I don’t mean to be a partypooper but I was struck by the sexism of Superbowl Sunday. I am fortunate enough to currently be on holiday in the US. I spent Superbowl Sunday in California and we watched the Colts play New Orleans. It was good fun and it was exciting to be here to see it live on tv and enjoy the victory of the Saints.
However, as I watched it occurred to me that all the big burly men on the field are payed hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and more from endorsements etc for playing a sport they love. How many women get that opportunity? I can’t think of one sport where women can make hundreds of thousands of pounds or dollars….maybe tennis if they’re a female champion… as for football of the American or UK variety it’s all men. Here in the US the only women you see enjoying sport or benefiting from the games (bar tennis) are jumping up and down scantily clad on the sidelines – cheering on their men in quite a sexually overt way.
I guess this goes someway to explain the WAG phenomenon as women don’t really get a chance to excel in the sports professions, unless you count marrying a sportstar. And here in the US in particular it’s not just football of course. Every bar or restaurant I go into here there’s a tv screen on the wall showing the latest games – baseball, basketball, ice hockey – and these are all men. It’s the same in the UK, all our main sports – football, rugby, even snooker and darts, they are predominantly men we are watching. Why are we women sitting back and accepting this? It’s actually something I haven’t given much thought to before. But in a culture where we are meant to be equal where are the women in sports?
[...] This is another dimension to the ongoing debate on how women are portrayed in the media. Previous blogs on the Progressive Women website have recognised the lack of press attention on female sports, and [...]