‘Women’s sport doesn’t get support it deserves’

KILLORGLIN rower Monika Dukarska, who along with Aileen Crowley qualified a boat for the summer Olympics in Tokyo, has highlighted the discrepancy between how female sports people are treated in comparison to their male counterparts.

In an interview in this week’s The Kerryman she noted how, despite a level playing field in terms of high performance funding, women’s sport doesn’t get nearly as much support or sponsorship as that for male sports people and male dominated sports. “Oh definitely not,” she said.

“I would say in things like sponsorship or recognition I think there is a big difference between men and women, and I’m not talking about rowing. I’m taking about sport in general.

“It’s big in Kerry even, the difference. Can you name one female athlete that has a car sponsorship or is sponsored by any company? Can you name one person? So there’s no support for females.”

Dukarska also highlighted the difference in how female sports are covered by the media.

“Even if you read newspapers I’d say 90% is GAA and men and the other minority sports aren’t getting the coverage,” he said.

“To appeal then to sponsors you have to be visible and that visibility isn’t given. To increase the visibility of women’s sport everybody has to be on board from journalists, press and radio. [They] have a big pull on that.

“Unfortunately that’s the case. I don’t have anything against the GAA, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s a great sport, there’s great tradition in it and it involves people of all ages and abilities and so on, but so do other sports.

“In rowing you can pretty much do it if you’re eighty or you’re twelve. It doesn’t really matter. Even in our club the majority would be girls – very few would be boys – they are doing tremendous stuff.

“We had a girl who went to Tokyo to compete at the Junior World Championship. We had two girls that went to the Home Internationals. We had two girls who went to the European Junior Championships. The talent is there, but the publicity is hard to get as much as we’re pushing it.”

It’s an issue Dukarska feels passionately about and suggested that once she’s over this Olympic cycle – the games are pencilled in for late next summer – that she “would definitely put together some sort of a campaign to give the women the coverage they deserve.”