BY WILLIAM HUYNH

Australia’s female Olympic athletes undoubtedly deserve to be basking in the limelight following their outstanding performances in Tokyo. 

We saw the likes of Sam Kerr cement her greatness on the international soccer stage becoming Australia’s all-time highest goal-scorer while leading the Matildas to their first Olympic semi-final. 

Jess Fox achieved her quest for Olympic gold taking out the first women’s canoe slalom (C1). She was a key advocate for the event’s introduction to the female Olympic program.

Beach volleyball duo Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar carried Australia to its first podium finish for the sport in 21 years, winning silver having valiantly made it to the gold medal playoff. 

And after a seven-medal haul, swimmer Emma McKeon became the country’s most successful Olympian, surpassing previous record-holder Ian Thorpe (nine medals) to reach a career tally of 11. 

Time and time again, the Olympics have provided a setting for the much overdue celebration of our female athletes. However, will such a successful Olympic campaign for female athletes translate to meaningful outcomes for women’s sport in Australia? If history is anything to go by, these achievements and the representation of women’s sport will be relegated to background noise once the Olympic flame has been extinguished. 

Women’s sport has a history of being ignored

Australian female athletes have outperformed their male counterparts at the Olympics in three of the last four games – 2008, 2012 and 2020. Despite only outnumbering the men in the last two Olympic Games, 2016 and 2020, the women have taken home six more medals in total between the Beijing, London, Rio and Tokyo Olympics.  

Nonetheless, outside of major sporting events like the Olympic Games, women’s sports coverage in Australia continues to lag behind the men’s.

According to Repucom and the Australian Sports Commission, after both the Beijing and London Olympics, Australia saw no increase in the percentage of broadcast hours dedicated to women’s sports. In fact, both television and print coverage of female sports news fell after both the 2008 and 2012 games.

This is in addition to women already missing out during Olympic coverage. During the Beijing Olympics, female sports only accounted for 39 per cent of TV coverage and a mere 27 per cent during the London Olympics. Providing a glimmer of hope, the more recent 2016 Rio Olympics saw Seven Network’s coverage of female athletes on par with the men. 

However, subsequent coverage of domestic female sport has failed to replicate the coverage offered to women in Rio. On a day-to-day basis, women’s sport scarcely represents more than 10 per cent of the total media coverage in Australia. 

Yet it has been proven that women’s sport is capable of achieving successful broadcast ratings. The 2018-19 Women’s Big Bash League final drew an average of 479,000 viewers and had a peak at 812,000. The men’s final that season had its lowest average audience of the competition’s history with 703,000 viewers. At the 2019 Women’s Soccer World Cup, the Matildas attracted a television audience of 570,000 in their opening match, more than the 406,000 people who tuned into the men's 2019 A-League Grand Final.

Lack of women’s sport coverage is no surprise to Women’s Coaching Association founders Aish Ravi and Jules Hay.

“Horses and dogs get more coverage than women athletes and coaches,” Ms Ravi lamented.

“A lot of that comes down to the power relations in society, and the value we place on women.

“That notion of value that we place on women in society contributes to their lack of visibility in the media.”

Ms Ravi, who also coaches the Bentleigh United Cobras FC senior women’s team and is completing a PhD at Monash University on the experiences of women’s soccer coaches, highlighted that there continues to be a disparity between the media coverage of men’s and women’s sport despite their equivalent competition levels.

“Men play at the main stadiums where it’s easy for people to get to… and are on the mainstream [TV] channels,” Ms Ravi said.

“Girls and women often have to play in regional ovals or grounds where there is no, or poor, media coverage.”

Williamstown Football Club VFLW assistant coach and Monash PhD candidate for gender equality in sport, Jules Hay, said women’s coverage is often heightened at major events like the Olympic Games but “when it comes back to our national, state and community levels, it gets swept under the rug again, and we just go back to the norm”.

“The Olympics have the best broadcasting teams and commentators… and the best access,” Ms Hay said.

“It’s a shame it only comes around once every four years,” she said.

“Then you take our local or state sport… we’re lucky if we get independent media to cover women’s sport.” 

Victoria University Institute for Health and Sport professor Tracy Taylor added, while initial interest in women’s sport may spike after a major event, “this does not usually translate into longer term gains”.

