The Women’s Cricket World Cup started on Saturday, but you knew that already, didn’t you? You were watching on a big screen, through your fingers, as England lost by a whopping 35 runs to India in Derby. You looked up the match calendar on BBC Sports, you read up about your favourite players, yeah?
No, me neither.
The fact is, I had no idea the Women’s Cricket World Cup was even on until today, or that Indian women were absolutely dominating it. None of my friends watched it, no one on my Twitter feed uttered a word, and no papers mentioned Mithali Raj, the team captain who calmly reads Thirteenth Century poetry before every game and is one of cricket’s most prodigious talents - the youngest woman player ever to score 100 on her debut at a one-day international.
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Which, to be honest, is coverage I would have enjoyed. I don’t watch tennis, but I enjoy reading about Serena Williams. Similarly, I don’t watch cricket, but I find myself excited and intrigued by the Indian women’s team. In a world where global headlines about Indian women are so commonly snatched by tales of despair - often of forced marriage, domestic violence, and sexual violence - we need triumphant sport stories about Indian women. To be perfectly frank, we need more stories about all women in sport. Stories of strength and prowess, of agility and teamwork, of good-humoured losses and triumphant, soaring wins. Because honestly, as strong as Serena’s shoulders are, I don’t think it should be up to her to be “the” voice in women’s sport. As far as the media is concerned, there’s only ever room for one woman athlete, and right now that’s Serena Williams. Any time there’s a crisis over prize money or the unfair treatment of women in sport, it’s Serena who gets wheeled out to deliver a soundbite on the issue. Or be denigrated by one, as John McEnroe demonstrated yesterday with his comment, "If she played the men's circuit she'd be, like, 700 in the world." Serena’s response? A true grand slam.
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How is it that in practically all other elements of entertainment - music, film, literature - women are allowed a somewhat level playing field? They still experience sexism, obviously, but in general those who excel in their chosen field aren’t going to have to spend quite so much of their time defending whether or not its legitimate they do it in the first place.
In sport, a woman athlete can be at the top of her game and still have to fight to be merely acknowledged. Whether that’s the Women’s football or Cricket World Cup, it’s the same: if it isn’t comments about how women’s sport is terrible, it’s condescending arguments about how “yes, of course, the standard isn’t the same as the men - but aren’t they great for trying?”
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The amount of negative feeling around women’s sport is shocking, particularly when you realise just how much of the commentary is just a gross assessment of the physical failings of women in comparison to men. You know, as if we don’t live in a country that honours darts as a sport.
And it’s that - that casual dismissal of women’s achievements, that cultural insistence that what you do doesn’t “count” in quite the same way - is what’s feeding the national disinterest in women’s sport. Despite the fact that, according to the most recent Girl Guiding study, 65 per cent of girls under 21-years-of-age say they want to see more women’s sport on TV. Despite how many people retweeted Mithali Raj reading. Despite the stories we want and need to hear about women succeeding at physical things.
We can’t hate the players: we simply need to change the media game.
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