Daybreak

My DS plays football (he's 4). In his club girls and boys play together until they are twelve and then they at segregated by sex. The club actively encourages girls to sign up to play and even has reduced rates for girls! My DD (if we stay in the area and sadly at the mo, it looks like we won't) will sign up the minute she is 3 ( youngest age!). She loves "playing" football and is really jealous of her wee brother at the moment.
According to the coaches there is no difference between girls and boys physically as players until well into adolescence. They segregate at 12 for this reason, but not because the boys are " better" players, just that they are now becoming bigger and stronger.
Well done to the girl in question, and boo hiss to the interviewer for perpetuating such silly sexist ideas.

You really are bring quite tedious. It's a stupid programme. It's froth. If the inane nature of it offends you (as it should) either watch it in that spirit or don't watch it. See also in this ilk Loose Women.

slug. Absolutely agree - hate totty, scanty babes, skirts etc. Women as decoration. I too have played loads of sport in the past, including mixed hockey. I too get really angry at the lack of attention to female sport, particularly team sports.

But it won't stop me watching men's sport . Nothing would have stopped me watching the Australian semis and finals last week - Djokovic/Murray Djokovic/Nadal was riveting stuff. The women's final was IMO a damp squib.

However, I stand by my view that the fact that we don't have a dedicated thread for sports on Mumsnet indicates the level of interest (or lack of). Even Gransnet has a sports thread!!!!!

Arrgghhh!! I wrote a big long rant then lost is when Mumsnet went offline

In the UK especially girls are conditioned from an early age that sport=football=something boys do.

There are lots of threads on Mumsnet about sport. However, they are not about sport on the telly because sport on the telly is about the boys. The mumsnet threads are about women participating in sport.

I challenge you to take a long hard look at the sports you support. Do women play them too? If so, why aren't they mentioned in the press? This is especially worth looking at if the women's team do better than the mens on the international stage. (e.g. cricket, football, rowing, swimming, iornman, kyaking, hockey, long distance running, gymnastics) Why are the world champions ignored in favour of the third rate men? What makes them more newsworthy? Why do the news media think it's OK to only celebrate the third rate and not the first rate? Why was Amir Khan, who didn't win a single bought this year nominated for sports personality of the year when Chrissie Wellington, who regularly beats men at the ironman world championships ignored? What about Rebecca Adlington, Victoria Pendalton (who seems to need to get her kit off to be noticed) and Jessica Ennis ignored?

I genuinely enjoy sport. I play, and have played many sports in my times, some of them male dominated (I was a nifty rugby player in my youth). However, I prefer to follow the really high level stuff, the world champions and the teams that are really good at what they do. Like so many women I have no time for the third rate, the endless conversations about which overpaid footballer is guilyt/not guilty of violence or going to transfer to another overpaid position.

The media and the sports establishment make it very clear they are not interested in me as a fan. Just look at the barely disguised sneer when the offside rule is mentioned. It's not like it is difficult to understand but it's always mentioned in terms of somthing that our fluffy little girly brains wouldn't understand. And look at the big conversations about women in sport in the media this year. There was the BBC Sports Personality Man of the year, there was the Badmington conversation about sexing up the women's uniforms to get more TV coverage and there was the Boxing Federation wanting women to wear skirts so the poor judges would be able to tell they were women. "More Elegant" I think was the phrase

I get the message loud and clear from the media. Sport, important sport, sport worth mentioning in the media, sport worth "following" and sport with fans is synonomous with having a penis. I simply can't be bothered with that.

Oh, I get annoyed with the TDF totty at the stage ends. (And have bored my husband who tends to agree with me silly with my rants about it)

Still, I love the tour, and it does not bother me that it's male cyclists only. I imagine that if it was mixed that the women would fall to the back of the peloton very quickly, simply due to physical differences. That said, if they would show a women's grand tour, I'd probably follow it, the same as I followed women's cycling in the last olympics.

You get teh same with the Tour de France (which I watch sometimes) and motorcycle racing (which I used to follow a bit). "Young lovelies" all over the podiums with the winning men. It sends quite a strong message IMO.

I get annoyed when sporting events are adorned with scantily clad women for no apparent reason, basically

I like to watch the snooker

I'm not sure that counts as a sport though

And the conversation about watching / participation / coverage / conversation - it's a bit chicken and egg isn't it. Is it that women don't watch / talk about it as they are inherently not interested, or are they not interested as they are directed by society that they are not supposed to be?

