Feminism’s Fifth Wave: the rise and rise of women’s sport

Notwithstanding the cautionary tales of financial largesse in men's sport, the floods of cash have finally broken their banks and loosed their rivers of gold onto the, until now, barren plains of women's sport. This irresistible surge, built up over recent decades, signals a new and improbable reality; women’s sport is riding at the front of a fifth wave of Feminism.??

The recent boon in player payments by the BCCI’s WIPL competition is indeed a watershed moment in women’s sport. The New York Times stated recently that the seven-figure media deal “represent[s] one of the biggest investments ever in women’s sport”. Closer to home, one of Australia’s most measured and respected voices in women’s sport, Sarah Styles, passionately noted “that nothing would be able to keep up – and that’s across any sport. In any country.” This specific moment in women’s sport is indeed “a gamechanger”. It would have been unthinkable 50years ago, that sport might rise to become the bastion of the front line of women’s fight against sexism. One might say that the rise and rise of women’s sport to this moment is analogous to the Fosbury Flop or Jesse Owen moment. But it is bigger than that. Certainly, in Australian cricket, the women are the best performing team, and this global influence is central to the thesis.

Zooming out momentarily from the cash cow of the Indian WIPL, there is a broader social observation to be made. One that challenges the fragile axiom that ‘sport and politics don’t mix’. One that speaks directly to a global understanding of gender politics and social change. The moment it turned professional and invited advertising and gambling, into the locker room, sport became the bedfellow of politics. Indeed, the first Olympic games was a religious festival to placate the Gods and to honour war. Or, ask the Afghanistan women’s cricket team if their sporting aspirations are influenced by political undertows. It seems anathema to suggest that politics and sport don’t mix, unless it is sport for sports sake.

In the modern world, the breadth and depth of potential that sport has to bring about political change is unmatched, and examples abound. Sport plays a profound social role in promoting education, health, intercultural integration, and individual development across broad diversity in gender, race, age, ability, religion, political membership, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background. Until recently, and with few exceptions, the examination of sport as a vehicle for social change has been under-researched and even overlooked, including by the various waves of Feminism.

Perhaps hidden in the blind spot of ‘sport and politics don’t mix’, few appear to have been tracking the potential of sport to be a major force in the contest for women’s rights and equality. It seems Katherine Switzer new. And perhaps it is what US senators’ Green and Bayh had in mind in their 1972 civil rights law amendments to “Title IX”, or the UN’s early 2000 Sport for development and peace initiative pointed to as the emerging role of sport as a socio-political tool in change.

The broader sporting narrative has been anchored in perceptions of male dominance and assumptions about immoveable gender differences, such as physical differences. We now know that many human characteristics once thought of as fixed along gender lines, are not. One need look no further than what is arguably be the final male bastion, elite Special Operations Units, to see that even in this domain, women are smashing those assumptions—see Norway’s Jergertroppen. Attitudes attached to social roles based on dated stereotypes of men as the superior sex and women as weaker and subservient, in a modern world, are boring and intellectually lazy. I once was lazy.

Drawn, through Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, to the philosophical tradition of Feminism, it was during research for my Master’s thesis that I first learned of the four (recognised) waves of Feminism and post-feminist ideals. This is where I first considered their nascent intersection with sport. It’s no wonder really, given my lifetime involvement in sport with its deep, comparatively wealthy and accessible social roots in Australia. It struck me that sport is an unmatched vehicle through which to promote gender equity, be it on the field, in the boardroom, or in the home. Sport takes the fight directly to the engagement barricades of privilege; the boozy men’s clubs, the danger of locked change rooms, the embarrassment of ill-fitting clothing and equipment, to name only a few barriers. But change is now unstoppable and, like Sarah, I am tickled that cricket is at the forefront, and it seems to have happened ‘all of a sudden’. For some it has.

As recently as 8years ago, I sat in a mahogany walled room, replete with paintings of dead-rich-white-guys, with around 40 other men. We were being addressed by a senior sports administrator (a woman and former elite athlete) explaining the strategies to elevate the women’s game. I had never felt shame at being a man. But on that day, I did, as I watched many turn away, scoff, or laugh, or twiddle their phones, or roll their eyes as she spoke.

I am glad such cowardly intimidation and disrespect is increasingly passe as change has accelerated. I am glad that more and more adolescent girls will not have to wait for their parents to pick them up, alone, after dark, in poorly lit carparks, locked out of club rooms and facilities. I am glad that more and more will not have to change in the car or share change rooms and shower facilities with men. And I am also glad that many no longer avoid presentation nights for fear of sexual harassment by drunken ‘lads’, though this remains the shame of modern man.

Bygone activists such as Wollstonecraft and Pankhurst might rejoice in the rise of the modern (Australian) woman. But modern Australian women know there is still much work to be done. And so, it seems the rise and rise of women’s sport may have leap-frogged all comers to sit at the front of the fifth wave of Feminism and change. ?

And to think? Of all the games to do it? The traditional-privileged-white-upper class game of cricket, with its promise of billions of corporate dollars, incredibly has found itself front and centre. To those who continue to roll their eyes and turn and scoff, from behind the comfort of the mahogany walls of their mind, W. G. Grace might just rephrase his legendary quote just for you. Given his evident support for women’s sport, he might say “they come to see them bat, not you umpire.”

But there is a caution along this path to change. In the contest of ideologies, (corporate) Capitalism and Feminism, lies the cautionary tale of men’s sport. Along with the rivers of money running into women’s sport will flow the same predictable, inevitable flotsam and jetsam—corruption, gambling, self-indulgence, and inequality. In the face of the distorting floods of cash, these ills will challenge women’s sport too.

Yes, there are lessons to be learned from the men’s sport. But there is a much bigger cause at stake; the opportunity to continue to leverage sports’ extraordinary potential as a vehicle of global change. To impact conditions for disadvantaged women, to combat the social-media-sedentary lifestyles, to get girls moving, learning, and socialising. And now may just be that moment, the perfect time and opportunity in history for the rise and rise of women’s sport to not only ride the fifth wave, but to lead it.

https://www.cricketvictoria.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CV-Gender-Integration-Document-Final.pdf

Image: unknown surfer, photographer not credited, retrieved 28/02/23 from thewest.com.au