... and ain't I a woman?: Less spice, more sport
Just after Christmas, Brisbane's Courier-Mail newspaper reported stories of young women in the Australian Institute of Sport being treated unfairly by coaches in the women's tennis program, since the AIS's establishment in 1981. According to the Courier-Mail, seven of these women are now considering legal action against the AIS alleging that they "did not reach full potential under institute coaches".
On December 26, the newspaper quoted Esther Knox, who said that as a 15-year-old, she joined the program in 1992 but left two years later after being criticised for her weight, put on a crash diet (she lost four kilograms in nine days), being filmed by her coach supposedly for improving her serve yet having the focus of the video on the weight loss in her legs and developing an eating disorder and a decrease in self-esteem.
The paper interviewed several athletes from the same program who claimed similar treatment. One of them said she developed anorexia nervosa due to her attempts to lose weight to please her coach. Another said she was suspended after failing "skin fold" tests as a 14-year-old, and was ridiculed when she failed to lose weight.
Claims that "... as long as you looked good in your tennis outfit, it didn't matter if you lost" have highlighted a general attitude to women participating in sport, and in wider society of course, that looking good in itself is a goal, alongside performing well.
A researcher for the Australian Sport Commission, Dr Murray Phillips, told the Age newspaper (May 31, 1997) that women athletes were forced to "sell sex" to get media attention, and then the coverage on TV and radio was negligible.
His 1996 report for the commission, called "Women's Sport in Australia", revealed that newspaper coverage of women's sport had reached 10.7% of total newspaper sports coverage in 1996, but that television coverage was not so "generous".
On commercial TV, women's sport coverage made up 0.2% of the total coverage, with women's sport coverage on non-commercial channels better at 20%. Women's sport coverage on specialist TV shows Sportsworld, Wide World of Sports and Sports Tonight made up 1.2%, 1.6% and 5.7% of the total coverage, respectively.
When the media do report on women's sport, their focus on the way women look still dominates, or at least is a feature of, the coverage.
The June 22, 1998, "Sporting Life" section of the Sydney Morning Herald featured a full-page article entitled "Girl Power" which discussed the new interest in women's tennis.
Listing their top 10 pick of the players, male and female, with a section on each called "Why we're watching", the answer to this question regarding 17-year-old Anna Kournikova from Russia was, "Everybody else will be. And all because of her tennis ability — of course." This tongue-in-cheek comment refers to her conventional beauty — tall, slim, long blonde hair, with the face of a model. Their comment on her actual tennis ability? "Kournikova may be a playgirl but she's no grasscourt bunny".
Sporting women, as in virtually all women's roles in public life, are judged as much by the way they look as by what they are actually doing and achieving, or are belittled by sexist language commentary. (One of the prerequisites for sporting commentators surely must be the inability to articulate the polysyllabic word "woman", favouring instead the much simpler "girl", if the practice is anything to go by.)
Women in many sports are now forced to wear skimpier and more body-hugging outfits than any of their male counterparts. Take the ever-decreasing ratio of cloth to skin costumes of Australia's female basketball team, the beach volleyballers and the track and field athletics as examples.
The old adage, "Men are judged by what they do, women by how they look", is a dominant feature of the pressures being put on women athletes, not just in Australia, but in many parts of the world.
While these women must surely demonstrate excellent ability in their chosen field to win the competitions, the media coverage will value them less as athletes and more as sporting "pin-up girls". The executive officer of the women's sports lobby group Womensport Australia, Heather Reid, agrees, saying that television coverage of women's sport "could cynically be described as tits and bums".
While Olympic fever will ascend soon to near hysteria, especially in Sydney, criticism of the portrayal of women in sport must continue. Women's hard work and determination to excel in sport must be recognised and not trivialised by issues of appearance and sexual appeal.
By Margaret Allum