Sporting women

I love to read. My favourite time of day is early morning with the newspaper, LOML and a cup of coffee. It doesn’t make any difference where I am, morning isn’t morning without the essentials. And, while I don’t usually spend a lot of quality time in the Business or Sports sections of any newspaper, I do make a quick tour to see what’s happening with my favourite teams and players in both sections.

As regards financials, women have made more inroads on the money than on the sports pages. In years gone by, I was somewhat less inclined to care about sports or where women fit into the playbook. As a matter of fact, I thought women were much better off brainy than brawny, although I was more into layups than ledgers. And, then, in the late ‘60s, I read a story about Abby Hoffman and her Olympic career as an 800-metre runner. Somehow I wasn’t surprised to read Ms. Hoffman started her career as an athlete in a Junior ‘A’ hockey league as a star defence”man.” When her credentials were checked more closely, her future as an NHLer was quickly benched as a major misconduct.

Burning bras, birth control and looking up to see there was a glass ceiling was the name of the game women learned to play, openly, in the 1960s. Prior to that time, the fight for parity, equality and recognition for their accomplishments was usually fought in obscurity because the press wasn’t the place for women. Today, when we know how the results are posted, women still struggle to find space on the sports pages of any publication. And it isn’t because women don’t play the games. Indeed, Abby Hoffman wasn’t the first star, nor is she the last. Yet, women still struggle for recognition and acceptance—well, they are recognized and accepted if they happen to be wearing a string bikini and are in a relationship with a male all-star. Women still wrestle with underrepresentation in nearly all aspects of sports, not to mention the unveiled hostility.

In the 2012 Olympics in London, women will, for the first time, be able to show their mettle in the boxing ring. British boxing authorities had once said “women’s menstrual cycles made them too unstable to box” and besides, fighter-gals might hurt their reproductive organs in a match—as if ovulation and reproduction weren’t training enough for a feisty, hormonally charged go-round. International Ski Federation President Gian Franco Kaspar said his opposition to female ski jumpers was because the sport “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.” Better for men, I suppose, to fall and break a bone or two. Him don’t know us very well.

My point is, where the H E double hockey sticks/boxing gloves/downhill skis/baseball bats and shinpads are the females on the sports pages of our newspapers? All of our newspapers. It isn’t like there isn’t enough going on in the wonderful world of sports on the girl’s side of the yard. And don’t tell me you saw an article in the winter about a woman who won a medal in the Olympics, ‘cuz only 40 per cent of the participants in the Olympics are women and 19 participant countries do not even send women to the Olympics. We need to make a bigger effort to turn some of our attention to females in sports on our sports pages. Ya, ya, I can hear some of all y’all whining about calibre and your general lack of interest in anything short of “world class.”Well, I’m interested. World class is something writers and readers determine. I read the paper. I’m a consumer. I’d be more likely to read the sports pages (and see those advertisements on the sports pages) if you included some of the people I admire and want to follow. It’s about balance. Half of us are missing from the headlines.

Women kickbox and we kick ass. There must be a sports story about that someplace.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca