Women’s sport always seems to come off second best. If women aren’t having their bodies visually exploited, regardless of their ability, then they’re being ignored by the sporting world, or labelled lesbian. Where is the media coverage to boost women’s sport and, as importantly, where is women’s interest in sport.
By Simon Lewis (July 2005)
As with all change, there often needs to be a rebel who forces that change. In the world of women’s sport, Michelle Wie seems to be that rebel, in addition to being a 15-year-old occasional mall-rat who stands over six foot tall on size 10 (and growing) feet. When she’s not changing the world or tripping through malls with her mates, she manages to keep ahead of her studies and maintain a level head on her shoulders. The youngest person EVER to play in a (men’s!) PGA tour event, Wie already hits the ball the same distance as many men on the tour. She’s not going to sit back and let men rule the roost without a challenge: when she grows up she wants to take on the men in the PGA in a big way. She has a need to push herself to the limit, and she has the benefit that her generation no longer stands back while the pale male dominates everything. She’s cheeky, but not cocky. Another woman golfer who had a crack at teeing off with the men recently was Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam, but she was all a bit too apologetic afterwards, no doubt upset over not playing as well as she’d hoped. Sorenstam seemed to shy away, overtly proclaiming her desire to return to the women’s tour, to ‘her place’. Perhaps the weight of expectation on her had been too great. Certainly, there were many waiting for her to fail: she didn’t. In fact, she did rather well, better than many people had expected, but she did fail to make the impact she had hoped for. Ultimately, it knocked the wind out of her sails.
Wie has no such apologetic streak, and she seems to be less bothered by any expectation to match the men. She is, rather, inspired by the pure challenge to her own ability. Sorenstam is currently twice as old as Wie, so perhaps it shows that the new generation isn’t going to be blown by the wind so much as do the shaking up themselves. This new generation can do it easier: they travel lighter through life and carry less baggage.
A similar wind blew through golf in the late-90’s when Tiger Woods tore the opposition apart and ran around scything through the record books like a smoking chainsaw through cardboard. Woods opened up the world of CAN DO to people of all races and ages, one of whom was Wie herself, then a mere seven years old. So inspired was Wie by Woods’ Masters walkover in 1997 that she started playing golf with ‘greater enthusiasm’; she was clearly a seven-year-old with purpose and a lot of drive.
Wie’s approach is refreshing for one bearing the standard for women worldwide, smiling when she says that it would be “neat” if she could be a Tiger Woods that breaks down barriers and, in her case, makes it easier for women to compete against men. She is, however, diplomatically quick to stress that she is not suggesting that women SHOULD play against men. Nonetheless, the fact remains that over the past decade she has embarrassed battalions of boys and men on the golf course, and her development hasn’t been hindered by a love for sport that extends to her kicking a soccer ball around at break with the boys while her girlfriends sit chatting in the shade.
… OR NOT TO BE
One of the main ‘voices’ being raised against women taking part on the men’s tour is one subtle ‘threat’ that packs a mean punch. ‘They’ warn that if the best women join the men’s tour their earnings will only be a fraction of what they would have earned on the ladies tour (where they would more likely be winning and finishing high up the leaderboard). With the loss of the top women the LPGA – weakened and unable to maintain the interest of their sponsors – will wither, ‘they’ claim. It’s a great argument: get the other girls opposed to Annika, Michelle and any others who are keen to take on the men. Inspire division in the ranks. It’s a stupid argument, though, if you examine it. Until men and women are able to compete equally together, women obviously wouldn’t always play on the men’s tour - they need success on the ladies tour to boost their career portfolios and earning potentials. However, they ALSO need men’s competition in order to lift their own competitive levels. Women would, therefore, only appear sporadically at men’s events. But clearly many men are concerned that the difference between men and women is not quite as unbreachable as some would have us think.
Ellis Cashmore, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Staffordshire University in the UK, an eminent proponent for equal opportunities for women, is quick to point out that men and women’s bodies respond in similar ways to training.
