Will women athletes ever be tough enough?
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It’s Olympic fever once again. Eight years in the making and four years of waiting and it’s finally here, Rio 2016. The world’s biggest sporting event, showcasing the talents, power, discipline and tenacity of some of the strongest and most powerful men and women in the sporting world. The sheer hard work and strength of will that gets an athlete to the top of the podium as an Olympian is unquantifiable and for some a goal they strive for, for most of their lives.
Interestingly, whilst female athletes are sometimes relegated to being less strong and able in comparison to their male counterparts in some sporting arenas, the Olympic Games has always held a place of wonder and awe in most people’s minds and hearts as the most supreme sporting event and so an Olympian, whether male or female, is regarded with the utmost respect. Or so it seemed…
Hot on the heels of the opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro less than a week ago, the media is buzzing with the question as to whether the sports commentary at the Olympic Games has been undermining the hard work and achievements of some of the strongest, toughest and most accomplished women in sports.
Whilst the athletes have been hard at work, some of the commentators have been busy undermining their achievements discussing the favourability of the hue of a leotard in relation to the Gymnast’s skin tone: “her salmon pink and white leotard failed to complement her skin tone and it appeared to be somewhat see-through around the chest area”; Crediting the husband of the Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszú – who broke a world record and won a gold medal for the 400-metre individual medley – with her win, focusing on her husband afterwards and saying “and there’s the person responsible for her performance.”; Headlining a bronze medal winning athlete as the “wife of a (Chicago) Bears’ lineman”; and NBC’s Chief Marketing Officer claiming that women are not particularly sports fans and don’t watch the Olympics for the results in an attempt to justify delaying broadcasts for prime time: “They’re not particularly sports fans…More women watch the Games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and mini-series wrapped into one.”
Sexism in sports is nothing new. Who can forget Florence Griffith Joyner, “Flo-Jo”, still considered the fastest woman of all time, given the world records she set in Seoul 1988 for both the 100m and 200m, which still stand and have yet to be seriously challenged. She was discussed as much for her glamour, flamboyant wardrobe, trademark long nails and flowing locks, as much as she was for her super-fast-record-setting performances on the track.
In many ways however, the unique nature, added coverage and special interest in the Olympic Games, leads to a heightened interest in global sports, which is always a good thing. The point of contention is that the achievements of male athletes are rarely compared to or contrasted against those of female athletes, so it is curious that the achievements of great female sporting heroes are often compared to those of men…as if that somehow ‘legitimises’ the results.
According to Claire Bates, writing for BBC News Magazine, a few days ago, a NBC commentator complimented a stellar performance by US gymnast Simone Biles on the uneven bars, by saying: “I think she might even go higher than the men.” Meanwhile American swimmer Katie Ledecky was praised as being the “female Michael Phelps” in the Mail Online. Yet incredibly, both women were already world champions, so why the need to compare them to men? As Sam Smethers from women’s rights charity The Fawcett Society points out,”They are Olympic stars in their own right…for far too long women’s sport has been treated as a second-class game…”Claire Bates reports that according to a recent study by Cambridge University Press, these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Researchers analysed millions of words relating to men and women and Olympic sports in the Cambridge English Corpus (CEC) and the Sport Corpus – massive databases that include news articles and posts on social media.The study revealed common word combinations for female athletes included aged, older, pregnant and married or unmarried. In contrast, top word combinations for male athletes included fastest, strong, big and great.
It also found, that the language around women in sport also focused disproportionately on appearance, clothes and personal lives. The Cambridge study also found that it’s much more common for women to be referred to as “girls” than it is for men to be called “boys”. According to Prof Kath Woodward from The Open University, “Many commentators say ‘girls’ in sport even if they know they should say ‘women’. This is because they think it’s a trivial issue to do with political correctness and they forget in the heat of competition…But when you call a woman a girl you are actually infantilising her. A girl is a child. Women’s bodies have long been infantilised in popular culture as youth is seen as attractive.”
However, everyone agrees that things are changing. Statistics show that the proportion of female athletes competing at the Olympics has increased with every Games since 1964 when it was 13.2%. By 1988, 26.1% of competitors were women and in Rio 2016 it is 45%. So encouraging improvement in terms of numbers and geographic participation in individual sports and the Games as a whole, and in many ways the added attention and interest in women’s sports can only be a good thing. As Olympic Gold medalist, rower Anna Watkins says, “10 or 20 years ago we didn’t question what was said as we were just pleased to get coverage for women’s sport.” But she claims that the media needs to be more careful, with how they present female athletes:”They define how the public see you,” she says. “I think often it’s an unintentional thing but in some ways that’s more concerning as it shows an unconscious bias…” As Prof Woodward says, “When we stop talking about women’s sport and instead just recognise them as equal to the men and athletes in their own right we know we will have changed the terms of the debate…”.
I was privileged to work with many international athletes and Olympians during my ten years with the International Olympic Academy in Greece and still count many of them as my friends. Female or male, the thing they all had in common was iron-willed determination to do their best; unshakeable belief in their ability to be the best if they worked hard enough and unparalleled focus on putting every ounce of everything into ultimately achieving that dream of being an Olympian. So much to honour, admire, respect and appreciate, whether they be women or men.
Citius, Altius, Fortius the Olympic motto goes, and Faster, Higher, Stronger we would all be – together – as a People, if only we could stop seeing our gender differences as an issue in sport and just focus on the Game.
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Please email: KJWVoiceforWomen@gmail.com