MUCH has been made of the age of the coach of South Africa’s Olympic Gold Medal winner, Van Niekerk. Ans Bootha is, among many other things, a 74-year-old grandmother and great grandmother. In some reports she has been described as a silver-haired, bespectacled, school headmistress. Perhaps I have taken this the wrong way, as I think they meant to imply soft and sweet, however some of the headmistresses I remember were pretty tough individuals.
Ans Bootha has had an amazing career that has spanned over five decades and she should be revered for her success, not relegated to some outdated examples of descriptive terms that clearly highlight the reporting of women’s success and equates that with how they look, not what they have achieved.
So whilst these words themselves are not derogatory, they do identify a problem that exists within sport for women, and that is, how we report it. We need to take a closer look at how we describe our women in sport in future, through all media platforms.
Before I go any further, let me ask one question, have you ever read, in descriptive terms, about the silver-haired, slipper wearing grandfather of football? Yes, I am talking about Sir Alex Ferguson? I am sure that he fits all these adjectives, but I don’t believe, even for a moment, that journalists would ever dream of reporting him in such a descriptive manner, and be invited back!
Yet it seems fair-game to demean the achievements of women by comparing them to some outdated example of how reporters believe women should be, look and age!
Another aspect of this type of lazy descriptive reporting is when women play team sports. Take football. Watching yet another victory for our national women’s team in the European Championships, I heard, not for the first time, the stadium announcer asking fans to applaud the ‘girls’; not players, not athletes, just ‘the girls’. Whilst I believe this it totally unwitting and not meant to demean, it isn’t acceptable and has to change. We have to change the script surrounding women in sport.
The use, or in this case, the abuse of words does have an impact on an individual’s wellbeing. When I was young, the phrase your mum and dad used if you told them that you were getting some verbal stick from your ‘so called friends’ was ‘sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you!’ We now know that to be untrue, as for some people, this can have an extremely negative effect on them, they are hurt. They begin to believe what people are saying about them and to them, and that puts immense pressure on their mental wellbeing.
This insecurity isn’t just happening with our up and coming athletes. Even our well-seasoned and high achieving athletes carry this burden around with them. Remember, swimmer Rebecca Adlington’s emotional outburst whilst participating on I’m A Celebrity? Whilst the camp were discussing beauty pageants, Rebecca broke down in tears and revealed that she had suffered from name calling on social media.
We are making progress, things are changing, but that doesn’t mean we can become complacent, instead we must continue to identify and challenge unconscious bias wherever it appears.
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