Transforming the Women's game.

Mawande says...

I was thrashing around some ideas for an article on young South African athletes who have made a name for themselves in 2012. There was no shortage of names in my head, think Siya Kolisi, Eben Etzebeth, Chad Le Clos, Tokelo Rantie, Ronwen Williams, Lucky Baloyi, the list goes on.

It came as a concern to me that I couldn't come up with the names of any female athletes. Sure there is Bridgette Hartley who won a bronze medal at the Olympics and I'm not suggesting there aren't female athletes who have made breakthroughs or done well, but very few of them are household names. Apart from Portia Modise, Natalie du Toit, Caster Semenya and maybe Marsha Marescia, there are very few recognisable female athletes in South Africa and even fewer announcing themselves on the big stage in a big way.

There has been a lot of talk on transformation regarding the national sports like rugby and cricket. Beyond the societal and representative aspect, for my mind transformation also means making certain sports a viable career option to young and aspirant black children but I think that women's sport is being forgotten in this in amongst all the conversations that have been going on. There are no women competing at very high levels enabling young girls to see sports as something worth pursuing as a result SA has few female athletes reaching the finals in Olympic events and we lose out on seeing our own versions of Missy Franklin or Gabby Douglas taking the world by storm.

How do we remedy this? I really don’t know. But it was pleasing to see our women’s hockey team garnering attention prior to the Olympics games this year and seeing them in action, live, on television. The main difference between men and women’s sport is exposure. Perhaps if the national netball and hockey teams were on our television screens more often, more people would give a damn about women’s sport and we would be talking about transforming women’s sport in South Africa, which I maintain is the biggest source of untapped potential in the country.