Did any of you know that there is a FIFA World Cup going on at the moment?

[MmeLindor.]

No? That will be because it is the Womens' World Cup

What a surprise that it is not even being mentioned on the news.

I knew too, but not kept up with it

The DS and DH have discussed results

Final score: New Zealand 1-2 England - wahoo!

I think you can watch it through your Red Button PrinceHumperdink.

It's been talked about on Radio Five Live all week.

This is a feminist issue why?
(BTW as reported above, it has been reported in the news and all England matches are shown on the BBC)

It is a bloody outrage Women's sport is never on the sports pages or TV except tennis (which I don'tlike) or (rarely) athletics which I do like. Dd's PE teacher's daughter plays footie, proper team and everything The England rugby and cricket teams often outperform the men's sides. So there.

They are shown on the BBC red button im22 not on main channels. There is virtually nothing in the papers. 5 Live have talked about it a bit. But lets face it the coverage is hardly on a par with the men's world cup, Wimbledon or a bloody 20:20 cricket match with Sri Lanka!

Out of all sports football is my least favourite but that is mainly because of the behaviour of the men involved both on and off the pitch . And the fact that those said men train for pitifully short periods of time (in comparison to other athletes), yet get paid exhorbitant amounts of money. Women's football definitely has more appeal.

PurpleStrawberry - maybe you could be the feminist football correspondent as your enthusiasm is great (and catching)! I want to enjoy it, damn it, I love sport!

Big news here in Germany, obv. The dc are collecting the Panini stickers and swapping them with friends. I read in the Guardian that Panini were caught off-guard by the popularity of the stickers and had to rush through another print run.

My dc are as excited by this tournament as they were by the Men's World Cup last time round. I think the quality of the women's game is impressive.

"The England rugby and cricket teams often outperform the men's sides. So there." So??? Do you honestly believe this means that the England's ladies rugby or cricket teams would beat the mens? (The answer is pretty obvious, but irrelevant, just thought i'd point out that your argument here is irrelevant)

"Women's sport is never on the sports pages or TV..." This is because there is no great interest in it (relatively speaking), but again, so what??? There are thousands of things not generally reported in the news/tv. I love chess, but I accept there isn't a big enough interest nationally to justify putting it in the national newspapers, I don't assume there is some conspiracy against people that like chess, so please don't assume there is one here simply because the atheletes in question are the same gender as you are.

Men aren't interested in the women's teams because the quality is so much less than the male counterparts, women aren't interested because they aren't generally as interested as men in sport (a mass generalization I know, but one which nobody can realistically argue with). This is the reason that women's sports are less mentioned in news, please look for the simple answer to a question before jumping on the sexism bandwagon.

Ahh yes the old quality isn't the same argument, women aren't interested in sport blah blah blah. Yawn.

Why is it that women aren't interested in sport?

Because for years we weren't even allowed to do sport and now there is still the prevalant thinking that women look pretty, sport doesn't make you pretty. Sport is still seen by society as something men do.

Why is the quality less (although that is extremely subjective and also irrelevant as they don't generally compete against men!)?

Again, female sport is about 100 years behind men's sport and participation is less. So in that respect the quality is actually bloody good! And it is certainly not true in all sports that the quality is less. The women at the top of most sports will generally beat the average man competing in that sport. I am no where near the top of my sport but I can beat many many men hands down in it.

Why are men not interested in women's sport?
Because it takes the focus away from them. Women have to aspire to be men not the other way round dontcha know

Why is the success of female teams not promoted in the same way that success in minoirty sports such as rowing and cycling is?
No idea - I suspect male privelege has something to do with it.

The answers to those questions are the reason it is a feminist issue.

Am I wrong in thinking that Paula Radcliffe is the fastest British marathon runner? Not fastest British woman marathon runner. But anyway. There are two competitions usually, men's and women's. Some of us were thinking we could maybe see both. Apparently this is a 'bandwagon'.

In 2002/3 she was. I think a couple (but literally a couple) are faster than her now. But tbh there aren't that many men faster than her in the world!

HDS - It doesn't really make sense to yawn at an argument and then try to refute it, but anyway...

