What Is Stopping Women’s Sport From Progressing?
“Sport is one of the most powerful platforms for promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls” - International Olympic Committee (IOC)
Throughout history, women have faced endless barriers to equality in sport. At the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, women were banned from competing; the founder, Pierre de Coubertin believed women’s sport to be “uninteresting” and “improper”. By 1966, women were a powerful force in the world of sport yet became subject to gender verification tests in disbelief of their achievements. The expectation of what is 'normal’ for men and women has long corrupted social attitudes, creating the myth that women are biologically incapable of incredible sporting feats and hindering women's sport's progression.
Women’s sport is progressing; to deny this would be an injustice to the successes of countless sportswomen and the campaigning of many. Significantly, the IOC has announced that the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021 will be the first gender-balanced Olympic Games in history with 48.8 per cent women's participation, more than doubling the women's participation figure in 1984 (23 per cent). Within the British team, women are expected to outnumber their male counterparts. Yet beyond the world's greatest sporting event, what is stopping women's sport from progressing?
Interest
Deloitte, a leading sports business group, as part of their 2021 predictions for UK Technology, Media and Telecommunications, has projected that elite women's sports revenue could top just under a billion dollars in 2021. Following an almost completely wiped-out sporting calendar in 2020, audiences are expected to reach record highs, and brand sponsorship and TV rights deals are to increase. Nevertheless, compared to the sports industry's overall global value at $471 billion in 2018, $1 billion becomes minuscule. Although this figure does mark progress, women’s sport continues to suffer in the shadow of men’s sport.
Spectatorship of women’s sport has historically been lower than men’s sport. While gender-neutral sports such as athletics, swimming and tennis enjoy nearly equal viewing habits, women in traditionally ‘masculine’ or team sports lack spectators. Although TV viewers of the FIFA Women’s World Cup increased from 750 million in 2015 to 993 million in 2019, with 482 million accessing the tournament digitally, the men’s FIFA World Cup stormed ahead with over 3.5 billion spectators. Similarly, 1.8 million people watched the 2017 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup final, yet 15.4 million witnessed the men’s 2019 final. While positives must be drawn; 11.7 million people tuned in to watch England play the USA in the women’s FIFA semi-finals, representing just over half of the total TV audience at that time, women’s sport is regularly outshone.
Without greater media coverage, women's sport and spectatorship will fail to grow. Women account for roughly 40 per cent of sports participants, yet, before COVID-19, UNESCO found that women's sport received a mere four per cent of media coverage. It is, therefore, no surprise that the 2020 BBC Elite British Sportswomen’s Survey, sent to 1,068 female athletes across 39 sports and received 537 anonymous responses, found that 85.1 per cent of respondents believe the media does not do enough to promote women’ sport, contributing to its lack of spectators and exposing how far the sporting world is from gender equality.
Women are often demeaned or subject to gender-related stereotypes within media coverage, stripping them of their success. In the same BBC survey, just over three quarters (77.5 per cent) of respondents admitted to being conscious of their body image, demonstrating the standards women in the limelight face. Until all media outlets offer equal and neutral coverage to women’s sport, progression will be impeded by the limited opportunity to promote and inspire. Greater visibility of women’s elite sport will provide role models and help to dismantle the cultural understandings that certain sports are masculine and feminine, removing negative connotations often engrained in mentality from an early age.
Money
Entrenched with stigma, lack of interest, and minimal media coverage, women’s sport has long failed to receive adequate funding. This was admitted in the June 2020 Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DMCS) report on the Impact of COVID-19 on DCMS sectors. DCMS stated that "women's elite sports have been consistently underfunded over recent years compared to men's". During COVID-19, though the Premier League provided women’s professional football with approximately £1 million to assist with a testing system, this gesture came too late to stop the women’s 2019/20 season from being cancelled, unlike the men’s Premier League that restarted in June 2020. Other sports for women followed suit.
Alongside funding comes salary. While in 2017, BBC Sport found that 83 per cent of sports now reward men and women equal prize money, an increase from 70 per cent in 2014. There remains a significant salary gap behind this. According to the BBC Elite British Sportswomen's Survey, 84 per cent of respondents believe they are not paid enough and receive inadequate financial rewards compared to sportsmen. In the same survey, only 12 sportswomen (2.2 per cent) revealed that they earned over £100,000 a year, a figure received weekly by many male Premier League football players. On an international scale, only two women made the Forbes' Highest-Paid Athletes in the World 2020 list – Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams. Significantly, no female athlete from a sport other than tennis has ever made the list.
Trailblazing justification for the gender salary gap is the point that women's sport brings in fewer spectators and money. In recent years, however, this argument has lost its foundations. In 2016, five US women's soccer team members filed a wage discrimination case following their win in the 2015 World Cup. The women's team brought in $20 million more than the men's team that year yet were paid only a quarter of what their male counterparts earned. This case was followed by a gender discrimination lawsuit against US Soccer in 2019 by twenty-eight players. However, the salary gap goes beyond money; monetary inequality arguably reinforces the stigma that women’s sport is not as good, or rather not as worthy of attention, as men’s sport, consequently limiting spectatorship, interest, and progression.
Power
The historical lack of women in positions of power in the sporting world has created obstructions for women’s sport. A greater female perspective in senior leadership would contribute to progress. In 2016, Sport England’s Code for Sports Governance put National Governing Bodies (NGBs) under pressure to comply with a 30 per cent minimum representation of both sexes, or face financial penalisation. By autumn 2016, Farrer & Co’s ‘Women in Sport’ report found that 72 per cent of NGBs had met this target, with a further 37 per cent having a woman in a leadership position on the board.
Despite this, professional clubs lag with only three per cent achieving 30 per cent female board representation and only five per cent with a woman in a leadership role. Without the threat of financial penalty, the sporting world appears to have little motivation to improve their governance, providing a barrier to women's progression and highlighting the continuing belief that women are inferior to men in sport. Until women are given greater opportunity to take leadership positions in sporting bodies and clubs, decisions will remain overwhelmingly male-dominated and male-focused, and girls and women will lack role models.
Participation
With more significant funding, media coverage, and marketing, and in turn, further sponsorship and endorsements, a new generation of female sporting stars and participants will be inspired. In 2014, according to Sport England, two million fewer female 14-40 year olds regularly played sport than male, triggering the founding of This Girl Can. Since 2015, This Girl Can have successfully persuaded nearly three million women to get more active, closing the gap.
Despite this, COVID-19 has hit women's sport hard from grassroots to elite level. As published in The Telegraph in September 2020, only a quarter of women remain regularly active after six months of lockdown. Though a fall in participation has been seen in both genders, due to women dedicating more time to other priorities, the decreased visibility of elite women's sport, and the reduction of group activities, gender stereotypes have been reinforced and women's sport progression stunted.
Following COVID-19, as the demand for live sport rises, women’s sport is expected to be included. This would allow women’s sport to regain the momentum it accrued pre-lockdown. While DCMS suggests that the lack of visibility women's sport received in 2020, risks undoing the work done to increase funding and inspire intake. By grasping the challenges women in sport face with both hands, and being vocal, optimistic, and determined, progress will follow.
For organisations actively combatting gender inequality in sport in the United Kingdom see:
Written by Sophie Olver
Hi, I'm Sophie. I recently completed a masters in History at the University of Southampton and hope to enter the heritage sector. My heart lies with writing, swimming and running.