Minister for Sport Kate Ellis drew attention to some interesting statistics recently in The Punch- that while men account for 81% of all sport coverage on television news, women only account for 9%. The other 10% of air time is devoted to horses. Horse racing garners more attention than all of the women’s sports combined. In fact, in the list of the top 10 women in sport, there are two female horses. These dismal facts have prompted Women’s Health Magazine and Rexona to team up and create the “I support women in sport” campaign, which has nothing to do with sports bras, and instead is aimed at both raising awareness of women in sport and encouraging more participation in female sports.
Unlike men’s sport where every disappointment and off-field indiscretion is torn apart by commentators, coverage of women’s sports is nearly always positive- but this only means that for women in sport to be recognized or even acknowledged, they must be extraordinarily talented.
More often than not though, the focus in women’s sport is not on performance but appearance- what clothing or jewellery they are wearing, and even on their underwear (as seen recently in the Australian Open where Venus Williams’ flesh coloured underwear and strange tennis outfits were more newsworthy than how she actually played).
The “I support women in sport” campaign will include six editorial pages featured in Women’s Health every week, as well as an accompanying website which provides information about featured sportswomen, upcoming sporting events, and a directory of teams in the user’s local area.
This campaign will represent Australia’s largest and most significant female sport awareness campaign ever, and although ambitious, believes that its goals of increasing government funding and corporate sponsorship for women’s sports teams, creating greater opportunities for women in sport, and changing public perception of women in sport are in fact achievable.
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