Positives and negatives of the Olympics.

[kickassangel]

Hopefully a fairly light hearted thread but thought we could keep a tally of the plus and minus sides of the Olympics.

Plus
Women from Saudi, and more women from other Middle Eastern States.
Women included in the military flag bearers
Future sports people fairly even m/f balance (and their sponsors)

Minus
Still more events for men than women
Still more men taking part, and given better status/accommodations etc
Women carrying the country names, and the bowl things during the parade.
Mainly women nurses with the children on beds.
Paul McCartney getting the 'men' to sing first and the 'girls' to have a go second.

I was hoping that I'd noticed some more positives, but apparently not.

What did other people notice?

Lurking - my point was that the Olympics is the only time you get to see women's team sports on the television. They never even cover the beach volleyball at any other time.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19000201

www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2011/05_may/20/england.shtml

Some good stuff here from the BBC, and not based on the Olympics.

"Some good stuff here from the BBC"

really? would that be the normal level of coverage for the men's world cup? where only the final is shown live on BBC3, and everything else is available through red button?

I was joking about why they only show the beach volleyball, sorry I'm not that great at sarcasm.

I am getting very bored of hearing about beach bloody volleyball.

My post was in response to 'the Olympics is the only time you get to see women's team sports on the television.'

Hand on heart, how many people follow women's football closely outside of the Olympics? The only time I have ever watched it live is when my daughter played for her school team.

namechange so you are agreeing with Treats?

By the way, who still does not have access to BBC3 and the red button? I thought everywhere in the UK was now covered by digital? Genuine question as I don't know.

But there's a cause-and-effect, trickle-down effect with that, ncg. If women's sports were given more attention / sports coverage in general was marketed more at women then they would become more popular. But sport (the doing it and the watching it) is marketed very heavily at men and the coverage leans very heavily on men's events.

There's nothing that makes women as a gender inherently unsporty. Give girls growing up more opportunities and more coverage of women's sport at a high level and they're more likely to play and to actively support women's events.

For a while after the last women's Rugby World Cup you'd see Maggie Alphonsi appearing on regular rugby programmes as a pundit/commentator and I thought that was tremendously positive because she was articulate and insightful and a darn sight better than Stuart Barnes . But after a couple of months, when the women's rugby "gimmick" was over, she was quietly dropped from the punditry roster.

A lot of this isn't about sport at all of course -- the principle that if women want to watch sport they'll watch men, while men won't watch women, so why bother with women's sport at all, isn't a million miles away from "boys won't read books with a female lead character, while girls will read books with male leads" or "you need a bankable male star to open a movie, and characters other than the love interest/mother should be male by default, because women will go to the cinema anyway".

NameGames, no I don't agree. The BBC show women's football, as I showed above.

From this website;

www.beach-volleyball.co.uk/about.htm

it seems British Volleyball UK Ltd have TV contracts outside of the Olympics with ITV, Channel 4 and Eurosport, as well as international TV companies. It seems that a lot of there content is also streamed live over the Interweb, which would tie in with the profile of the sport, appealing to the 'surfer dude' crowd and younger people generally.

Casey, agreed, but it's a bit chicken-and-egg. My own Premiership football club can attract over 40,000 men and women to home games. The women's team had 105 attendees for their last game, and this is in the highest league in the sport. I think the highest attendance for a league match this season has been just over 5,000 (Chelsea vs Arsenal).

The FA are trying in the UK;

www.fawsl.com/index.html

BUT it needs a groundswell of support as well. I would genuinely love to know how many people actually attend women's league games. Do any of your daughters attend? Liverpool charge four pounds fifty for adults, and it's free to under 16's. It needs commitment as well as coverage.

I don't attend football games at all (men's or women's). But when DD1 gets to 6 in a couple of years I'll be taking her to watch women's rugby. If she's interested in football then I'd be happy to take her to women's league games (far happier than to take her to men's games, TBH).

Casey, I would agree with your last sentiment. IF women's football does take off and big money becomes involved, it will go the way of the men's game - cheating, diving, feigning injury, conning the ref etc etc. At the moment it seems remarkable free of cynicism.

For those wanting increased coverage - beware what you wish for.

AFL (Aussie Rules Football) only recently started a female..In one state believe. Not mine.

Couldn't go see if I wanted too. :(

What a strange comment namechange.

Women watch male football despite these things, so we should 'be careful what we wish for,' hence we see women do the same thing.

How does that even make one iota of sense? If a woman is a mad footy fan and wants to see women's footy, why on earth would those things matter? She watches the male version regardless.

My post was in response to 'the Olympics is the only time you get to see women's team sports on the television.'

i got that, thanks...

Hand on heart, how many people follow women's football closely outside of the Olympics? The only time I have ever watched it live is when my daughter played for her school team.

i don't - i have no interest in watching sport in general. however, because it's been all over the TV recently i have watched chunks of tennis, gymnastics, swimming, athletics, etc.

are you seriously suggesting that people who enjoy football in general would immediately switch over if in the middle of an update on men's football there was a section on women's? Or if the highlights on a saturday night included snippets from two matches played by women?

this isn't about finding a massive audience devoted to women's football - it's about normalising women playing sport.

Lurking, what I meant was that one of the best things about watching the women's game is it's honesty and integrity. I am afraid that money could spoil that. It has ruined my enjoyment of the men's game. It was a comment in praise of women's football and the attitude of the players. Why do you find that strange?

Skrumle, normalising participation includes players and spectators. If girls see live action, they will be encouraged to play themselves. So if the BBC show more football, or Sky show the netball league live, like here;

www1.skysports.com/other-sports/news/12416/7442068/Netball-on-Sky-Sports

then it becomes normalised.

