and aint i a woman: Playing the game
When did you last sit down and watch hours of women’s sport on TV? Probably never, because women’s sport is barely visible in the corporate media. But according to columnist Miranda Devine, it is women’s refusal to participate in sport that has led to their exclusion from the corporate elite.
Devine’s argument, that most young girls don’t play team sport and therefore don’t have the “team skills” needed in the corporate world, was presented in the April 18 Sydney Morning Herald, in an article titled “Girls are letting the team down”.
But actually, it is the system that lets women down.
There are many barriers to women becoming”corporate high flyers”: sexism prevents women from getting promoted, the unpaid work in the home that women perform gives them less time to play office politics, the crippling under-confidence that most women experience makes it harder to fight for promotion and sexual harassment and discrimination can make “the office” a difficult place to be.
Perhaps most importantly, the most powerful “corporate high flyers” inherited their wealth. They belong to a select, private-school-educated group who benefit from the oppression of women through paying them lower wages, playing on their insecurity to sell things and not having to provide child-care and other services women provide for free.
By Devine’s reasoning, billionaire Kerry Packer must be a team player — despite sacking thousands of workers each year. The only team he is a part of is the ruling class — hardly something he learned from playing team sport when a young boy!
Another flaw in Devine’s logic is her assumption that women don’t play team sports — a conclusion she reaches by quoting the percentage of girls in male-dominated sports like rugby and soccer. But what about netball, one of the most widely played team sports, which is dominated by women?
If Devine wants to use statistics to work out why women are invisible in most sports, it would be more useful to examine corporate sponsorship of men’s sport compared to women’s, and the prevalence of sexual assault in sport.
Instead, Devine argues that girls choose to spend their time “bitching about other girls” over playing sport. Once again, relying on sexist stereotypes and language, Devine is blaming women for suffering discrimination.
Devine does not even mention the huge disparity between media coverage of men’s and women’s sport. Not only is men’s sport given more coverage than women’s, (women’s sport got a measly 2% of sports coverage on TV in 1996, and 10.7% of newspaper coverage), but most of the media coverage there is of women’s sport focuses on players’ looks and personal lives, not their athletic achievements.
“Homosexuality can be damaging to a team<192> it’s out there and its real” screamed a May 12 Sunday Telegraph article. The newspaper argues that the Australian women’s rugby team, the Wallaroos, have had their World Cup preparation disrupted by the break-up of a lesbian couple on the team.
Not only does the article fail to provide any evidence that the break-up has affected anyone’s performance, it doesn’t mention that heterosexuals could have traumatic relationship break-ups.
As if the subject of the article wasn’t enough, it was placed in the sport section of the newspaper, comprising half the newspaper's coverage of women’s sport.
Articles such as this — where women’s personal lives are judged and found wanting — just deter more young women from playing. Other deterrents include: few role models, little appreciation of women’s athletic performance and a lack of corporate sponsorship unless you look like a supermodel.
Maybe if we started to respect women athletes for their performances, treated them like adults and encouraged all women to value their bodies more, women would play more sport — I just wouldn’t expect it to result in more female power in a fundamentally sexist society.
BY BRONWYN POWELL
[The author is the Sydney organiser of the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]
From Green Left Weekly, May 29, 2002.
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