“Often this is related to a lack of clubs, access to facilities and human resources, like volunteers and coaches, to be able to respond to the demand,” Ms Taylor said.

Coverage is not the only part of women’s sport that is denied parity. Australian female athletes are also invested in and paid significantly less than their male counterparts.

Such inequity reached the point where the Matildas went on Australia’s first ever sports strike in 2015, boycotting a US tour over low pay by Football Federation Australia. At the time, the players were paid a yearly salary of $21,000 – well below the Australian minimum at the time of $33,327. 

Despite performing better than the Australian men’s Socceroos 2018 campaign at their 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup by reaching the knockout stages, the entire Matildas team only pocketed $1 million. The Socceroos were paid $8 million for simply qualifying. Even if they had won their tournament, the women would have collected just half as much. An agreement was eventually reached which saw the Matildas’ income increase to above minimum wage.

In 2019, AWiSAG found the full-time gender pay gap in sports was 30.6 per cent, nearly double the national average. 

According to the 2017 Intergenerational Review of Australian Sport, female athletes only receive 8 per cent of sports sponsorships, and a great number of women are forced to juggle dual careers or play in multiple sporting codes to earn a living.

“Investment in sport for girls and women needs to focus on… access, inclusion, adequate resourcing, fit for purpose facilities, talent development channels, [and] opportunities to be included in all aspects of the sport, from participants to officials, coaches, administrators and leaders,” Ms Taylor stressed. 

“Creating role models and normalising gender inclusion in all sports, at all levels, require[s] investment to better support and resource [it].”

Possible shifts in attitude

Although coverage of and investment into women’s sport is scant, research has shown that these deficiencies are not a true reflection of the engagement and demand for women’s sport in Australia.

A survey conducted by Nielsen uncovered that the vast majority of sports fans are equally as interested in women’s sports. Furthermore, women’s sport attracts a gender-balanced audience and fanbase, meaning it’s not just women who are watching women’s sport.

When it comes to public subsidies, the federal government has stepped up in the last few years. In 2019, they announced a funding boost to women’s sport where more than half of their $385 million national sport plan would be allocated to women. The majority of this funding is being dedicated to the development of female change rooms at sporting grounds and female swimming facilities across the country. 

The Commonwealth Bank has also recently brokered partnerships with Australian women’s soccer and cricket to transform the female leagues from grassroots to elite levels.

Australia will additionally be hosting two major international women’s sporting competitions in the upcoming years, the 2022 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup and the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. 

“It’s great to see that we’re trying to pitch and get a lot of those women’s sporting events to our shores,” Ms Ravi said.

“That’s the first step in starting to value women’s sporting achievements – by hosting them and celebrating them while they’re here.”

What needs to change?

According to Ms Hay, the largest hurdle women’s sport faces is that it is not valued to the same extent as men’s sport. The issue boils down to disproportionate male power and the misogynistic perceptions that “haven’t been challenged enough in Australia”.

“The problem’s so deeply rooted in our society,” Ms Hay said.

“Even if we pay all the AFLW women the same as the men tomorrow, the problem wouldn’t change,” she said.

“There are many old-fashioned discourses that we bring [to contemporary times] that disadvantage women.”

Professor Clare Hanlon, the Susan Alberti Women in Sport Chair at Victoria University and whose role it is to advance and advocate career pathways for women in sport, emphasised addressing the lack of female leadership in sporting organisations would increase social and cultural awareness of “the inspirational and strong skill set women have”. 

“Increased demand from the commercial sector to advertise during televised games of women playing sport, and to showcase women who lead in sport, will assist to increase the visibility of women as players and leaders,” Ms Hanlon said. 

There have also been calls for better female representation in sports media with a Media Entertainment and Arts (MEAA) Women in Media report finding that less than 10 per cent of sports journalists were women.

“We need a greater balance of women reporting the news,” Ms Hay said. 

“History is the history of the person that tells it,” she said.

“If we get more women in, they’re going to tell the story slightly differently and would advocate more strongly for equality and inclusion.”

The lengths our country has gone to get men’s sport back up and running during the pandemic compared to women’s is perhaps another indication of the progress still required. Whether or not the success of our female athletes in Tokyo will facilitate change on Australian soil is yet to materialise. 

“59 per cent of the gold medals for Australia were gained by women,” Ms Hanlon said.

“Investment made to women in sport brings returns.”