Women in sport
13/01/2021
I have always loved sport. I played a lot of basketball and netball growing up, I still play netball and I love to watch it played at the top tier level. Although I never played much AFL, we all know I also bloody love the sport.
So as a woman with a love of all kinds of sport, it’s irritating to me how under-appreciated women’s sport still is today and the disrespect female athletes face in this modern world.
A few things relating to women in sport caught my eye this week and frankly, they annoyed me.
An established news outlet published an article titled “Australia’s Top 100 Sport WAGS; Most popular wives, girlfriends and partners” and I was not a fan. I will say, I am one to use the term “WAG”, because yes these women may be the wives, partners and girlfriends of famous sports stars but that’s not all they are, being a WAG shouldn’t be definitive.
Time could’ve been better spent collating information and writing pieces covering women’s sport and the achievements of female athletes, preferably a story on the top 100 female athletes in the country instead?
Next, the AFLW are charging $10 for entry into games for the first time in 2021. Another well-known news outlet posted a poll to their Facebook page which read “The AFLW will charge adults $10 to go to games this year. We asked sporting stars and media personalities if they would pay it. Would you?” With a thumbs up for yes and angry react for no.
My question is, why does that need to be asked? Of course the games should have an entry fee, it’s a sport being played at the elite level — if anything the entry fee should be more and I hope one day soon it will be.
I understand that this is a method to engage readers, but that question is provoking those who already make regular comments directing hate towards the AFLW and its players, which is not okay. The post now has over 700 comments, many supporting the entry fees; one woman wrote “We pay $12 a head for bloody country footy.
I think surely we can handle $10 to help boost the AFLW” and another said, “I think it’s an insult to the athletes not to charge. Men wouldn’t put up with it so why should the females.”
While others chose to be hateful, one wrote “Lol they can pay me $100 and I still wouldn’t watch it” and another said, “I don’t think the player’s parents would pay $10.”
It’s simple really, if you don’t want to watch it, don’t, and if you don’t want to pay to go, don’t. But it’s unnecessary to continually hate on a nationally loved game because it’s women who are playing it. You can’t claim to love the game that much if you refuse to watch it purely because it’s women who are taking to the field.
The AFLW competition needs an income through methods such as entry fees, to grow and develop — just as the men’s competition did in the early days to get the AFL to what it is today.
I was reading an article the other day from Deakin University about sports journalism and how to increase coverage of women’s sport. It detailed the statistics on women’s sport and the lack of stories and articles surrounding them. For example, on International Women’s Day in 2020 when the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Final was played between Australia and India in front of a record-breaking crowd at the MCG, less than one-third (31.5%) of Australian sport media coverage that day was devoted to women’s sport. Even when women’s sport is in the spotlight, it isn’t reflected in the media.
As an aspiring sports journalist myself, I was baffled to find out that although women make up roughly half of Australia’s reporters, just ten percent of sports reporters are women — meaning 90 percent of sports news reports are written and broadcast by men.
All this made me realise how undervalued women in sport still are in this day and age. That is something that needs to change urgently, women in sport deserve respect, recognition and praise for each and every one of their achievements.
