the mould
Carolize Jansen Women in sport
Cast your mind back to the little statuettes of sports players Shell distributed last year. Can you recall how many of those statuettes were of women? To refresh your memory, just one. Of Penny Heyns.
Does that mean that there is only one sportswoman of note in South Africa at the moment? Surely not -Amanda Coetzer maintains a steady spot in the top10 tennis rankings, the national karate team came second after Japan at the recent world championships and the national netball team is ranked second in the world.
Women’s sporting achievements continue to be overlooked and undersupported not only in South Africa, but in the rest of the world. Could anyone name the female winner of the Tour de France? The world women soccer champions?
While it is true that there are more sportsmen than women, that is a mere fraction of the problem. The problem is mainly made up of one word – apathy, amongst men and women, towards women’s sporting abilities and performances. And it is under these lukewarm circumstances that most professional sportswomen have to remain motivated and dedicated.
For the professional sportswoman it truly is a labour of love -in almost any given sport she’ll earn less than her male counterpart in financial terms, career opportunities will be few and far between, media coverage scant and subsequently little in the way of sponsorships.
All of this results in a catch-22 situation that riddles women’s sport the world over: career and financial opportunities for women in sport are fewer, thus less women dedicate themselves to professional sport, and those that do have to juggle their time between sport and a job.
Thus, the standards are sometimes not as high as they could be, which draws smaller crowds, less advertising and ultimately less money. Which brings us back to why there aren’t more professional sportswomen. One could also look at it from the other side: women’s sport is not regarded as an exciting spectator sport, therefore it receives little media attention and sponsorships, which means that women’s sport is not developed, forcing it to remain marginalised and stigmatised. And the circle continues.
On the bright side, however, women’s sport has progressed with leaps and bounds. Women’s sport has yielded many truly magnificent stars and achievements, surpassing everyone’s expectations. This is the Year of Women in athletics and it is heartening to see that the Department of Sport and Recreation is taking the imbalance in sport seriously, resulting in Women and Sport in South Africa (Wassa).
This organisation, co-ordinated by Ntambi Ravele, receives R400E000 per year, which is pitifully little compared to what is pumped into men’s sports, but it is a start. Every national sports federation is also required to dedicate 30% of the funding they receive from the department to the development of women in sport.
With this meagre funding, it is thus evident that sport organisations will have to take the development of women into their own hands and among the plethora of these organisations, there are two that stand out among the others.
Athletics
When speaking about the progress made by women in the sporting arena, it is fitting to use the example of athletics. Athletics is one of the very few sports where women, by and large, experience the same amount of encouragement and opportunities as men.
Two previous male-only events have been opened up to women – pole vaulting and hammerthrow -and with the inclusion of the steeplechase next year, all athletics events will be open to women. It has been a long, hard slog though.
For years the American Amateur Athletics Union ruled that 800m was the maximum official distance for female runners, until the Sixties and Seventies, when women’s liberation started exerting an influence on the sports world. In 1968 the maximum distance was only 8km and in 1971 it doubled to a whopping 16km, even though women had already broken the three hour barrier in the marathon.
In 1972 it was stretched to 42km and by 1983 women had established world records for distances of up to 217km (while the Olympic marathon for women was only recognised in 1984!). In his book The Lore of Running, Professor Tim Noakes recounts many anecdotes of women who had to punch racing officials or disguise themselves as men in order to participate in marathons.
In the New York Marathon of 1971, it was decided that the women would start 10 minutes before the men, but when the gun went off the women sat down in the road for those 10 minutes until it was time for the men to start.
Locally, Athletics South Africa (ASA) is regarded by the International Athletics Federation as one of the most active athletics governing bodies in the world as far as sports development is concerned, in terms of gender as well as race. ASA takes pro-active measures to get more women involved in athletics, not only on participatory but also on managerial and administrative levels.
According to Richard Stander, manager of development at ASA, young athletes are pinpointed through talent identification programmes throughout the country, resulting in development teams which have to consist of at least 50% women.
The concept of development teams is bearing fruit since a number of athletes from those teams are competing at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur later this year. On team management level the aim is also an equal number of women and men. At the moment women make up about 40% of the managers.
“Athletics is currently levelling out the differences on the sports field. The differences in prize money is also being addressed. All the women complain about unequal prize money but at the South African Championships there are no such discrepancies anymore,” says Stander.
Unfortunately, differences in prize money are still common in roadrunning, but that is definitely changing – in the Comrades Marathon the first 10 women received gold medals (on par with the men) for the first time this year.
Netball
Netball is the number one women’s sport in South Africa and the most successful at international level. It is played at all white schools and most black schools. It boasts a total of 650E000 participants throughout the country with a majority of black. Lynette Ferreira of Netball South Africa says that the reasons for the popularity could be found in the fact that it doesn’t require a huge capital outlay: “You basically need a flat surface, a goal post and a ball. Furthermore it incorporates skills that come naturally to children, like throwing, catching and running. It is also an upward game and a person jumping is a happy person because it gives the illusion of freedom.”
Three years ago Transnet started investing in senior netball, but decided to focus on the under-21s and under-16s, even sponsoring a tour to Malawi. And just as significant as their pumping money into the game, Transnet has secured a weekly slot on the SABC’s Saturday sport schedule. The Transnet Schools Netball Challenge is the only national media outlet for girls’ school sport (apart from athletics).
According to Anne Taylor, New Zealand- based president of the International Federation of Netball Associations, netball enjoys prime-time television coverage in New Zealand and Australia, either resulting in or caused by (here’s that catch-22 situation again!) good sponsorships and large adult crowds on a regular basis. Australia has been dominating netball for years and are the currrent world champions, which goes to show that if some time and money are invested into women’s sport, it will show dividends.
Women in the Olympics
The Olympic Games is the biggest sporting event encompassing the greatest variety of athletes in the world (although Soccer World Cup advertising tells us differently). It is therefore a valuable gauge to measure the growth of women in sport.
It has come a long long way since Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, said in 1928: “As to the admission of women to the Games, I remain strongly against it. It was against my will that they were admitted to a growing number of competitions.”
He needn’t have worried too much though – in the 1928 Olympics some women fainted after participating in the 800m race and it was only reinstated as an Olympic event for women in 1960.
In 1996, a world conference on women and sport was organised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since a huge gender discrepancy still exists, with only 36% of the athletes in the 1996 Olympics being women.
There are 165 men-only events and 95 women-only events and only 11 mixed events (such as badminton, yachting and the equestrian events). The bobsleigh race was supposed to be a mixed event at this year’s winter Olympics until officials complained about the intimate proximity of the participants.
Furthermore there are 35 countries (including Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan) that bar women from competing in the Olympics. Iran has sponsored a women-only Muslim Games where the sight of exposed female flesh will only be visible to fellow female athletes.
A number of recommendations were made at the IOC conference, among others that the National Olympic committees in the different countries should create working groups composed of at least 10% women that will design and implement national programmes promoting women in sport. The IOC have also ruled that one of the criteria of assessment of the cities bidding to host the Olympics should be a demonstrated ability to serve the needs of women in sport. While there are a number of South African women that have excelled at the summer Olympics, women in Africa are far from having reached their potential, especially when one looks at the excellence of female athletes of African extraction in America and the Caribbean.
Derartu Tulu from Ethiopia was the first black African women to win an Olympic gold medal when she beat Elana Meyer in the 10E000m in 1992, a feat made more extraordinary by the fact that she enjoyed hardly any support from her family.