To me the obvious way to give womens sport a “hand up, not a hand out” is to host mixed gender competitions – particularly at the highest level. It worked a treat in tennis where women and men compete in parallel at the same Grand Slam tournaments. The resultant organic growth in fan following for women’s tennis has been the starting point for media attention, viable sporting career paths (not just for players but also coaching, administration, fitness, media etc), large committed player base and everything else needed for a sustainable professional sport ecosystem. Sure, some young women may initially wilt under the sudden spotlight of massive media attention, but others will seize their opportunity and take flight.
A mixed gender FIFA World Cup would rapidly and dramatically raise the profile of women’s football. Cost and logistics have been thrown up as obstacles, but how significant are they really? FIFA is already planning sprawling, continent-wide World Cups for the future (and seems intent on diluting the elite status of the competition in the process by adding ever more men’s teams). The real obstacles are conservatism and short-term greed.
Like many first world males, my view on gender equality was that we aren’t quite there yet but we’re generally going in the right direction apart from some occasional backsliding. This view was utterly shattered when my daughter started showing signs of enjoying and having an aptitude for sport. It didn’t take much research to find that of the wide range of sports providing men with financially self-sustaining careers, only tennis and golf were reliably viable options for women. I’m embarrassed to admit that somehow this yawning gulf of gender disparity eluded my notice until there was a possibility it would affect a member of my family.
From there it didn’t take long to become aware of online commentary to the effect that women’s sport is a joke, they don’t have the physique to compete and nobody’s interested because of the low level of performance and skill on display. Often online seems to be a place where everyone’s trying to be a shock jock, but you have to assume that at least some of that sentiment is genuine and worth responding to. So here goes:
It’s true that most of the records for physical feats are held by men (ultramarathon and freediving among the few exceptions). For some, this is what sport is all about – running the fastest, jumping the highest, throwing the furthest – and those people can get everything they need from the Guinness Book of Records and track & field (which ironically is a big promoter of women’s sport thanks to its joint competitions). But for the rest of us, record breaking is of relatively fleeting interest compared to oppositional sports where humans compete with all the resources they can bring to bear – physicality, skill, instinct, determination, adaptability, deception and brainpower. Two committed opponents contesting a finely balanced game is one of the most reliably entertaining forms of reality TV in existence. Doesn’t male domination of sport make this a more one-dimensional experience for everyone?
Balance is crucial to the drama of sport. In balanced sports we often see an entertaining “arms race” where teams and players continually strive to find new and improved ways to counter each other. Balance is also why elite level women and men don’t generally participate together in highly physical sports – there is little entertainment in lopsided competition. But there is no reason why women-only competitions should be any less competitive and entertaining, and they can actually be more interesting than men’s sport. Some male tennis players have excessively powerful serves that cause an imbalance between attack and defence, with a large percentage of points only involving one hit of the ball. Female tennis players generally aren’t as able to dominate with the serve, resulting in a more engrossing contest.
Sport can give us many gifts – goals and direction, building of character, camaraderie, health, and maybe even income. But the greatest gift of all is the chance to live life with heightened meaning through high-stakes competition in front of large, passionate audiences. Are there really any worthwhile reasons to deny women the opportunity to share in these experiences?
No comments:
Post a Comment