Sexism, god help us (4 Viewers)

Oh wait, here we go

Why isn't it a reason? People don't watch women's sports as much as men because they just aren't as interested in them?

Ah hang on ... so you're saying "that's not a sufficient reason - there must be some other underlying reason why more people don't like women's sports"

Am I getting somewhere now? And you reckon the ultimate reason is that women generally have a lower status in our society, whereas @washingcattle thinks it's more to do with physical differences between men and women.

Your ultimate reason - societal power structures (which might be changeable)
@washingcattle's ultimate reason - biology (which is not changeable)

Is that it?
Something like that. It's not.... uh... my reason though, I'm no expert in feminism or sport in Ireland. I think in our Science orientated society people want exact answers and "Biology says so" can be quite useful for simple answers and/or shutting down a conversation, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The answer, if there is one, is most likely somewhere between the two.
 
nowadays it is. Historically they were basically 2 different sports though with very different sets of rules and with different governing bodies.

When I started coaching camogie (mid-90s) I was gobsmacked by how antiquated some of the rules were (for example there was an ACTUAL rule that stated your underwear must be made in Ireland). Over the course of the next 5 years or so the game changed a lot. It became 15-a-side and the rules tended back towards the hurling rules a lot more.

At this stage the 2 sports are effectively the same (apart from the 3-catch rule and that stupid fucking rule that still allows camogie players handpass a goal). Any resistance to changing the name of the sport to hurling would come from the governing body of the game themselves. Still a load of antiquated old biddies.

True story. I used to attend county board meetings on behalf of the team(s) I coached. At these meetings the aul ones would break out their knitting and knit away til the meeting was over.

Sometimes the governing bodies could be doing more to help themselves, would be the moral of that story.

There must be a reason why they didn't start out as the one sport with the same rules under the same association?
 
There must be a reason why they didn't start out as the one sport with the same rules under the same association?
the reason it started out that way is because no GAA sports catered for women. Even today only ladies gaelic football is directly under the GAA. All other organisations are still outside (handball, camogie, rounders) and are 'affiliate' organisations.

And just on a point of information, the camogie organisation were given the choice a few years back to be directly governed by the GAA but they chose not to.
 
nowadays it is. Historically they were basically 2 different sports though with very different sets of rules and with different governing bodies.

When I started coaching camogie (mid-90s) I was gobsmacked by how antiquated some of the rules were (for example there was an ACTUAL rule that stated your underwear must be made in Ireland). Over the course of the next 5 years or so the game changed a lot. It became 15-a-side and the rules tended back towards the hurling rules a lot more.

At this stage the 2 sports are effectively the same (apart from the 3-catch rule and that stupid fucking rule that still allows camogie players handpass a goal). Any resistance to changing the name of the sport to hurling would come from the governing body of the game themselves. Still a load of antiquated old biddies.

True story. I used to attend county board meetings on behalf of the team(s) I coached. At these meetings the aul ones would break out their knitting and knit away til the meeting was over.

Sometimes the governing bodies could be doing more to help themselves, would be the moral of that story.


I love this. I'm appalled and bemused at the same time. Keep on keeping on Ireland
 
This article is based on anecdotal evidence and is just written to provoke reaction. The writer is speaking from experience. Speaking from my own experience I know several women who are deeply passionate about sport - football, rugby, athletics, GAA, cricket, golf... members of my family are women who are heavily involved in organising and participating in sports. It's a ridiculous argument to suggest that women just don't like sport. Women are actively marginalised in the media and the coverage of sport is overwhelmingly sexist and male-centred - to almost comical levels. It's openly accepted that gay footballers can't be open about their sexuality because football is too macho. Female athletes are openly judged on their physical appearance far more than male athletes are. Fair enough men are generally physically stronger than women and can run faster or jump higher etc. But that's completely missing the point of competitive sports - particularly in team games such as rugby or football. It's about competing and spectators want to see good competition.
 
This article is based on anecdotal evidence and is just written to provoke reaction. The writer is speaking from experience. Speaking from my own experience I know several women who are deeply passionate about sport - football, rugby, athletics, GAA, cricket, golf... members of my family are women who are heavily involved in organising and participating in sports. It's a ridiculous argument to suggest that women just don't like sport. Women are actively marginalised in the media and the coverage of sport is overwhelmingly sexist and male-centred - to almost comical levels. It's openly accepted that gay footballers can't be open about their sexuality because football is too macho. Female athletes are openly judged on their physical appearance far more than male athletes are. Fair enough men are generally physically stronger than women and can run faster or jump higher etc. But that's completely missing the point of competitive sports - particularly in team games such as rugby or football. It's about competing and spectators want to see good competition.

picard_clapping.gif
 
This article is based on anecdotal evidence ... from my own experience I know several women who are deeply passionate about sport - football, rugby, athletics, GAA, cricket, golf... members of my family are women who are heavily involved in organising and participating in sports. It's a ridiculous argument to suggest that women just don't like sport.

Erm, Billy, you're fighting anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence here. Do you think it's ridiculous to suggest that the sum of liking-of-sport over all the women of Ireland is less than the sum of liking-of-sport over all the men of Ireland? I don't think that's ridiculous at all.

