Women's sport still trying to find level playing field in battle for coverage

From: The Canberra Times

For as long as I can remember, there has been a seemingly endless list of inquiries and reviews into the media's coverage of women's sports compared to their male counterparts. Progress has been made but it's obvious the media still has some way to go, with women's sport yet to gain a foot-hold in mainstream coverage. The latest example is the treatment given to the Australian women's basketball team after they won the world title in Brazil last month.

Unluckily for the Opals, their gold medal-winning performance occurred in the middle of the AFL and NRL finals series. A number of people involved in women's basketball believe that even though they were competing with the football finals for attention, more could have been done to profile the achievements of the team. The feeling is that if the Australian men's basketball team had won gold, more would have been made of the historic win.

Instead, the women's victory was buried in a lot of news bulletins. In the wake of the Opals win, I have scanned the letters to editors in all major newspapers. Despite the concern among the women's basketball community about the coverage, there hasn't exactly been a deluge of complaints.

There has been a groundswell for a campaign or a tickertape parade, similar to the one given to the Socceroos who made it to the World Cup round of 16. This week, the West Coast Eagles and the Brisbane Broncos paraded through the streets of Perth and Brisbane respectively after winning domestic competitions. If there wasn't a parade for the footballers, there would have been an outcry, but the lack of fanfare for the women's basketballers has barely raised a whimper, although some of the team were presented to the crowd at the MCG as part of the AFL grand final day.

The Opals probably received more coverage when they returned home with jubilant scenes at the airport coupled with Lauren Jackson's hospitalisation. There has been a suggestion that if the Opals versus Russia final was on free-to-air television, it would have generated far more emotion from the Australian sporting public than was the case because it was only shown on pay TV. In Australia, the only women's team sports shown regularly on free- to-air television are the WNBL and the national netball league.

Both are shown on the ABC. In New Zealand, netball has a significant audience with the Silver Ferns one of the most decorated teams in the country. In the United States, NBA television covers the WNBA.

Capitals guard, Tully Bevilaqua, says people in the US recognise her more than fans at home in Australia because of the greater media coverage. But female basketballers in the US still fall well behind their male equivalent in terms of earning capacity. The top players in the WNBA earn $US110,000 ($A148,000) a year.

A number of their male counterparts earn that much in a week. Canberra Capitals coach Carrie Graf says she would like to see a women's sports channel established on pay TV. She says if that's not going to happen, there should be at least a women's sports program.

Graf says she grew up wanting to play AFL because it was always on television. It was only until she reached 11 years of age she realised that women didn't play AFL. Part of the problem is that she didn't have any female sporting role models.

She believes it would lift the profile of sports women but also show that men's and women's sports are vastly different and they should not be compared in terms of power because of the obvious physical difference. A lot of people prefer to watch women's basketball because there is less reliance on power and more on team work. Others like women's golf in preference to the men's game.

The grace of women's tennis has its own attraction compared to the men's power game. There's also an argument that people will watch sports that they have traditionally followed. It's hard to develop an emotional attachment to a sport that you have limited exposure to.

It would take a certain amount of courage on the part of senior television executives to put women's sport on during prime-time viewing hours. It's difficult to see it happening except when there are select events. Women's sport receives most of its free-to-air coverage every two years during major multi-sport competitions, such as the Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

At these times, the focus is on teams such as the Hockeyroos and the Opals, while the swimmers and rowers gain an equal share of attention to their corresponding male competitors. In the past month though, apart from the Opals' win, Karrie Webb's success on the LPGA tour, the US Tennis Open, Emma Snowsill's triathlon win and World Cup victories by the Hockeyroos, there hasn't been much to talk about in terms of women's sport. And this is part of the problem.

The media gets canned for its lack of coverage yet, more often than not, there are no women's sporting events to cover. Admittedly, it's a 'catch 22' for the sporting organisations. They can't put on events without sponsorship and sponsors won't be attracted because there's no media attention.

The Australian Government is currently considering a recommendation from a Senate committee which looked into women in sport and recreation in Australia. The committee looked at various aspects of women's sport including participation and media coverage. One of the report's recommendations is that the Government, through the Australian Sports Commission, provide $3million a year over the next three years to assist women's sport in gaining greater media coverage.

Personally, I think it would be a step in the right direction. Most professional male sporting teams have media officers whose role it is to generate publicity. In women's sport, there are examples of media officers, but not in all sports.

Perhaps if the money was used to put the women's world basketball titles on free-to-air television, it might have resulted in street parades and widespread community adulation. It's too late for that now but there could be an opportunity in the future with the Australian women's soccer team qualifying for the next World Cup. Tim Gavel is a long-time sports commentator on ABC radio in Canberra