The BBC Sports Personality of the year award (SPOTY for short – when did that happen?!) shortlist was announced last week and it caused tremendous consternation.
It turned out that there were no women in the running for the award, which lets be honest is a total disgrace.
There was – rightly – much outrage at decision. Great Britain has four world female champions, Chrissie Wellington, the world leading tri-athlete, rower Kath Grainger and swimmers Becky Adlington and Kerri-Anne Payne. None of these ladies appear when there are places for the likes of Andy Murray. Not really very clever on the face of it.
There was also much discussion about the way the decision was made. Leading Newspapers and magazines were asked to name 10 sports people each, from which the shortlist was created.
Somebody thought it was a good idea to let Nuts and Zoo vote in this cross-section and therefore it’s hardly a surprise that these magazines didn’t cast many votes for women is it?
Women themselves veered from calm – Kerri Anne Payne tweeting “Thank you so much for all your tweets! We don't need awards just the support from the Great British public! So keep it coming :)" To more outraged, with Wellington saying it was “disgraceful.”
Even BBC presenters criticised the list, with Gabby Logan saying the shortlist was “backward” and Claire Balding joining her.
So it appears on this issue the BBC got it wrong, but doesn’t that rather miss the point?
Isn’t this issue symptomatic of a much bigger problem and one which the venerable former Paraolympian Tanni Grey-Thompson touched on when she told BBC Sport wouldn't want tokenism and I wouldn't want a woman to be on the list just because she was a woman,"
"But I think you just look at where the nominations have come from and that highlights another problem really - only 2% of media coverage in sport goes to women.
"Women just aren't on the minds, whether it's editors or in some case producers, it's just not there ... you're fighting against the system all the time where it's the big sports all the time that get the recognition."
But really, how hard should it be in this day and age for a women to get recognised for her sporting achievement? Wisden, the cricket bible, picked Charlotte Edwards as one of their Five Cricketers of the year in 2009 and in doing so she became the first women to get that accolade. The English women’s cricket team has been one of the best in the world in recent years and yet their T20 matches in the summer were played before the men’s games at the same venues later in the day. So that some of the finest sports people in the world at their particular discipline were reduced to playing almost as a warm-up act like some young, up and coming band at a festival. The same fate is to befall the female footballers at the Olympics.
The people behind this scheduling (I saw a chap from the England and Wales Cricket Board defending it earlier in the year) say that it is to give greater exposure to the sport, but to me, having the games going on while people are streaming in through the gates to watch a “big” game later, says – at the very least implicitly – that the women’s match is somehow not as important, some sort of second-class event.
And it is this form of almost institutional sexism that needs to be dealt with before we can past the bluster of last week.
Last week was in actuality a pretty good PR Coup for the BBC. SPOTY has been on the wane in recent years and is no longer the staple of the festive season that it once was, and at least people are talking about it again.
What’s the old line about all publicity being good publicity? I’ll bet if you asked them candidly, the BBC can’t believe their luck.
It turned out that there were no women in the running for the award, which lets be honest is a total disgrace.
There was – rightly – much outrage at decision. Great Britain has four world female champions, Chrissie Wellington, the world leading tri-athlete, rower Kath Grainger and swimmers Becky Adlington and Kerri-Anne Payne. None of these ladies appear when there are places for the likes of Andy Murray. Not really very clever on the face of it.
There was also much discussion about the way the decision was made. Leading Newspapers and magazines were asked to name 10 sports people each, from which the shortlist was created.
Somebody thought it was a good idea to let Nuts and Zoo vote in this cross-section and therefore it’s hardly a surprise that these magazines didn’t cast many votes for women is it?
Women themselves veered from calm – Kerri Anne Payne tweeting “Thank you so much for all your tweets! We don't need awards just the support from the Great British public! So keep it coming :)" To more outraged, with Wellington saying it was “disgraceful.”
Even BBC presenters criticised the list, with Gabby Logan saying the shortlist was “backward” and Claire Balding joining her.
So it appears on this issue the BBC got it wrong, but doesn’t that rather miss the point?
Isn’t this issue symptomatic of a much bigger problem and one which the venerable former Paraolympian Tanni Grey-Thompson touched on when she told BBC Sport wouldn't want tokenism and I wouldn't want a woman to be on the list just because she was a woman,"
"But I think you just look at where the nominations have come from and that highlights another problem really - only 2% of media coverage in sport goes to women.
"Women just aren't on the minds, whether it's editors or in some case producers, it's just not there ... you're fighting against the system all the time where it's the big sports all the time that get the recognition."
But really, how hard should it be in this day and age for a women to get recognised for her sporting achievement? Wisden, the cricket bible, picked Charlotte Edwards as one of their Five Cricketers of the year in 2009 and in doing so she became the first women to get that accolade. The English women’s cricket team has been one of the best in the world in recent years and yet their T20 matches in the summer were played before the men’s games at the same venues later in the day. So that some of the finest sports people in the world at their particular discipline were reduced to playing almost as a warm-up act like some young, up and coming band at a festival. The same fate is to befall the female footballers at the Olympics.
The people behind this scheduling (I saw a chap from the England and Wales Cricket Board defending it earlier in the year) say that it is to give greater exposure to the sport, but to me, having the games going on while people are streaming in through the gates to watch a “big” game later, says – at the very least implicitly – that the women’s match is somehow not as important, some sort of second-class event.
And it is this form of almost institutional sexism that needs to be dealt with before we can past the bluster of last week.
Last week was in actuality a pretty good PR Coup for the BBC. SPOTY has been on the wane in recent years and is no longer the staple of the festive season that it once was, and at least people are talking about it again.
What’s the old line about all publicity being good publicity? I’ll bet if you asked them candidly, the BBC can’t believe their luck.
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