“Take a male and a female, same height, weight, build and similar physical condition, and subject them to 6 weeks of identical training and conditioning and you’ll find both bodies have responded in very similar ways,” says Cashmore. “Test the people involved and you will find the female’s muscular strength is within five per cent of the male’s. Five percent is a lot when it comes to sports where brawn is a crucial factor, but most sports are further along the continuum and involve a greater skill factor. The further along the skill continuum you get, the more women are able to compete with men as the difference in physical strength becomes less significant.”
Clearly women have great potential for change, but such change happens when there is power and intent behind it. Change happens when the marketing machine gets fired up.
A RAINBOW AT THE END OF THE GOLD
Unless you’re a really hot sportswoman with legs to die for and have learned how to pose with that delicious come-on smile as your thumbs tease your bikini down, you will struggle to get media exposure or big-time endorsements. Ironically, it’s the opposite for men. The good-looking ones with the great bodies don’t automatically get the support they need to fulfil their own potential. We’ve had more grim-looking sportsmen over the years than good-looking ones, but the only men who get the attention are the ones who win (damn them!). Not the beefcakes with no headline-grabbing honours. That’s because men are the consumers of those images, stories, and live coverage.
Ryk Neethling and his fellow swimmers have battled for so long for decent media coverage and support. Ryk is a good looking bloke, hell of a body, modest yet not a pushover. Oh, and a damn good swimmer. The perfect guy for any gal.
But endorsements, major sponsorships, decent funding? Well, precious little really, compared to mainstream sports. That is, until he, Roland and two other guys (not quite as good looking or hunky as R&R, ironically!) picked up some Olympic gold. Now it’s embarrassing – you see more of those two than Graeme and Minki. Ryk hasn’t changed nor become ‘better’ as a commodity, he just became a big-time winner. He has the same smile, same bod. Yet winning matters not in terms of who gets exposure and huge endorsement deals in women’s sport. Mrs Iglesias: case in point!
Obviously, though, swimming doesn’t pack them in like soccer, rugby, cricket, tennis or golf, so there’s less adspend and gate-money to make the swimmers rich, and the equipment sponsors aren’t going to be making gajillions from selling extra costumes at R60 a pop. So it’s about identity as a winner that matters in terms of earning male athletes and sportsmen big money, while for women it’s their identity as someone physically desirable for men.
I guess it’s understandable as both scenarios are exactly what appeals to the supply and demand needs of the male sports-buying market …
WERE WOMEN BORN EQUAL TO MEN?
A big bone of contention is that men and women are generally not allowed to compete side by side, and Cashmore claims that myths and male-dominated society over the past 120 years of organised sport have ensured the status quo. “Women and men could be competing at comparable levels,” he said, adding that women are advancing at a more rapid rate than men. Partly this is because women are pushing themselves harder, as they have a huge gap to close. They are chasing, and you often chase harder, as you know what your goal is.
“Women’s progress in sport has been retarded not by their own physiological frailty or bodily differences, but by myths about their physical capabilities. If we could turn back the clock and start organised sports again, except allowing men and women to compete in the same events, we would have a very different history of sports ... and women would be holding their own in mixed team sports by now,” claims Cashmore.
You don’t have to like sport and you don’t even have to try your hand at playing or watching sport: but you do HAVE TO have the opportunities and the choice either way.
THE SPIN CYCLE
Women’s disadvantage in the sporting arena is also largely an economic thing, and economic issues have two sides. Your market wants X, so you supply X. You give them a bit of Y and Z, but your focus is X. That is how you stay in business. If your readers aren’t interested in reading about black showjumpers, then you’re not going to feature them. If people aren’t interested in white swimmers who look like Greek gods but who lack any gold around their neck, then the public don’t want to read about them. You’re wasting space if you try to supply hockey or netball information while disregarding other mass-market sports. Of course, if your market starts to want more of Y & Z, why then the media starts to supply that. And that’s the second issue. It’s a vicious cycle, fuelled by media spin doctors and marketing moguls, but it is ultimately driven by what the market wants. Charitable benefactors are few and far between, so you need a sponsor who wants a bit of bang for their buck. A glimmer of hope remains in the fact that the supply and the demand for women’s sport will always balance out perfectly, as most supply and demand generally does in the long run. Supply (and advertising and marketing bucks) will follow when demand increases, and being led by demand ensures a more sustainable, long-term product.