I don't see why me pointing out that coverage of women's sport on TV is increasing has raised hackles. Is this not what you want?

I'd really like my DD (who's still not yet 3) to get into sport when she's older. I didn't do much as a teen and I feel I really missed out. Personality-wise, she's very sociable and loves playing with other children, so I think that a team game like football or hockey would suit her really well.

But there's a HUGE difference for girls and boys in terms of motivation for continuing sport. A boy who's really good at a sport can hope to develop a career in it. There's absolutely no reason for a girl to continue with sport - except tennis or athletics - unless she really wants to do it for its own sake. This is ABSOLUTELY a reflection on the different commercial markets for sport - I do see that.

I just think it would be nice to try to develop a market for women's sport. I don't see why the BBC, in particular, can't devote a bit more time to it.

But I was also making a broader point about how very infrequently you see women on television or on film enjoying doing things together that don't involve men in any way.

namechangeguy - everything you say is correct - showing more women's sport makes it 'normal' and we want to see increasing amounts on telly. (not sure about your point that women's football would then inevitably become more cynical, but that's beside the point).

BUT - you seem to think that showing women's football on the red button is sufficient. That's not 'normal' broadcasting of football. There's a difference between making something available for somebody to seek out if they want it, and promoting it as something that the channel think we will enjoy.

Ahh, I see namechange. Sorry I misunderstood!

I'm not British so I can't comment on the BBC3 thing, but in Aus we have Channel One which is a sporting channel. I'd love it if woman's AFL was backed financially and shown on there too, as there is currently no coverage of women's footy, see the support grow and then it could be broadcasted regularly on the other channels like men's AFL.

My mum is a super fucking annoying mad footy fan, she says she has no interest in watching women's footy if it was on telly because 'she enjoys the power and strength of the men.' It's weird because she's been raving about the amazing women in the Olympics, but I believe she just holds the natural stereotype here that AFL is for boys. Why wouldn't she? We don't fund or attempt to encourage little girls to play footy. When I did Little Aths as a little girl, there wasn't even a girl's section. :( I don't know if that's changed, but I seriously doubt it. I quit Little Aths fairly quickly because the options for girls were only soccer, tennis, basketball and athletic events, while the boys had so much more. Since a great deal of Little Aths funding comes from the AFL, it leaves little girls out in the cold quite a bit. Little Aths is also used to scour for boys to join the AFL, so not exactly equal. Or even close.

At least with AFL, the funding and coverage has to come first because there is no option for support. I think they should be encouraging young girls to play footy too. ATM it's up to adult women to attempt to make teams on meagre funds and no community support, which is a damn shame.

I would not try to claim that women's sports is covered as much as men's, but there is stuff out there. The Solheim Cup is another. Sky are really pushing to make this equivalent to the Ryder Cup, which has to be great for women golfers. Outside of the BBC though, it's a numbers game. Sky, ITV, C4 etc will only cover events they can sell advertising around. That requires bigger attendances, to show companies that there is an audience. Obvious stuff I know, but in a revenue-driven environment like commercial TV, money talks.

I am lucky that my daughter went to a school where she could play football, lacrosse, tennis, table-tennis, golf, cross-country running and a host of other stuff. This was primarily driven by a brilliant headmaster who saw the benefits of sport for all. The UK needs more head teachers like him.

namechangeguy - we know that. That's why I said that it would be good to see the BBC make some of the running here (no pun intended.....)

That's great for your daughter. But other young women won't be motivated to seek sporting opportunities for themselves unless they are inspired by outside influences and are reassured that it's a normal thing to want to do.

Treats, agreed. Sorry to make this UK-centric, but if my daughter is one of the lucky ones, has anyone raised the issue of participation within their child's school? Do the sports teachers have a view on why girls appear to lose interest? Are there any sports teachers or coaches on here?

And going back to the Olympics, did any of the LOCOG legacy stuff talk specifically about increasing female sports participation? All I ever seemed to hear about was selling the stadia!

I don't have Red Button. Though I believe I could have if I chose different options on our cable package, but then I'd have to give up other things I like.

I don't take my daughters to see any sports at the moment, but I don't understand why it would have to be daughters - that emphasis is horrible. Men and women watch men compete, why should we be taking only our daughters to see women compete? That's indicative of the whole mindset that hurts women. It's one thing to suggest women give something that they have missing out on an extra push to get it going, but why are we responsible for creating the whole market?

I think the whole emphasis on football is wrong, I think the professionalization of sport really damages it's grassroots participation. The BBC as a national public broadcaster ought to be doing a lot more to cover a wide range of sports and especially the less professional ones (who can have the commercial channels fighting over then to pay for rights). And they have been doing some, but while I've flicked past men's lacrosse and hockey games from time to time, I've never seen women's. In fact I'm trying to recall a time when I've seen any women's sport broadcast without it being part of an event that also included men. (If you're tempted to search for an example, I'll point out I'm not actually saying it never happens, just that it's rare and in high contrast to men's coverage).

And it's not just about televising events. The only time I've seen women's team sports in movies is on the odd occasion the whole movie is about it "Bend it Like Beckham" and "Whip It" being the ones that come to mind. It's rarely used in the casual way it can be for men. Women don't currently participate as much as men, but then they don't tend to wear three-inch stilettos and low-cut blouses when they are senior, front-line law enforcement officers, but it hasn't stopped directors from portraying them that way. It is a shame directors don't use some of their artistic license to show a positive outlier.

Someone up thread pointed out that a lot of the demand for things in the media is created by the media (for the media to make money). The slight increase in covering women's football is partly due to the men's game being pretty much maxed out. The media can make more money by generating interest in Women's football and cashing in on that before the cost of it gets so high that their profits decrease.

When it comes to media coverage of anything, money is the driving force.