It is not Women’s Day, nor am I trying to curry any favour with the new editor of the Mail & Guardian who is female, but recognition should go where it is due this week.
Women’s sport has been performing wonders so far. The South African women’s hockey team booked themselves a place in the Olympics and recently beat Australia — who are number one in the world in hockey — 4-3 in a four-nations tournament in Athens, where the Olympic Games will be held in June.
That is already enough to prove that women in sport are progressing.
Another national women’s team in South Africa are on the brink of qualifying for the Olympics — the soccer women’s team, Banyana Banyana, who this weekend play Angola in an Olympic qualifying match in Luanda before going to the finals of the qualifying round, facing either Ghana or Nigeria for the only African spot in women’s football at the Olympic Games.
We hope these teams can continue to lift the South African flag high on the international stage, after it has dropped halfway on the poles to mourn how men’s team sport has dwindled in the past 12 months.
First the cricket team failed to make it to the final of the World Cup in 2003, followed by the Springboks and then Bafana Bafana’s early exit from the Nations Cup this year. The nation has been grieving at how appalling the three biggest sports in the country fared on the international stage.
But the women of South Africa are not only excelling in team sports, but also individually. For example, Kim Cloete continues to maintain her high-jump record. We hope that other women’s sports such as women’s rugby and netball can also come to the party and make the country proud instead of staying in the peripherals.
Women’s hockey and soccer may not have many sponsors or supporters due to these sports not being marketed well by their federations, but then in a big world like ours small things also matter.
Women should now start to change the mindsets of everyone, proving that in their sports — or those that men also play — they can do very well.
Only when they begin to maintain their winning ways, will the media start properly to take note of them.
And don’t forget, many supporters of men’s sport are women — if this support could be shifted to women’s sport, then a balance could easily be struck, ensuring both men and women’s talents in the sporting arena are recognised by the people and the sponsors.