Serena Williams played her way to a sixth Wimbledon title on Saturday and is now being hailed as one of the greatest players of all time. In June, the 2015 England women’s World Cup team took third place in the most watched football event in US television history, and England’s women’s cricket team is aiming for a third straight victory this month in the Women’s Ashes series.
It’s fair to say that women’s sport is having a moment but let’s hope it’s more than just that. Gender inequality still pervades the industry and business has an important role in overcoming it.
The FA’s now infamous tweet welcoming home the women’s football team with the message, “Our #Lionesses go back to being mothers, partners and daughters today, but they have taken on another title – heroes”, led to an outcry about sexism in sport. And beyond ill-advised social media, there are hard facts that speak to the disparity between men and women in the industry.
Only 0.4% of all corporate sports sponsorship in the UK goes to women’s sport, men get more prize money than women in 30% of sports and the total women’s World Cup payout was 40 times less than the men’s.
This feeds into salary inequality. Professional male cyclists enjoy average pay of around £100,000 a year but there is no minimum wage for professional female riders. Most Women’s Super League players make around £20,000 a year whereas an average Premiere League player earns £31,000 a week. England captain Steph Houghton makes £65,000 a year, while her male equivalent Wayne Rooney makes just under £300,000, a week.
To top it off, only 7% of all sports media coverage in the UK is dedicated to women’s events despite many women’s teams achieving results their male counterparts can only dream of.
Women aren’t supported
The neglect of women’s sport does not just affect top tier players. “It’s also about the number of women represented in sport as a workplace,” says Ruth Holdaway, chief executive of Women in Sport, adding that women are hugely under-represented at the highest levels.
Women in Football’s (WiF) report last month on sexist incidents in the sport found 61 separate reports of sexism (from match-day incidents to workplace harassment), which it says is just the tip of the iceberg. And yet, during that same period, football’s equality and inclusion organisation Kick It Out reported only two sexist incidents.
“We were so appalled that it wasn’t on the radar at all,” says Anna Kessel, Guardian sports writer and co-founder of WiF. She believes sexism in the industry is so normalised that many fail to understand what it actually is.
“It’s astonishing to say that but we are just at the start of the journey,” she says, pointing out that WiF this year produced sexism briefing notes for stewards on match days. “It was very basic,” she says, adding that the words they listed would be understood as unacceptable by most people across society “but within the football environment unfortunately they are commonplace”.
She brings up Chelsea club doctor Eva Carneiro, who was subjected to degrading chants from hundreds of fans, and sexist emails sent by Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore in 2014 that have remained unchallenged.
Policies tackling racism and homophobia in football have long been in place but when it comes to gender discrimination little effort has been made. Kessel calls it a “huge blind spot”, adding that she thinks those campaigns were run from a male angle or using the “catch-all phrase” of discrimination. “It was an incredible oversight from the entire industry that they didn’t consider 51% of the population’s experience, not that football is 51% female but there are a huge number of women working in the game.”
The role of business
Business has long seemed reluctant to support women’s sport but in some areas things are changing. Barclays recently announced it will not be prolonging its Premier League sponsorship but it is sponsoring WiF.
“We think it is of paramount importance to support diverse communities because this will lead to diverse and creative thought,” a spokesperson says.
Kessel says the sponsorship has changed the organisation. Before it had the money to employ someone, board members like Jacqui Oatley would arrange the teas and coffees for events. And she says businesses looking to sponsor women’s sport must stop comparing it with men’s.
“What corporate sponsors can get out of it is actually not the poor man’s version of the men’s game, which is, you know, the holy grail, but a completely different sport that has its own qualities that is worth investing in,” she says.
That is something Newton Investment picked up on as it sponsored the Women’s Boat Race this year. Chief executive Helena Morrissey demanded that the women’s race be given equal investment and it was broadcast live for the first time. It was a huge lift for the sport, not to mention Newton’s publicity.
This year, energy firm SSE signed a seven-figure sponsorship deal with the Women’s FA Cup, which is astonishing considering that two years ago the biggest investment in a women’s sport totalled £450,000.
“More commercial investment will create more opportunities, better women’s sporting events and will start to drive sustainable normalisation of sport for women,” says Holdaway.
Normalising women’s sport
We need more female coaches to normalise women’s football, says Kessel. She applauds the FA’s social media campaign #WeCanPlay tackling sexist Google image results. Currently, an image search for “women and football” brings up stiletto heels, women in underwear and sexist jokes.
Holdaway singles out Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign, saying that “actions like the inclusion of female players in EA’s Fifa series of games for the first time are a real step forward”.
Emma Shoesmith, the brains behind Board of Media, a project and documentary on women in action sport media, says the key to equality is giving women more media power.
“It’s proven that you can’t be what you can’t see so we need to have a diverse array of genders, races and sexes on our screens and that will only happen when there are diverse people in the media and in the commissioning side of things,” she says.
When asked whether businesses should sponsor women’s sport and if that would also boost women in business she says: “Absolutely. It’s kind of a no-brainer.”