I bet there will be lots of people on here talking about the olympics when they happen - and certainly wimbledon gets a lot of talk on here. So it's not right to say that people don't talk about sport on here at all. I have also seen conversations about rugby and football, now I come to think of it.

And thinking about it - the new snooker boss has made a lot of changes and I was watching one of the new speedy style competitions on the telly and bizarrely when the players were introduced they walked out flanked by scantily clad young women. What was that all about? It certainly gave me a strong messsage that this sport / game wasn't for me, it was for men.

sportsfanatic Hear hear - totally agree, that it'd be great if more women's sports would get greater coverage, but the suggestion that a woman should be only interested in women's sport is weird.

slug, you could be right by taking issue with me. But if women as a whole do enjoy or value sport why no Sport on popular forums in Mumsnet? To have such a forum that was well supported could prove you correct.

I do agree with you though about the lack of coverage of female sport - it is disgraceful. However, I don't understand why anyone who genuinely enjoys sport would not watch it because it is men involved, though. Sport is sport. I couldn't be one of those sports enthusiasts who only likes it because females are involved.

sportsfanatic, I would take issue with the idea that women, as a whole, don't enjoy sport. Whenever I turn on the TV or read the sports pages all I see is mens sport. Women barely get a mention. That's why I don't watch it or am bothered with it in any way. If the media had the grace to admit to only covering men's sport, by labelling it, perhaps, the "Men's Sport Pages, with a few women's bits thrown in so we can show women in skimpy outfits" then possibly the daft idea that women don't value sport will be questioned.

Every morning I read the paper on my train journey into work. Just for fun I tweet the number of stories about men to and the number of stories about women in the sports pages. I'm fair, I even count those little one or two sentence stories just in case. Usually the ratio is somewhere in the region of 30:2 Because this is an olympics year, you tend to see a few more female stories, the swimmers, kyakers and gymnasts for example who you normally never hear about but may shame the men by performing better than them, will be given a few small mentions.

Yesterday, for example, there was even a picture of a female sportsperson. I have no idea who it was, as it was a picture of a Beach Volleyball player's arse in a skimpy bikini bottom, but at least it was a small acknowledgement that women have been known to grace a sports field occasionally.

And for the record I didn't call you a moron.

I'm just surprised that you're surprised to find stupid sexist shit being peddled on this programme. It's a stupid programme. It caters to a market. You aren't part of that market.

And get into eventing. Men and women compete in that.

I think it is important for people engaged in this type of discussion to keep an eye on what is going on in popular culture. If a person considers themself to be above certain sections of the media, they will not know what sort of things are going on there. You can't challenge something if you don't know it is happening.

It is therefore very important that members of the feminism section do their duty and "take one for the team" by tuning into programs like Daybreak, Doctors, Celebrity get me out of here and Big Brother on as regular as basis as they can manage.

HTH

I don't know what you're do upset about. You clearly aren't this programme's target market and that's why these frothy stupid bits annoy you. Watch something else.

Incidentally while I see your point widowwadman about adult men and women competing separately, I don't think that need apply to 8 / 9 yo?

At DDs school they have football club after school and it is mixed - it's a primary school - DD isn't that old yet but I saw them out there a while back and the children were all practicing together including the older ones.

I can't see anything wrong with that. Better than segregating them and sending the boys to football and the girls to cooking or whatever inevitably seems to happen. They certainly wouldn't run one class for boys and one class for girls in the same thing. So the boys would get football, whether they liked it or not, and the girls something else, whether they liked it or not. And most children do not have the confidence / thick skin to do the activity which is "for" the other sex.

'Listen to Today on radio four and you may not have this problem again'

Just noticed this. Heavens no, no chance of any sexism on Radio Four!!!

Oh OP my heart sank when I saw 'Daybreak' in your thread title - it's absolutely and utterly ghastly for this sort of thing (and in many other ways!) Was the female interviewer Kate Garraway by any chance??? She can always be relied on for a witless, sexist comment at a moment's notice.

'The problem here is that you were watching daybreak which is designed for the moronic to have in in the background to get their not very powerful brains into gear'

Well that's less than helpful Chubfuddler and very unnecessary

Don't watch tv for idiots then.