Sporting life
david goldblatt
Wimbledon provides a rare moment in the sun for women’s sport. Yet media coverage focused on the best-looking female players
sex and wimbledon With the exception of the Olympics, no event attracts as much coverage for women’s sport in Britain as Wimbledon does. While some minor headway has been made by the English women’s cricket and football teams, women’s sports continue to get less than 2 per cent of the mainstream sports coverage and even less of the commercial sponsorship, and much of both is taken up by the Wimbledon women’s singles tournament each summer.
How disappointing then that, despite matches like the thrilling semi-final between Serena Williams and Elena Dementieva, the clearest message coming out of Wimbledon this year came from the All England Club’s policy of allocating games to the show courts in general—and centre court in particular. The Daily Mail , among others, observed that while Dinara Safina (seeded No 1) was playing on court number two, centre court was hosting Caroline Wozniacki (ninth seed) and Maria Kirilenko (unseeded). When number two seed and now three-time champion Serena Williams was on court two, Victoria Azarenka (eighth seed) and Sorana Cristena (28th seed) had top billing on centre court. Interestingly, neither the men’s eighth or ninth seeds made it onto centre court. What, one wonders, is in the scheduler’s mind when Maria Sharapova and Gisela Dulko, two unseeded players who are outside the world’s top 40, are timetabled for a prime afternoon slot on centre court? The answer, as we know, is sex, and the decision-makers are unabashed. When the Mail asked the All England Club’s spokesperson Johnny Perkins how scheduling decision were made, he replied, “good looks are a factor.” An even more candid, if anonymous source as the BBC put it, “our preference would always be a Brit or babe as this always delivers high viewing figures.”
It is hardly news that sex is the default strategy for promoting and selling women’s sport, and the undeniable sexual element of sport should not be denied. In the case of tennis in particular, the game rests on a historical substratum of erotic energy. The initial success of lawn tennis in the late 19th century was closely tied to its perceived suitability as a game for genteel girls; mixed doubles offered a suitable cover for flirting and courting on aris-
tocratic lawns and in suburban country clubs. No, the problem is not sex per se. It is, first, that the sexual imagination of the media and its perceived target groups are narrow, crude and commercialised, not to mention relentlessly masculine and heterosexual. And second, that this is the predominant frame within which women’s tennis and women’s sport is shown.
I find it extraordinary that a media so fixated on sexuality has failed to notice that there is more to it than the schoolboy cheese of the Athena “tennis girl” poster and swimwear shoots in the lad mags. Tennis has proved a rare sporting arena for the expression of female heterosexual desire, while the gay and lesbian fan base of the sport is immense. When are broadcasters going to stop worrying about titillating male armchair viewers and start worrying about the messages they are sending their daughters and nieces? I’m happy for mine to find out that tennis is sexy, but I also want them to know that there’s more to tennis than sex.
trophy women One of the reasons that coverage of women’s sport is so excruciatingly narrow is that sports desks in the media are overwhelmingly male. It turns out that the same is true of sports bureaucracies. In 2008, the department of media, culture and sport launched its Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport. The commission’s first report, “Trophy Women?,” shows us how bad the situation is in British sport’s national governing bodies (NGBs). Only seven of the 47 NGBs have women in charge—and one of those is Women’s Rugby Football Union. One quarter of NGBs have no women on their boards (including the Football Association and the Rugby Football Union) and only 21 per cent of board members are women. While over half of these organisations’ staff are women, less than a quarter of performance directors are female and only a fifth of senior management. Amazingly, sport has proved more conservative and unreflective than even business. A long history of the masculine control of sport has been entrenched by a failure of its governing bodies to search out and nurture talent from beyond its narrow circles, and a pervasive macho working culture underwritten by scant provision for parents of any gender. The overwhelming evidence gathered by the commission from the corporate world is that mixed boards and management teams are better decision-makers, so addressing the issue is a matter of efficiency not ethics
But this not only a matter of efficiency. Sport’s very nature is wedded to notions of universalism and egalitarianism, level playing fields and equal opportunities. The recruitment of its bureaucratic elites should reflect this. One hopes this will result in more than just better styles of management, but a shift in the culture and policy agenda of these institutions. Until that happens the huge gap between men and women’s participation in sport will be hard to close, and the kind of sexual crudity at work at Wimbledon will remain unchallenged. David Goldblatt is a writer and broadcaster, and the author of “The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football” (Penguin)
august 2009 · prospect · 65
