GETTING IT RIGHT : Flaws from Data Gap to Marketing
-Niyati Sinojiya
TY BSc
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Having a mother who plays competitive badminton, I’ve seen all the struggles: from family apprehensions to failures, the hard work and the sheer dedication that go into simply showing up on court every single day, while also being a mother to two, managing the house and the family, and getting the balance just right.
Women in sports have seen significant progress, evolving from a time when women were discouraged from participating due to fears that it might impair reproductive capabilities and consequently hinder their ultimate purpose of giving birth, to female athletes being featured in all events in the 2012 Summer Olympics and finally having an equal share in the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics.
Although this progress is commendable, we still have a very long way to go until we can call sports a level playing field for both women and men. Apart from longstanding debates on pay gaps that women face or the assaults they sometimes endure, one important issue that is often not spoken about is that females are playing and working in a world inherently designed for men. Even in academia and research, which includes some of the world’s brightest minds, we see a huge data gap in sports science and exercise research for women. When talking about “humans”, one should ideally be considering both females and males, but sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the case. In a recent study, of the 1631 sports science publications that included only men, 0.6% had nothing to do with male specific factors (e.g.,prostate cancer). What this essentially means is that 99.4% of the publications generalised male findings to the entire human population! Moreover, only 6% of the total studies were conducted exclusively on females. This just goes on to show the lack of research being done on females. This issue is more critical than it seems. By ignoring how the bodies of half the population reacts to certain events, we are overlooking crucial insights into female physiology and performance. It wasn’t until as late as 2016, 44 years after Title IX first mandated no discrimination in sports on the basis of sex, that sex was required to be included as an important biological variable in sports research studies. Better late than never, I say!
Another lesser known problem is that of the way in which we market women’s sports. Turning on the Sports18 network, one can hardly find an advertisement for WNBA while it is flooding with a Curry here or a LeBron there shooting the occasional 3. While this is a problem, a much greater problem is the way in which we package the product i.e women’s sport. At the end of the day, all sport is entertainment and women’s sport is just one of the thousand products being sold in the industry. People will buy it only if it is attractive and has value for money. But let’s have a look at how it has been marketed.
Haley Rosen, who leads an only women’s media sports company rightly points out that women’s sports more often than not is marketed as charity, something that needs support from the public. Of course it needs support but marketing it in that way doesn’t make it appealing enough to watch. Pity doesn’t sell, thrill does. To truly support women’s sport, we should be talking more and more about their game, the thrilling moments, the best points scored, the controversies, treating it like any other sporting event. Women’s sport will get the attention that sticks only when we treat it like a sport and not as charity.
Being in the industry for so long, Haley also observed that we often focus on their achievements off the sport. Yes, they are role models for millions of little girls and women out there but when talking of the sport, we should be focusing on their role in the game and not outside of it.
So maybe, I didn’t get the introduction to this article quite right. Yes, along with being an athlete my mother is an exceptional homemaker, and those are her achievements, but when talking about the sport, above all her achievements off court, she is one fierce and competitive woman who exhibits immense passion, dedication and excellence for the sport, reminding me time and again that the game is far from over and the best is yet to come.