Women's Sport: Urgent Priority

Mawande says...

Believe it or not, I am a fan of women’s sport. I’ve always enjoyed women’s tennis, I grew up watching it and then gradually came to enjoy women’s track and field and more recently in the last 5 years women’s football has become a favourite of mine. I’d certainly choose to watch any of these sports over the IPL any day of the week!

I do not presume to be a feminist or a champion for women’s rights and equality or whatever. I’ll leave all of that for civil groups and the like. My views on women’s sport are purely based on the notion that it has the biggest untapped potential in South Africa.

Coverage of women’s sport in South Africa is lacking. This past week, I tuned in between the SABC, Supersport and ESPN channels to see how much coverage of women’s sport there was. On one of the SABC channels there as a show about women in sport and that was only about 30 minutes long along with some coverage of women’s athletics. On Supersport, I saw some women’s tennis along with a couple of shows including women’s golf, water sports and volleyball. On ESPN women’s sports coverage included billiard, bowling, college basketball and cheerleading.

This might be decent enough coverage of women’s sport on the box, but for my mind too little of it was local content. Our local female athletes are not gaining the exposure that their counterparts in other parts are getting. Our national women’s football team probably gets the most media attention but still, very few players are household names unlike Mia Hamm, Hope Solo and Alex Morgan from the United States, who are able to attract major endorsement deals and appear on magazine covers. Caster Semenya is the one female athlete I see more than any other on television and in newspapers. Constant media coverage of our female athletes seems to be fleeting. Whilst Caster is the darling in the media right now, it is no different to the early 2000s when Olympic silver-medallist high jumper Hestrie Cloete was all the hype.

 In recent times, golfer Ashleigh Simon attracted a lot of media attention but in the last few years she has all but disappeared from the sporting public’s consciousness, whilst fellow golfer Lee-Ann Pace only garnered media attention after topping the LPGA’s money list. This country’s top female athletes  don’t garner the same amount of media attention as their male counterparts who hold the attention of the media and the public not only in the prime of their careers but well into retirement as well.

But I understand why this is so. A little boy who dreams of representing his country at rugby, for instance, probably has a better chance of realizing that dream than a girl who dreams of representing her country at netball does with hers. I say this because young boys are given every opportunity to succeed. While they may come from similar circumstances, things change for the little boy when he reaches high school and gets into the junior provincial teams.

The young girl might play junior provincial netball as well, but she isn’t being watched by scouts at her tournament and won’t get offered a bursary to a top netball-playing school. These are opportunities available, through rugby, to the young boy if he does well. At under 18 level, the young boy gets to play in a tournament that is broadcast live on national television. The young girl doesn’t.

When the two finish high school, the young man now has the opportunity to attend varsity on scholarship that requires him to gym a bit, pitch up for practice and occasionally attend some class. The young lady probably won’t get the same kind of scholarship unless she works her socks off academically. The young boy goes on to represent his Maties or Tuks or whomever at The Varsity Cup, another tournament that is broadcast live nationally, whilst the girl who no matter how serious she was with her netball will probably end up playing the bulk of her game in social leagues and playing in the national inter-provincial tournament for one week in the year that will get 5 minutes worth of coverage on SABC 2.

What am I trying to say here? I am saying that we have so much invested in male sports that the path is clear for them and we’re developing in those areas that are already teeming with talent and opportunities, however we don’t have nearly as much or enough invested in female sports which is why South Africa is not constantly producing female Olympic gold medallists or World Champions. Quite simply, young girls don’t have local sporting females to look up to, to drive and motivate them to achieve their dreams. There aren’t enough female sporting role models spread out across the sporting codes to inspire young girls. As much as a young lady may love sport, it just isn’t a career option for her because she doesn’t have what the young boy had growing up, do not even think of innuendo here.

I have always had strong views on women’s sport and it seems like when the Sports Minister hops on to our TV screens and gives his platitudinous speeches about transformation and grass-roots development that he forgets that young girls and young ladies also play sports.  I feel like the focus of the country’s Sports Ministry should not be rugby, cricket or football at all but on the ‘minority’ or amateur sports. The professional sports have mother bodies to generate their own money and to run themselves within the guidelines of the Ministry. I feel like if careful attention could be given to developing sports such as hockey, volleyball, swimming and the like, especially the women’s aspect of those sports, South Africa would produce more stars and medal prospects.

The only problem right now is that there aren’t enough female athletes proving to young girls that a career in professional sport is worthwhile.