I have four adult daughters who participate in sports as triathletes, and a granddaughter who plays in a junior football team. We have been angered by the virtual invisibility of women in the sports section of the Guardian. Reading the letters about the list of the world’s top 100 footballers (Letters, 26 December) I did a quick random survey of eight sport sections (mostly Saturdays) that had escaped being used to light the fire or line the compost bin.
I counted articles and pictures. There were 100 pages of male sport, accompanied by 163 pictures of sportsmen; one and one-third pages covering women’s sport, with four pictures of sportswomen (three of Jessica Ennis-Hill, one of Nina Carberry), and one big picture spread of four bikini-clad women at a pre-match face-off of two boxing contenders. I couldn’t be bothered to count how much of the coverage was of football (men’s of course), at the expense of other sports.
Janet Tyrrell
Farndon, Cheshire
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