WHAT A MAN WANTS
Any argument also has two sides: they don’t always balance, but there are always two sides. Why don’t men support or encourage women’s sport? Well, men’s interest in sport is extremely personal: it’s based on personal experience and personal aspiration. We generally like relating to the reading and photographic matter that we are provided with, or the sport we watch. This fact surely indicates that if women only played more sport, then they too would create a greater market for women’s sport as an industry and a career. Absolutely true, although if you cast your eye back a century you’ll see where things started to go pear-shaped, as Cashmore points out.
“The idea of sport, as we understand it, is a peculiarly western male creation, built in fact to validate masculinity. The main organisations that gave us what we now regard as sports were instituted in the late nineteenth century — around the time when the factory system was introducing machines to replace physical labour. This meant that men’s physical work was less and less useful. According to some views, men created organised sport as a kind of substitute, as if they wanted a forum to demonstrate their physical superiority over women. Which is why women were excluded for the best part of the last century.”
AND THE ANSWER IS …
The only reason men have more power and money in sport is because MEN SUPPORT MALE SPORT. They turn up to watch, youngsters buy the memorabilia, they join fan clubs and own season tickets. Sure, girls and women also get involved, but it’s men en masse. And THAT is the key!
There’s nothing really stopping women from starting a whole new culture of sport. If that’s what women want then they now have the freedom to pursue it. It’ll still take time, but there’s room to build ... so long as women start by supporting women’s sport. Many might bemoan the lack of support from male spectators and male corporate companies ... but if women don’t start by building up a following and an infrastructure themselves then they can’t expect an insecure male population to encourage further self-emasculation. Women will have to keep the ball rolling… and take charge of speeding it up.
Think about the power of money and the greater power of supply and demand. I’ll bet my house, my job and everything I own on one fact - if women started to turn out in their thousands to watch the ladies provincial matches or national tournaments, there would pretty soon be big sponsors involved. There would be stadiums. There would even be a woman’s sports magazine. I’ll bet my life on it, cos it’s a pure economic fact. If you support it, they will support you.
Most men play or have played a number of sports, and this helps to build men’s sport as a whole, because in playing a sport you are more likely to be interested in watching the sport. You can relate to it, maybe even aspire to it. But we’ve never encouraged women to do the same, aside from encouraging them to take an interest in watching our men’s sport with us (think ‘dutiful wife or girlfriend’!).
“Men have excluded women; but not always by force,” reveals Cashmore. “Many of the eminent physicians in the first half of the 20th century warned against women participating in sport. They feared exercise and competition would lead to virilism (women taking on the physical characteristics of men) or infertility. The prohibitions on women’s participation in sport were quite subtle in their own ways: women simply didn’t want to get into something they thought was either going to hurt them physically or stigmatize them socially.”
Men also build themselves physically by playing sport. That gives them an increased physical edge over women, as well as an emotional one. A couple of boys are throwing a ball to each other. Little girl skips into the garden and asks them to throw her the ball. She drops it, or it klaps her on the head. The boys laugh, the girl feels stupid, and runs back into the house to help her mother out in the kitchen.
Of course she looks stupid, and she has little co-ordination. But then she hasn’t had the benefit of a lifetime of ball throwing, kicking, hitting and holding. Co-ordination is built up over a lifetime, as is physical conditioning. You don’t get as toned by dancing around the kitchen as you do out on the golf course, or playing touch rugby, tennis, or any of the other sports that men and boys have held the monopoly on. The more you do it the better you get. Why does Tiger Woods hit a ball so much better and with greater consistency than everyone else in the world? Probably largely because of all the effort and time he has devoted to it. Yes, he’s a genius, but his advantage is built on hitting hundreds of golf balls every day for the last 20 years. You get good like that. So the fact that some girls can’t catch a ball shouldn’t be embarrassing, as it just shows that they haven’t spent time catching balls.
