never have to work to find out what’s happening in the men’s sporting world: I’m fed a constant stream of information.

On TV, the radio, the internet: it’s all laid out for me. If I want to watch men’s sport, it’s a click away. If I want to know the scores, I know exactly how.

The fact is taking a close interest in women’s sport requires a lot more effort. Women’s sport is rarely televised, and when it is, it’s sparsely advertised. Results are generally relegated to the lower reaches of news sites and the later segments of bulletins, if reported at all.

The personalities of women’s sport are mostly obscure – few of them get to flex on TV ads or grin from billboards, and if it takes some work to learn the names of a national women’s team, it’s double the effort to put faces to them.

And so we have the situation I find myself in: although I call myself a supporter of women’s sport, my confession is that off the top of my head, I could probably name, at best, three quarters of the Australian women’s cricket team, only one or two of the Matildas (and one of them is also one of the cricketers, so I don’t know if it should count), a handful of netballers and basketballers, and absolutely zero Australian women rugby or Aussie rules players.

When it comes to female athletes from outside this country, it’s a non-starter – only in the fields of athletics and tennis am I au fait with non-Australian sportswomen at all.

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This is not because I dislike women’s sport. Women’s soccer I find isn’t a hell of a lot different to men’s. Women’s cricket, on the other hand, is quite a different game to the male version, but for that very reason brings a different aesthetic and variety of skill to appreciate.

Women’s basketball is, for me, frequently more entertaining than the men’s, because of what some would probably say is its weakness: the lesser influence of freakish feats of individual athleticism helps showcase the full range of ball skills. And netball, though far from my favourite sport, is second to none in its ability to generate supreme tension and drama in a close finish.

But I neglect them, because I’m lazy. I admit it. I should know a hell of a lot more about the many outstanding athletes currently plying their trade. And I hope that I can ameliorate my ignorance in future.

But if we are to elevate women’s sport to a status equal to that of men’s, I fear we can’t just all make personal pledges to try harder – there’s a system here that needs to be changed.

There are a few green shoots showing through – the Diamonds’ World Cup victory attracted some promising attention, as did the Matildas’ brave showing in the last soccer World Cup. The Southern Stars’ exploits in the Ashes have sparked enough interest that, miracle of miracles, the final T20 is actually to be shown on free-to-air TV next week.

And then there was the women’s AFL game that actually outrated the men – admittedly the men’s game it outrated was the depressing spectacle of Adelaide dismembering Essendon, but it is an excellent indicator of potential.

So how do we build on these green shoots? How do we push forward with the promise already shown, so that eventually women cricketers, footballers, netballers and basketballers are equal in acclaim and reward to their male counterparts? It surely can be done – if women’s tennis can create millionaire celebrities, why can’t women’s soccer?

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It can, I am sure, be done. But I am not naive enough to claim I know exactly how. To be honest, I’m open to suggestions. I know there’s a vicious circle to be overcome here: interest in women’s sports is low, which means media coverage is minimal, which means the money isn’t there, which means players can’t be full-time professionals, which means observers dismiss the sports as lower standard, which means interest remains low, which means…it goes on and on.

At some point there must be a circuit-breaker: either a groundswell of interest despite the lack of media coverage, or a big injection of cash despite the absence of proven mass following, or… something else.

Whatever the answer, a shift in attitudes is necessary, I’m sure. Has that begun already? Possibly. Certainly, though the coverage of women’s sport is shamefully lacking, it’s significantly improved from, say, 20 years ago. We’re starting from a low base, but playing the optimist, I suggest we have at least started.

But as I said, I do not actually know the best way to effect major change here. But I have some ideas, and I humbly present them here, in the hope that even if I’m wrong, I might get people talking (it’d be really nice if you all say I’m right though).

First, let’s stop forever comparing sportswomen to sportsmen. This is perfectly obvious when it comes to, for example, people pointing out that women cricketers can’t bowl as fast or hit the ball as far.

Negative comparisons are self-evidently damaging to the cause, and moreover miss the point that here we have skilled practitioners playing a different game, who should be watched and admired on their own terms, not on how well they match up to the benchmarks set in a different sport.

