Finding a place for women in sports arena
Held back: For many reasons, it’s still a man’s world
The grand hope is that following the 2015 World Cup, soccer will become the first lucrative and widely played women’s team sport.
Soccer already is the world’s most watched and most played game. And, as American coach Jill Ellis noted before Tuesday night’s match with Nigeria, it’s a sport where even small, poor countries have a chance.
But it’s a huge challenge because the hurdle has never been sport itself. What holds women’s sports back are the same complicated issues they face every day about “a woman’s place,” female beauty and even gender identity.
Because if competence alone were the criterion, Brazil’s Marta Vieira da Silva would be celebrated in her soccer-mad homeland. But FIFA’s player of the year for an unprecedented five times isn’t. If she’s talked about at all, Marta (who’s almost always referred to only by her first name) is often derisively referred to as Pele with a skirt. In Brazil, soccer is a man’s game.
Latin machismo and the arcane notions of old men running the world’s most powerful sporting organizations (like FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who mused a decade ago that women’s soccer might be more popular if the women wore tighter and shorter shorts) are only part of the challenge.
In many parts of the world, girls and women aren’t allowed to play sports. Where they are, some are hobbled by cultural rules about what they must wear.
Not for them are Olympic sports like beach volleyball, where the rules require tight and brief bikinis. It’s one reason why sports such as archery and shooting have been retained in the Olympic program.
In parts of the world, women and girls remain chattel.
Just ask the Nigerians, at least those players willing to talk about the 276 schoolgirls and nearly 2,000 women and girls who have been abducted by Boko Haram, the radical Islamicist group, and forced to become child brides and suicide bombers.
“Those girls and the tragedy that happened to them, it is deep within all of us,” said Nigerian striker Desire Oparanozie. “When people see us fight for victory on the field, it is their spirit that is within us. We want to win for them.”
Worldwide, it remains true that beauty, not brawn, matters most when it comes to female athletes’ paycheques. But it’s not only corporate sponsors who prefer paragons of traditional femininity; even women’s magazines such as Chatelaine, Shape, Women’s Fitness and Redbook, when they do write about elite athletes, it’s to share their hair and makeup tips and favourite recipes.
Given that, it’s unsurprising that the fraternity of sportswriters often struggle with language.
Last week, ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith apologized for his “joke” that Germany’s failed attempt to stop Norway’s free-kick goal was because “they might not have wanted to mess their hair up.” Earlier this week, Canadian captain Christine Sinclair was described as having “less room to manoeuvre than a matron at a Black Friday sale.”
Beyond female athletes being judged by looks and their hair, questions are often raised about their sexual preferences and about whether they are really women at all.
Homosexuality is rarely spoken of or admitted to among elite male athletes. But in the past, it was frequently whispered about female athletes and with the legalization of same- sex marriage in many jurisdictions, it’s deemed commonplace enough that American soccer star Abby Wambach and Ellis, the U.S. coach, talk openly about their wives.
But it remains a dangerous topic in countries like Nigeria, where homosexuality is outlawed.
So, how does Nigerian coach Edwin Okon handle the issue of homosexuality among his team members, an American journalist asked him at a news conference this week.
Okon replied: “I don’t deal with my players’ personal lives. … That is not my concern. I don’t dwell on it. I think only about what they can do on the pitch.”
More challenging is the traditional notion that some women may not be female enough.
Gender testing for women remains firmly in place even though 2.5 per cent of women have hyperandrogenism, which is a naturally occurring condition that results in some women having more testosterone in their blood than fits within the normal range.
The testing remains despite no scientific consensus about whether testosterone enhances athletic performance. Under FIFA rules, an opposing team can point to any player and demand that her testosterone levels be tested. If the athlete refuses, she will be suspended.
There is no comparable test for men either at FIFA events or the Olympics. Although now, one can’t help wonder what might have been learned at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, the world’s greatest athlete after she/he won the decathlon.
But if equality is the goal, there can’t be any picking and choosing of the rules that apply to female athletes. Why, for example, is American goalkeeper Hope Solo allowed in the tournament when she’s going to court in September on charges of domestic assault? There would be outrage if a man charged with domestic abuse were allowed to play. So where’s the equality in that?