STEP TWO
Having built your co-ord the same as little boys are allowed to, where do girls go from there? You have to watch women’s sport! Your mothers and aunts need to pitch up for netball or hockey in the same numbers as uncles and dads go to boys’ rugby and cricket matches. You don’t need to go mental like many sideline fathers, trying to relive their youth through their sons, but showing support en mass validates the girls and their sport. It shows an interest in them playing sport. With no spectators watching and maybe even cheering a bit, what are girls to think about sport? ‘Oh, we’re just doing this to keep fit and in reasonable enough shape to draw some male attention’? And your school peers need to also pitch up to watch. But aren’t most of the girls watching the guys play? Probably, and maybe that’s the way the girls want it, and if so, that’s great. No-one should be forced in any way regarding sport; it should be a pleasure and a privilege, not a duty.
Getting onto a more competitive level, with your fledgling sports you’re going to have to use a lot of ingenuity - and that’s something women have in buckets. You can’t expect, at this stage, to have 20 matches going on at 20 different venues and hope to have decent crowds at each game. Not at this stage of women’s sporting revolution. You need to play at central venues, where crowds can congregate at one stadium or ground and wander from match to match. People who come to your match will perhaps stay on to watch another match. That way you’re sharing spectators, and the players are being exposed to greater swells of spectators. Reputations start being built. One step at a time.
BOYS WILL BE THERE, GIRLS
With 600 girls at a stadium for a day of hockey or cricket or soccer or rugby, well, I’ll guarantee that you’re going to start pulling the guys to your matches – I’ll bet my next prosthesis on that fact. If you build it, the boys will come … in droves. They’ll go to check out the babes, of course, but before they know it they’ll start to notice how you play. They’ll get to know about the better players, and word will spread. Legends will be built. Stars will be born. Aquarius will rub the sleep out of her eyes and leap out of bed ready to kick some boy butt. But, better still, why not adopt the methods used by tennis and athletics: piggyback with men’s sport. Hijack their audiences and share their admin and marketing costs. Starting on a small scale, girls should ‘ambush’ the high profile schools weeks, like Craven Week rugby and Nuffield cricket. Select a couple of the best girls sides from around the country and let them play their own matches during Craven Week on surrounding fields. The audience that is there to watch the boys will start getting to know, appreciate and respect girls cricket and rugby… and so the girls will benefit from the exposure.
SO MRS MOHAMMED WENT TO THE MOUNTAIN …
The adult women could play curtain-raisers for professional soccer and rugby matches, while the lady cricketers could play 7-over slogs to fit in with the breaks of play during men’s matches. It would be a great way to expose the male audience to women’s cricket and its players, as well as giving the girls a chance to play in front of large crowds, building their reputations, experience and confidence.
Of course, this brave new women’s sporting world wouldn’t be built in a day, but then neither was the current men’s professional sporting world. It’s taken decades of male support and privilege to attain our pro sporting world, but as women have a goal in mind to chase as well as a blueprint to follow, so potentially they can fast-track their ‘own’ professional world.
Looking forward, the most exciting possibility is not equal money for the big professionals, or more development courses and clinics for girls: no, the most exciting thought is the possibility that sharing equal opportunities to enjoy the world of sports will encourage a breakdown in stereotypes and prejudice. In short, it will bring men and women, girls and boys, husbands and wives closer together in a more natural way. It’ll put us all on the same playing field. That’s fantastic because, although our differences do need to be appreciated and allowed to flourish … we all sure do love playing together!
© SIMON LEWIS • The Ball magazine
simon@theball.co.za • www.theball.co.za