"Because for years we weren't even allowed to do sport and now there is still the prevalant thinking that women look pretty, sport doesn't make you pretty. Sport is still seen by society as something men do"
If you think this then work on changing women's views on this. A man's view on whether or not looking pretty during sport is irrelevant - the only relevant view is that of the potential participant

"Why is the quality less (although that is extremely subjective and also irrelevant as they don't generally compete against men!......."
It is relevant in that the OP asked why female sport makes the news less often than men's. My point is that men's it is only the top qualitysport that makes the news - If you compare the English women's football team and a men's team of equivilant ability then you would see that the amount of media coverage would be similar (eg. compare the national news coverage of the women's national team with, say, a semi-pro (since this is what womens football is) men's football team and you would see the womens team gets a lot more)

"Because it takes the focus away from them. Women have to aspire to be men not the other way round dontcha know "
Yawn. Grow up

"Why is the success of female teams not promoted in the same way that success in minoirty sports such as rowing and cycling is?
No idea - I suspect male privelege has something to do with it."
Again, as I stated in my first post - there are more people interested in rowing/cycling than most female teams. The success of a team should only make the news if it is newsworthy (ie. enough people would care to justify it's inclusion in the news). What you are suggesting is that a female sports team's success should be reported above a minority sport, even though a minority sport has more people interested in it? This is sexist (although since it is sexist against males, obviously it doesn't really count as sexism, right?!)

Alice - "Am I wrong in thinking that Paula Radcliffe is the fastest British marathon runner? Not fastest British woman marathon runner. But anyway. There are two competitions usually, men's and women's. Some of us were thinking we could maybe see both. Apparently this is a 'bandwagon'."
I have no problem with this, assuming you are arguing this is a non sexist way - ie that men can also compete in womens team's/sports etc. (Although I'll fully suspect you would only want women to compete against men in sports where they are good enough to do so)

DP has been staying up late to watch it

I was interested to see that in Canada (where I live now) the football results were on the front page of the main news web-sites (in fact I think it was the fourth article). Here football is played widely by women and girls, although it is a minority sport.

The fact is that many men are interested in football and are willing to pay huge sums of money to watch it. Similarly, many women are interested in the minutiae of celebrity sex lives and this is where they spend their money. I think both topics are given similar coverage in the mainstream media.

It is not reasonable just to say that coverage of women's sport should be the same as men's if the market is not there at present. If you are so interested in seeing the women's Football World Cup then why are you not in Germany watching it? Why have you not schedule your family holidays to accommodate it? Or at the very least, why to you not have a subscription to Eurosport so you can watch it on tv?

If the market was there I have no doubt that the media would provide the coverage. Maybe Kelly Smith or whoever should get involved in a bit of spit-roasting to drum up a bit of media interest.

KingofHighVis, DP has been watching it on the BBC, but it's shown at silly o'clock - last night it started at five to midnight! He has still watched a fair few of the matches, at least as many as he actually managed to catch of the Men's game.

He says it's a lot less technical than the men's game and not necessarily as fast-paced. Perhaps that's another reason it doesn't attract such a large audience?

He also says that a lot less women play than men. There is a 200 year history behind Men's football and less than 100 for women's.

Who is this im22? Sounds a bit of a twat.

In answer to the OP, the Guardian's football website has done loads of articles about it. I would say that anyone who's into footy definitely knows about it.

But what some of the posters here are saying is 'why hasn't knowledge of it intruded into general consciousness'? Well, I think that's just because most sports don't, do they? I only occasionally grasp when the World Athletics Championship is, or Showjumping/dressage is on, even though we have decent sportspeople in those fields.

Men's football is the ONLY sport that you can guarantee knowing when a major tournament is on. Even rugby and cricket can pass us by.

Womens' football should be bigger, and better supported. But for a semi-pro sport, the coverage is decent.

Don't care at all about football mostly wouldn't know what's on when it comes to men's football tournaments either - but mentioned this to my uncle this morning when he was grumbling about the tennis (not a fan) news. And he not only knew it was on but knew the scores etc.

So, he knew there was football on.

Full coverage of it here in Thailand. Obviously with Thai commentary so I have no idea what's going on. Unfortunately I find women's soccer as dull as men's.

Now tennis, well there's my game. Sadly nobody gives a monkeys about it here, so no Wimbledon live coverage for me.

Twas on news and England were v.good

Go on Britain

I'm not a great fan of footie, but my dh has been watching this and is a massive fan of womens football.

We have the Ladies Open Golf championship starting here very soon, I thought you meant that!!! Not football yet again,doesnt really appeal to me.

LeninGrad, the England matches were on the red button, but they played their last group game last night (and beat Japan).

The other matches, I believe, are only on Eurosport, which you can get on Freeview or cable.