The Financial Times released an excellent 16 minute video this week on the business case for women’s football. They touch on all the important things, from the history where women’s football in the 1910s were attracting huge crowds until the English FA inexplicably banned women from playing, how boots are made for men and only recently IDA has designed a boot specifically for a women’s foot, with a narrower heel to stop blisters, a wider front to stop losing toenails, wider sprigs underneath to balance our body positioning which is different to men’s due to hips, to name but a few of the modifications. They profile Lewes FC, the first club to pay their men’s and women’s team equally, and still are the only club to do so, and the club is reaping the rewards. It turns out when you pour resources into the women’s game this turns into results on the field. And they discuss the differences between men’s and women’s matches – the vibe and culture of a women’s game is different, questioning whether we want the women’s game to emulate the men’s. We’ve seen this closer to home with the AFLW and the women’s A-League scheduling games at the same time causing backlash – women’s fans want to watch all the games, we love women’s sport, not just a team. In the U.K. they are trying to squeeze the women’s game into the men’s model, from the team being part of what has historically been a men’s club, game day experience, commercial models and league structures, whereas in the U.S. the women’s teams are often standalone, and everything is bespoke women. Which leads to the question whether exisitng structures are fit for purpose (spoiler alert: they’re not!) The video is high level, but a great summary of all the topics we see, talk, read and write about each week.
This weekend Alison Mau wrote about the furore that kicked off when Grace Tame didn’t smile when standing with the Prime Minister of Australia. Her comments follow on nicely from Alice Soper’s article last week on the expectation of being grateful. Tame was rung and asked to make sure she didn’t say anything damning about the PM on the eve of the Australian of the Year event. Note, she was awarded Australian of the Year last year for her advocacy work to change the law in Tasmania and Northern Territory, where her rapist (her teacher when she was 15) could openly talk about the rape but she couldn’t. So she spoke up to ensure others like her could also speak up if they wanted to, rather than be shut up by an archaic law. And then a government employee rang her, tellng her she needs to shut up. The irony would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious! Ali Mau reflects on this in her own work as a journalist, and it resonated for me in writing this. Ali points out the societal expectations that women “Don’t be angry, don’t make a fuss and above all smile, smile, smile” – and the necessity of rejecting this trope! Which is a better way of what I said last week, that I see myself as being curious, not grumpy. I guess that’s my warning and segue into the next headline that caught my attention this week…
Gymnastics NZ CEO said they “underestimated” the time it takes for culture change, after it’s been a year since the report came out from their review with 50 recommendations and so far only two have been addressed, and one was an apology. Not only is this hugely disappointing for the women and girls involved, but this just doesn’t ring true for me (and I got angry about this, as well as curious). It’s not really culture change that Gymnastics NZ are looking at, in the first instance anyway. There was a list of factors that led to the reviewers labelling Gymnastics NZ having a “normalised insiduous culture” that included; “instances of psychological and verbal abuse, body shaming that led to life long battles with food and body image, sexualisation, biased judging and score tampering, coaches being bullied and athletes training too long and too hard, and competing while seriously injured leaving some scarred for life.”
All of those things should have stopped and been addressed, immediately. Anyone who abuses athletes, gone. Anyone who body shames or sexualises athletes, gone. Biased judging and score tampering, that’s the easiest! Gone. Coaches being bullied, athletes training too long and too hard, and competing while seriously injured, no more! Maybe this sounds overly simplistic, and I’m sure there are many factors to take into consideration to make this a long term change and to keep a high performance programme running. But those are very horrendous and very specific actions that could and should have stopped by now, that would have an immediate effect on the culture. And if it means pausing BAU, even the high performance programme, so that girls (88% of these gymnasts are under the age of 12) don’t end up with battles with food and body image or being physically scarred for LIFE, so they are safe, then so be it! It is not that hard and I do not understand why they are purporting it as being as such. When children are facing harm like this, addressing it should be top priority for the organisation. Everything else comes second.
Friday was International Women and Girls in Science day. To celebrate, I want to highlight the great work by Dr Stacy Sims, female athlete performance expert, physiologist nutrition scientist. You can follow Stacy on Facebook for her regular posts on science based nutrition for women who are active. Stacy coined the phrase “women are not small men”, a nod to the fact that many things in science have not been tested specifically on women, but small men. Therefore, in many instances they have not taken into account physiological differences (like the boots mentioned above) and hormonal differences, for just a start. Did you know seatbelts were not tested on women before being launched, just small men, who obviously don’t have breasts, where the seatbelt literally crosses over.
This week in herstory, two years ago Alex Braae wrote about how much agency national sports organisations really have when they want to, while a year ago, WiSP Sports released a podcast about changing culture in sports organisations. And last year the head of the Tokyo Olympic Committee made those sexist comments about women talking too much.
For all the headlines on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the media this week, check out HerStory.
Alida Shanks 