Women in sport meets women in STEM this week with the story on Jacqueline Comer and Rebecca Lee who have developed the FairPlayBot, that can be attached to social media accounts of athletes to automatically respond to negative messages with positive ones. This is an interesting and awesome development to help tackle the nastiness on social media. Go to any athlete’s social media page and you’ll see all sorts of horrible comments, worse if they’re a woman, not to mention the personal messages that they receive. I support the Instagram account Athletes Are Humans Too, which shares some of the vitriol athletes receive without blanking out the names. The bot is an interesting concept, it doesn’t hide or delete the comments, but for every negative comment it detects, it posts a positive one in an attempt to drown out the negativity. It will be interesting to see it in action.
For anyone who has been told that ‘no one watches women’s sport’, I’m pleased to give you (more) stats that directly proves that in fact, millions of people watch women’s sport! This week, more people in the U.S. tuned into the women’s US tennis Open final than the men’s, with an average of 2.44 million viewers watching Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez on ESPN, beating the average viewership of the men’s final by 17%. The number watching peaked at 3.4 million viewers between 6 and 6.15pm. The women’s final was the first in the Open era to feature two unseeded players and it had a 37% increase in viewers compared to last year, when Naomi Osaka played Victoria Azarenka.
Last Friday, the Wellington Phoenix and NZ Football announced they would be entering a team in the W-League, the semi-professional women’s competition based in Australia. This is good news for the development of football for players based in Aotearoa or Australia and in the lead up to hosting the FIFA Women’s World Cup. I am curious about the support for the players. I’m sure these have been considered and we’re just not privy to the details, but the players are to be based in Australia for the season of around five months, with no guarantee on when they can return due to MIQ limitations. So they’re likely to be in Australia for a while. As I mentioned last week, the salary cap for a women’s team is $450k, so if the team receive the maximum (not guaranteed), and that is split evenly (also not guaranteed) amongst the 18 players, that’s $25k each. I wonder about accommodation and food, if the players will have to give up jobs and flats/houses here and/or pay for them there? I am sure it has all been carefully planned, but it would be reassuring to know our football wāhine are well looked after.
Check out all the media headlines in women’s sport for the week of 17th September right here.
Alida Shanks 