But positive comparisons can be damaging too, when they serve to patronise. Look at the way the Southern Stars’ Ashes campaign has been remarked upon. So often we hear, ‘The women have done what the men couldn’t’, ‘The men’s team is rubbish, check out the women instead’, and variations thereof. Very well-meaning, but it’s a problem for a few reasons:

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1. It’s an illogical comparison anyway – to say ‘the woman have done what the men couldn’t’ suggests that the men’s and women’s team were facing exactly the same challenge, when in fact they were playing against different teams, in different conditions, and indeed different games. To say the women’s team is ‘better’ than the men’s makes as much sense as saying that the Hawthorn Hawks are better than the Socceroos. But more importantly than that…

2. It perpetuates the sense among the public that women’s sport is a consolation prize for the public – to be turned on and enjoyed only when the men’s edition has disappointed. If women’s sport is to gain mass consciousness the way men’s sport has, it can’t be marketed as ‘if the main team’s losing, check out the ladies’.

3. Moreover, if we say that women’s teams are a good alternative for when men’s teams are losing, the logical conclusion is that when women’s teams are losing, we should turn them off too. In men’s sport it is generally accepted that when you follow a team, you’ll keep following them when times are tough – that’s a mentality that has to apply to women’s sport too.

It just does no good to talk of sportswomen in terms of how they compare to sportsmen, particularly at this stage of history when so many women’s sports remain amateur or semi-professional even at the elite level. Women’s sports have their strengths, attractions and beauty, and they can be appreciated for them without genuflecting in the direction of male megastars as the standard by which everything can be judged.

Cathy Freeman would not have won a gold medal in the men’s 400m and Serena Williams could not win Wimbledon against the men, but we know they are magnificent sportswomen and we justly acclaim them as such. We can similarly acclaim Meg Lanning’s sensational skill with the bat, or Lisa de Vanna’s thunderbolt goals, without bothering to wonder whether they have the power or pace of men in the same position.

Next, it is absolutely vital we speak of sportspeople as sportspeople. Commentators given responsibility for covering women’s sport should be instructed in the strongest terms to avoid condescension or puffery. The excruciating sight of Australia’s best cricketers being quizzed on their appearance or relationships by Channel Nine‘s buffoons should never be repeated.

It would be nice to reach a level of sporting punditry where it would never even occur to anyone to write a column like Graham Cornes’s recent doltish blithering about lady footballers and the discomfort they cause in his reptilian hindbrain.

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The musings of Cornes, who experts estimate is two thousand years old, on how women manage to chase a footy and have breasts at the same time, should become as unthinkable as an article wherein a respected commentator questions how men manage to play with those awkward dangly bits flapping about between their legs.

It’s a fairly simple rule, really: if you wouldn’t comment on it or ask about it when it’s a man, don’t do it when it’s a woman. This goes for matters of physical attractiveness, fashion sense, romantic escapades and questions about child-rearing.

Of course, this also means women need to be subject to the same scrutiny as men. Male sports stars aren’t immune from comment on their looks or speculation about their love lives, and while it may be desirable that this not be so, we don’t expect that women’s sport, if it achieves widespread popularity, be any more bereft of tabloid silliness than men’s. And professional sportswomen will have to deal with all the criticisms of form, fitness, commitment, body language and off-field poise and etiquette that the men have to put up with.

Basically, I believe there needs to be a recognition that women’s sport is, well, sport. We fans can follow and support and love and obsess over the games that women play quite as easily as the games men play. And some women’s sport we may adore, and some may leave us cold. That’s sport for you. But it behooves us to help achieve a level footing before we make up our minds.

That level footing might be a long way away, and will require manoeuvrings of administrators and money far beyond my humble standing in the world. But hopefully I, and many other fans who support women’s sport but have until now allowed themselves to remain far too ignorant of it, can help the cause along a little by making that effort – to watch, to understand, to appreciate, and to spread the word.

Because the best reason to change the way things are is simply that there’s some brilliant sport being played out there, and as lovers of brilliant sport, if we don’t make the effort, we’re the ones missing out.

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