The Great Gendered Debate: Women's Sports vs. Men's Sports

The never-ending online battle of the sexes in the world of professional sports is a tired old story, and it is time for more media and marketing campaigns to step up to shut it down.

21st October 2023

Sport is powerful. It is more than just a game. It reflects our values and biases that are often laid bare for the world to see on social media feeds.

"Fans" and "supporters" are the ones who take it upon themselves to keep the great sports debate alive. But truth be told, there's nothing great about it, and it shouldn't even be a debate. ?Women's sports and men's sports are just that—sports, plain and simple. There's no need for distinctions; it's all part of the same game, played under the same rules.

"I don't call myself a women's footballer; I say I'm a footballer" - Lucy Bronze, England and FC Barcelona Defender

I have been thinking about this topic for a while because not only has it always confused me in its merit, but it also has made me so frustrated seeing it so frequently brought up on social media by users (often male) using it to discount professional sportswomen’s achievements without care or regard.

In my view, the persistence of this issue is due to a mix of uncontrollable and controllable factors. The most obvious uncontrollable factor is the timeline of professionalisation. In the context of football, many women's leagues have only recently become fully professional in the last decade. Top leagues, like Spain's Liga F, went fully professional in the 21/22 season, and England's WSL, despite launching in 2011, only became fully professional in 2018.

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It is a matter of fact that due to the recent transition to full professional leagues, women's matches are expected to initially have lower attendance, generate less income, and receive reduced exposure and public recognition when compared to the men's game, which has enjoyed professional status in England since 1885.

However, this shouldn't perpetually consign women's sports to an inferior status. The goal should be to create an equitable professional environment where all leagues/competitions have access to all tools to excel, emphasizing the athlete's talent over gender-based and often outdated competition metrics.

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Nevertheless, it's the controllable factors that fuel this ongoing debate that need a significant overhaul. Disparities in marketing efforts, media attention, and resource allocation between men's and women's teams and individuals contribute to the persistent sexism and objectification that female sports stars endure online.

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Tweets like “female being introduced to football is the worst thing to happen to this sport” and going as far as to attribute the ACL epidemic to “female bodies trying to play a men’s game, they simply can’t cope” represent just a fraction of the cruelty female athletes face daily on social media. Despite this, they persist and strive to prove these critics wrong.

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These social media comments aren't limited to female athletes; they're directed at officials as well. For example, when Stephanie Frappart became the first female referee to officiate the ENG vs AUS senior men's Wembley friendly, one user tweeted, "Why is there a female ref for an international men's football game?"

?The hurdles in front of these female athletes aren't confined to football; it's a challenge that reverberates throughout the world of sports. Just look at Serena Williams and the continuous erasure of her accomplishments in favour of male athletes. It's not about diminishing male achievements, but rather ensuring that female sporting achievements receive the recognition they rightfully deserve. Sporting clubs and associations, along with mainstream media, must play a part in this.

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The catalyst for writing this piece was a post by Sports Pro Media on X (formerly Twitter) that listed sport's 50 most marketable stars. While this list is rooted in quantitative and qualitative reasoning, developed through extensive data analysis, social media monitoring, economic valuations, and expert and consumer insights, it has not only held up a mirror to our deeply ingrained societal and gender biases but also handed a microphone to them.

?Beneath the post, some relatively mild, generalized comments coexist with others that label the list as "patently absurd" and "fake”, which is expected as you cannot please everyone, but then the more targeted comments start to flood in. Scrolling through a pattern becomes clear, many of the comments focus on female stars, particularly Lucy Bronze, one of England's most decorated female footballers, and her highly deserved place at #15. Comments such as "What's a Lucy Bronze?" and "Stop pushing this female footballer narrative" are echoed over 30 times in a section with over 100 comments at the time of writing.

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This response to the list underscores the work yet to be done in the realm of female sports media, marketing, and exposure. Some comments on X question the athletes' lack of recognition, using it as a reason to dismiss and undermine their achievements. Logic suggests that not knowing someone or their accomplishments should not erase or belittle their achievements, especially in a once male-dominated field. However, logic doesn't always prevail on social media.

What does happen, though, is that the athletes see these comments, and young girls see these comments, which serves as a formidable and constant reminder of the perceived inferior place in the sporting world.

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In the marketing world, the prevalence of these cruel and sexist comments has pushed stars to withdraw from public life to shield themselves from the hate. This reduced interaction limits their public influence and marketability for themselves and their clubs. It's a destructive cycle that only dedicated and comprehensive internal marketing and media strategies can break, to improve the lives of female professionals.

?With a collective commitment to fairness and equity in published media and marketing campaigns, women's sports can shine as brightly as men's sports and prove many of the social media “trolls” often untested options wrong.

The future of the sports industry holds great promise but this can only be realised in a world where our favourite athletes don’t have to endure the negative opinions and biases of a vocal minority, allowing them to focus on the game they love.

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