 
I'm not really interested in the article, I thought we had moved on from it. It's a pretty poor, clickbaity piece with the odd point worth arguing the toss over.

There's a lot of top international women's sport on telly nowadays, especially if you have Sky Sports. The exposure is there to the extent that if people watched it, there'd be more of it on. Judging by the general vagueness of people arguing on the broadly "women's sport doesn't get enough coverage" side of the fence on this thread, I'd doubt that any you watch very much of it. I could be wrong but the lack of references compared to a row about, e.g. women in music, is telling. I've got your number.

I think there's a real challenge here to increase participation in women's sport, make more avenues available to girls to follow sport as a thing to take seriously as they go through their teens and so on. But I really don't think newspapers or other media can pretend it's what readers are interested in right now, and obviously they're not going to do it to broaden the minds of the public.
 
Let's go witht
Erm, Billy, you're fighting anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence here. Do you think it's ridiculous to suggest that the sum of liking-of-sport over all the women of Ireland is less than the sum of liking-of-sport over all the men of Ireland? I don't think that's ridiculous at all.
It's not ridiculous to suggest that sport is more popular with men than it is with women. But it is ridiculous to assume this is something natural. It's more popular with men because sport is overwhelmingly marketed toward men and the way it is presented to us is that men, and men's versions of sports, are inherently more valid than women's. Indeed sportsmen are also largely seen as heterosexual.

Until Laurie Cunningham, Luther Blissett, Cyril Regis etc. came along there were barely any black footballers. Football was seen as a white man's game. That changed - and it continues to change - as FIFA and all the media organisations who promote football actively promote black players. They are making it normal for a black man to play football. The FA are now trying to actively bring in people from British-Asian backgrounds. They will succeed and, like we saw in cricket with Nasser Hussein, we will see a British-Asian man captaining England probably in the next twenty or thirty years.

It's the responsibility of sports organisations and media outlets to change the demography of the participants of their sport. It's happening - but it's happening slowly.

Here's something... there was huge media coverage of how astonishing Michael Phelps is as a swimmer - how his natural build makes him almost superhuman in the pool.
China's Yi Shiwen won the women's 400 metre individual medley in the London Olympics at the age of 16. Her final 50 metre length was faster than the men's champion, Ryan Lochte (and, indeed, Michael Phelps). In other words it's fair to suggest that Yi Shinwen is as good as, if not better, than even the best male swimmers.
Likewise it's commonly held that Katie Taylor was the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world - for both men and women.
Women are, and can be, as good as men in any sport.
 
Aside from sport...
Is it just me or has the whole internet filled up with feminist articles lately.

Women in STEM
Brogrammers
Women in tech
Glass Ceiling
Pay disparity
Campus rape
Everyday sexism

has it something to do with the clickbaity nature of these articles?
 
It's just the internet and women expressing their views on an international platform. It's about time really because we're a long, long way from having a society where everyone has an equal chance.
 
Aside from sport...
Is it just me or has the whole internet filled up with feminist articles lately.

Women in STEM
Brogrammers
Women in tech
Glass Ceiling
Pay disparity
Campus rape
Everyday sexism

has it something to do with the clickbaity nature of these articles?
Probably stems back to that Caitlin Moran book, it made feminism accessible to your average book browser for the first time in years. It is a bit of a fad, but a better fad than ladette tbh
 
Judging by the general vagueness of people arguing on the broadly "women's sport doesn't get enough coverage" side of the fence on this thread, I'd doubt that any you watch very much of it. I could be wrong but the lack of references compared to a row about, e.g. women in music, is telling. I've got your number.
would you say the same thing about racism in sport? you cant have an opinion on sexism because it's in an arena you're not that interested in?
 
Probably stems back to that Caitlin Moran book, it made feminism accessible to your average book browser for the first time in years. It is a bit of a fad, but a better fad than ladette tbh

Seems like more of a Yank thing to me.
Seems like the only job opportunity for someone with a gender studies degree is shitting out clickbaity artices a fifty notes a pop.
 
would you say the same thing about racism in sport? you cant have an opinion on sexism because it's in an arena you're not that interested in?

Well, I'm not in a great position to discuss racism in the Indian mining industry. Or in the punk scene in 1980s Washington DC, or whatever. So yes, I would say some contextual knowledge is helpful.

Not that I'm trying to shut down the debate. That was a very shut down the debate kind of post.
 
those might be good comparisons if there were indian mining industry and washington 80s punk scene sections in every newspaper, and every news programme on television and radio

not to mention that millions of people are active on just such issues as inequality in foreign countries
 
Seems like more of a Yank thing to me.
Seems like the only job opportunity for someone with a gender studies degree is shitting out clickbaity artices a fifty notes a pop.

True across the board for all types of writing though. All culture writers are getting fired and being replaced with interns working to algorithms.
 
those might be good comparisons if there were indian mining industry and washington 80s punk scene sections in every newspaper, and every news programme on television and radio

not to mention that millions of people are active on just such issues as inequality in foreign countries

And these sports sections should devote equal space to women's sport? Because not to do so is sexist?
 
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