2014 was a fantastic year for women in sports, but how much of what these women achieved do you remember being covered in the media for more than a few minutes?
My example today is of course going to be the Women's Rugby World Cup. Now, I honestly had no idea that this competition was taking place until the Semi-Final stage when I saw a very brief mention on a news channel. Whether that is down to my own ignorance, who knows? Nevertheless, I am willing to bet that the reason for this is that all news channels seem to find any stories about men in sport, even minor ones, as more important. I am not, for one minute, suggesting that people don't prefer watching men play sports compared to women in sports because, let's be honest, if we all had to pick between watching women playing rugby or men playing rugby, 9 out of 10 of us would pick to watch the men's game. However, why does that mean that stories about women's achievements have to be pretty much absent in the news, rather than being on par with all other rugby coverage?
Yes, when the England Rugby Women won the World Cup last year, there was coverage in the media. That is not in doubt. But, whilst the coverage did stay in the media for a little while, once the women won Team of the Year at the Sports Personality of the Year awards, it was like the media had decided that enough was enough. They had to go back to covering men, and leave the women behind. Personally, I am tired of turning on the news channel to watch the sports section and only seeing that this men's team have beat this men's team, or that this man is moving from here to here. Quite often you will see mentions of results from the men's premiership, such as that Wasps beat Sale for example. But, have you ever seen a mention of the women's premiership? I certainly haven't.
My main issue is that it cannot be that difficult to make some sports stories a bit shorter in order to fit in a story relating to women in sports. So why don't they do it? Probably because women's sports are not as popular, and so these news channels figure that people want to hear about the men's sports. I am not suggesting that the news channels are inherently sexist, more that people have always been surrounded by sports involving men and that it's now the norm to watch the men and not the women. The only way that this can change is if people make the decision to get more interested in women's sports. And so I'm issuing a challenge, as some sort of new year's resolution, to everyone that reads this: I want you to post on Facebook or Twitter, as soon as you have read this, letting everyone know of your intention to help raise the profile of women's sports by watching as much as you can. And then I want you to follow through on this by watching women's sports for the rest of this year and beyond, continuing to post about it every time that you do so. I'm hoping to get a great response over the next few days in relation to this challenge. So please, if you read this, get involved, and let's give women's sports the coverage it deserves.
I am going to leave you with two things: a quote and a picture that I think sums up what I am saying perfectly.
First up is the quote where, on the 31st December, Katie Scott made a comment saying: "Just watched Sky Sports News and I'm genuinely appalled by the under-representation of women in that feature. About 5% of the entire thing focused on women, despite record breaking women's international football games, mad success in the women's cricket and rugby, and massive achievements at Sochi. Unbelievable."
Lastly, this picture sums up the importance of covering women's sports. The England Rugby Women won the World Cup, beating Canada 21-9 to become the best team in the world. How often can you say that your country is the best in the world at something? Not that often I'll tell you. So why weren't they covered in the media much more extensively? This has to change, so let's get more interested about women in sport, and do everything we can to raise the profile!
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