The meteoric rise in women’s sports has been one of the most exciting trends in the entire sporting industry in Australia.
Every prominent sporting code has now formed their own elite women’s competitions.
- Australian Football League has introduced the AFL Women’s (AFLW) competition.
- Cricket has its national women’s cricket team, the Women’s National Cricket League (WNCL) and Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL).
- Football has its national women’s soccer team, the Matildas, and its W-League women’s competition.
- Rugby league has its national women’s team, the Jillaroos; an annual women’s State of Origin match; and the newly formed NRL Women’s (NRLW) competition.
- Rugby union has its national women’s team, the Wallaroos, and its newly formed women’s rugby union competition, Super W.
- Netball has its national team, the Diamonds, and its highly popular National Netball League.
- Basketball has its national team, the Opals, and the Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL).
Katie Brennan of the Bulldogs AFLW team. (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
And it’s not just the prominent team sports doing well – Australia is producing many top-calibre female athletes in individual sports like tennis, golf, surfing, mixed martial arts and many Olympic sports.
Women’s sports has grown and developed into the elite level whereby a large percentage of female athletes now compete full-time and are paid accordingly, with increased exposure through television, online streaming, media coverage and sponsorship. It’s driving the rise of high-profile female athletes and record levels of interest and support.
Superstars like Ellyse Perry, Samantha Kerr and Caitlin Bassett are among the most influential female athletes inspiring a generation of girls simply by showing their world-class talents and competitiveness.
With women’s sports at the elite level making unprecedented progress, the glass ceiling preventing women and girls taking up sports at grassroots levels, which included lack of girls teams and competitions to join, girls not being included in male-dominated teams and sports and limited pathways for women and girls to compete at the elite level, have been shattered.
Although there’s still plenty of progress to be made at the elite level and grassroots level, girls are being inspired to follow their sporting dreams and are encouraged to have a go at whichever sport they love.
Sport is a very important part of Australia’s culture, and now that culture is being enriched by women and girls being encouraged not only to compete but also to succeed in traditionally male-dominated sports.
Brainstrust
Roar Rookie
The majority of the funding for womens sports in this country is from the government and has been declining along with the Olympic performance , and then for sucessfull women their pay off was in endorsements and thats been declining as the media seems to focus more on the male dominated sports. Look at Cathy Freeman she would have been one of the main sport earners in Australia around the 2000 mark through endorsements. In terms of professional national womens leagues the WNBL was around in the late 80's and 90's and has gone backwards since then. The pay has declined and the best Australian women wil not bother to play here because of that. In contrast with that womens basketball earnings has increased overseas but well under the amount mens basketball has increased in the states. Liz Cambage got big money from the Chinese but the others would be lucky to get 100,000 a year. If your looking for a career where a women can earn big money within the sport then you still limited to tennis and golf. Netball is the next well best paid but that is getting less attention now that the so called major codes have bought into women after ignoring them. Cricket locally here is the best paid in the world, the difference between is still huge but even more so unlike the men who can pop off and play in all these other leagues and quadruple their money the women don't have that option. The Matildas get a basic wage now, the W-league used to be mainly unpaid and now is a vey small amount, if your good you can earn something overseas but not that much. The only real big earners would be Perry and Kerr through endorsements, the rest are going to earn a lot less than even a lowly placed male AFL or NRL player. The womens AFL is mainly window dressing without the amount given to the players small compared to the amount marketing it in order to cross promote the mens competition. In the case of AFL the amount of government funding now directed to the mens game through one means or another is now more than all our Olympic sports combined. If you look at the Perth Stadium thats a great example of how AFL can grab government funding for mens AFL in disguise. Not only did it cost 1.5 billion, the only rent paid by the two AFL teams is going to directly to men in WA afl. They local state players will earn more than the women nationally . the new Fremantle training center is another 100 million spent on AFL for men.This is happening in endemic amounts all around the country. Then you have all the pokie money the AFL clubs spent in the hundreds of millions, of course none of that is spent on the women. Now NRL here we have a sport which if you include pokies in their earnings like the AFL is actually the biggest sport earning wise in the country but they dont try to boast about their pokie earnings .The money is there, it hasn't been earnt by the men in the NRL, in fact its mainly now older women playing the pokies, and a lot of it goes to paying the legal bills of misbehaving male NRL players.
Working Class Rugger
Roar Guru
Hmm...are you sure you're not virtue signalling with this piece or attacking men? Let me check. No, I cannot see anything other than another piece celebrating progress in women's sport. Which I think is great. Just be prepared for the inevitable BS that seems to follow every such piece of this ilk on this site.
Jay Wright
Roar Rookie
As a father of four daughters it’s fantastic that women can be pro athletes without having to rely on traditional girls sports such as netball and tennis to be a sportsperson. The ufc ironically enough leads the way in the development of women’s sport, besides the WWE ( which doesn’t really count) it’s the only sport in the world where the women can headline an event. Despite the Rousey era being over Amanda Nunes will carry the company for a while yet. I enjoy watching the girls play footy just as much as the fellas, skills just as good, hit just a hit and game just as entertaining. Nothing but positivity going forward