Gender-based discrimination still exists

Unlike race-based transformation, which started virtually from scratch in the early Nineties, we have no excuse as a sporting nation (or a society in general) for our blatant failure to resolve our discriminatory behaviour towards women.

Growing up in the Eighties and Nineties, for unsavoury but obvious reasons, the majority of the athletes who inspired me were white. Many of them were also women.

Elana Meyer, Colleen de Reuck, Zola Budd and Penny Heyns did not just play a key role in developing my interest in sport, but they played an undeniably crucial role.

Meyer was not only one of the best distance runners in the country. She WAS the best.

Heyns was not only able to match the accomplishments of her male compatriots – she exceeded them at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996.

And as much as we are rightly attempting to balance our society from a racial perspective, making slow but gradual progress over the last couple of decades, we seem to be regressing in terms of equality between sexes.

We can argue until we’re blue in the face about the reasons for this, and whether we are still predominantly a patriarchal society, but we don’t have to discuss whether the promotion of women in sport is an issue. The statistics prove it.

Let’s set aside team sports which have failed dismally from a global perspective to provide equal opportunity to men and women, and we’ll concentrate on individual sports which do not require national depth for athletes to reach their potential.

For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll also ignore the codes of tennis and triathlon, as neither has a global championship event. While both sports are relevant, their league-based international formats allow for statistically inaccurate interpretations.

We will also ignore indoor athletics and short-course swimming, as neither is truly global

Wesley Bo on

and both are far less competitive than the outdoor and long-course formats of those codes.

Based on those presumptions, if we consider the results of swimming, athletics, cycling, rowing and canoeing, South Africa has earned 110 World Championships medals in the last 20 years, of which 17 were contributed by women.

This means, at World Championship level, only 16% of our measurable success from an international perspective has been achieved by female athletes in our country’s most prominent Olympic codes.

Interestingly, at multi-sport events which are promoted more holistically by officials and sponsors, the contribution made by women has been more significant.

At the last four editions of the Olympic Games, female athletes have earned five of the nation’s 22 medals, which accounts for 27% of the podium places.

Similarly, at the last four editions of the Commonwealth Games, women have contributed 44 of 152 medals, which equates to 29%.

But the contrast within the various codes is so obvious, any journalist covering these sports can ascertain that there’s a problem.

Pinpointing the cause, however, is far more complex.

Even the majority of female athletes I have questioned over the years have either offered vague explanations on the subject or simply avoided the question.

On the rare occasion an opinion has been forthcoming, it is evident that at least part of the problem can be blamed on our society which still largely dumps responsibilities such as child rearing and house cleaning squarely on the laps of women.

And while prize money is equal across the board in most sports, women are still seemingly marginalised by corporate sponsors. That is at least the impression given by some women who are directly involved in professional sport.

In much the same way as racebased transformation is in the best interests of our country, as it widens the talent pool and raises the standard, we can deduce the same reasoning from promoting equality of the sexes.

Transformation is often misconstrued as a drive to ensure racial equality, and we have fallen into a trap that has left half our population trailing in the wake of our progress due to archaic social views.

If we want to improve our global standing in Olympic codes, and reach our full sporting potential, we need to find the cause and fix the problem.

If we don’t, we face the danger of allowing the small group of elite women athletes to decrease even further, and nobody will benefit from that.