Time to reflect on
gender issues in sport
That sport is a global matter with the potential
to connect people worldwide has again been
proven by the fact that newspapers from all
over the world were packed with articles on the
FIFA corruption and bribery scandals under the
regime of Sepp Blatter. However, relatively little
attention has been paid to the 7th edition of the
Women’s World Cup which took place in June and
July and was hosted by Canada, the only country
that applied to host the event. While the results
of some matches demonstrate that women’s
soccer is far from boring, it does not seem to
have succeeded in stirring emotions in the same
way as the previous men’s World Cup in Brazil.
Therefore, the Exchange to Change team seizes
this opportunity to pay some attention to the
event and reflect on gender issues in sport more
generally.
The first and most obvious gender issue related
to sport concerns participation in sport activities.
While the proportion of men taking part in sport
has historically been larger than the proportion
of women, participation of girls and women in
most sport disciplines has been steadily increasing
in most countries. Nevertheless, the process
of reducing the barriers to professional female
participation in sport has been rather slow in
many sport disciplines. This is partly due to the
lack of Olympic recognition of some sports which
are popular with women such as netball. In
addition, for some sports such as field hockey and
boxing there were great delays1 in recognizing the
female counterpart at the Olympics. Similarly,
some major sport events2, for instance the Tour de
France3, still do not have a corresponding female
competition in place. Furthermore, some historical
bans such as the one on playing soccer with head
scarves4 have only recently been lifted by the
imposing organisations. However, if we consider
gender issues we must also acknowledge that
there are still two sports which do not have male
competition at the Olympics, namely synchronised
swimming and rhythmic gymnastics. In sum, it
seems that gender stereotypes still determine to
1 Field hockey (men: 1908 vs. women: 1980) and boxing (men:
1968 vs. women: 2012).
2 The first official women’s soccer World Cup was held in China
in 1991, i.e. more than 60 years after the first men’s World Cup.
3 So far, the Giro is the only Grand Tour that offers a feminised
version of itself (source).
4 FIFA only decided in 2014 to lift the ban on playing with head
scarfs (source).
a large extent who can compete in particular sport
disciplines. As Irene Monroe wrote in her blog, this
type of discrimination creates a situation in which
not only the athletes miss out, but so, too, does
the world.
The second interconnection between gender and
sport is related to wage disparities in professional
sports. It is old news that women from all over
the world are striving for equal pay for equal work.
However, in sports the wage gap seems to be
extremely solid. Some tend to explain the gender
wage gap as a natural consequence of biological
differences between men and women (e.g.
strength, endurance, haemoglobin values). Yet in
some sports female athletes have succeeded in
their attempt to obtain equal prize money. Female
tennis players, for instance, owe this achievement
to the victory of Billy Jean King over her male
opponent Bobby Riggs who openly criticized the
idea of equal pay for male and female athletes.
Even though this legendary battle of the sexes
took place in 1973, the wage gap has remained in
the majority of the sport disciplines. This is mainly
due to the fact that the economy that underpins
professional sports is highly demand-driven. In
other words, the wages of athletes do not merely
depend on their athletic achievements, but also
on the value in terms of television rights, ticketing
and sponsoring. Women’s sports seem to be
trapped in a vicious circle of low demand, fewer
fans, less media coverage and fewer sponsors. It
remains to be seen therefore whether incremental
measures such as the inclusion of women in the
2016 version of the famous FIFA game will help
women in their quest for fans, sponsors and
exposure in a sports world dominated by men.
Another interconnection between sport and
gender is the gender disparity in sport journalism.
Several studies have demonstrated that female
sport reporters are still rare in this man’s game
of sport journalism (Franks and O’Neill, 2014).
Consequently, female sport journalists endure
their struggle to gain respect from their male
counterparts as well as from the athletes
themselves. An American female sport reporter,
Rachel Blount, argues that breaking through the
glass ceiling in sport journalism requires women
to pursue decision-making and opinion-setting
positions in the sports world as we will otherwise
continue in a world in which “men set the agenda
and drive the majority of the discussion”.
It follows that we must indeed ask ourselves
to what extent women are engaged in agendasetting activities within the context of sports and
soccer in particular. The finding that it took until
2013(!) for the very first woman – Burundi’s Lydia
Nsekera – to be elected as a member of FIFA’s
Executive Board, is somewhat disappointing and
discouraging. However, this observation might
be indirectly linked to the recently revealed
bribery practices as evidence tends to suggest
that women may have higher standards of ethical
behaviour and be more concerned with common
goods (Rivas, 2013). While other researchers tend
to nuance these claims depending on institutional
and cultural context (Alhassan-Alolo, 2007; Esarey
and Chirillo, 2013), increasing the participation of
women in decision-making bodies and agendasetting activities might be worth considering not
only because of the existing evidence that women
may be less likely to behave opportunistically
than men (Dollar et al., 2001), but also for
reasons of gender equality more generally. As
some journalists believe that the upcoming
reconstruction of the FIFA constitutes the most
significant opportunity for change that’s come
along so far, we might at least try to go beyond
doing business as usual.
On a final note, we would like to inform you that
the United States won the 7th edition of the World
Cup. In the event that you do not