Women's Sport

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19608812

Ah, so it has at last been noticed by the powers that be how great a part women played in Olympic success and how badly they are represented in the media.

FWIW my husband (ex rugby player and, like myself, a sports enthusiast) have Sky Sports (yes I know it's not PC among many mums netters to have a Murdoch channel) because we are sports enthusiasts and because we both like to see women's sport as well as men's sport. And Sky covers women's rugby, cricket, football, tennis and golf widely as well as other sports.

I have provided information on here before re women's football. A lot of English Premier League clubs have fully independent women's teams now - Arsenal, Everton, Liverpool etc. They have the FA WSL;

www.thefa.com/Leagues/SuperLeague

Then there is the FA Cup;

www.thefa.com/Competitions/FACompetitions/TheFAWomensCup/newsandfeatures/2011/1rq2rq-draws

13,000 fans watched Arsenal win the Cup last year. It is all on the FA's website;

www.thefa.com/womens/

There is even a section at the end about development of young talented players.

As a guide, Liverpool charge something like 4 UK pounds for entrance to a league match, so it isn't expensive.

The OP asked what she can do to encourage the media to cover more sport. I would suggest attending and supporting a local football team for starters.

As for cycling, try this website;

www.womenscycling.net/

It's an international site, but it covers all the major meetings and championships. As with men's cycling, most big races are on the continent because the sport is so much bigger over there. If you want to find a club and participate, as well as meet like-minded people, try here;

www.britishcycling.org.uk/clubfinder

I run sports teams, we get about 99% boys for football and 95% boys for cricket. Junior cricket is a totally mixed sport. Football has been changed to i think mixed until Under 14.

The FA and the ECB are promoting girls participating in playing the sports but it takes parents to take them along.

Take them along, get them interested as they're the potential spectators of the future.

I think part of the problem is that football is talked/written about constantly. I love athletics but it's the big competitions I like to watch - Olympics, World Champs etc. I'm not particularly interested in watching a local meeting. However, with football, local meetings are effectively what you get all the time. In other sports only the major competitions are mentioned because that's where you get to see top class performers. For some reason even mediocre and tedious football matches get loads of coverage.

I have posted two threads on MN about how I believe that the TV chanels are missing a huge opportunity to get (admittedly cheap) deals for women's sport.

Both of them where ignored.

I can only assume that no-one was bothered.

FromEsme, I second what Eats said, I'd be up for a writing campaign.

FromEsme - What about encouraging a letter/email writing campaign to relevant papers? You could provide information on who to write to, email addresses and useful facts, and post it here and ask people to share it on fb and other places.

DD2 would follow Women's Football if there was any decent publicity. She's 11 and moans quite often that it's all men's.

Except in mixed things like the Olympics and grand slam tennis and athletic meets woman's sport just vanishes.

If we want an Olympic legacy that inspires a generation we shouldn't leave 50% of that generation out.

How have attendances for womens sport gone? There were plenty of people willing to pay money to attend during the olympics and people happy to make noises about how there should be greater focus on both womens and minority sports (such as athletics etc.) but I'd wager that there has been little follow through.
I'm not sure if it's solely a womens issue, because like I said, the same effect can be seen throughout male minority sports.
If people are honestly seeking out these events and tweeting, blogging or attending then fair enough I'm completely wrong, but I'm not so sure that the appetite of the general populace for attending a marquee event like the Olympics, which for many was more about the occassion than any true love of the sport, is replicated in going to a regional/national meet or event (obviously those who were interested before the olympics will still be highly interested.)

If you are on twitter you could try pointing this out to the relevant papers. i use the hashtag #halfthepopulation to comment (almost daily) on the proportion of women's mentions in the paper on my daily commute