If Australian media was still only reporting on men’s sport, sports fans would have spent a bit too much time sobbing into their beer nuts lately.
The Ashes.
The Bledisloe Cup.
Ouch.
Luckily, there are a couple of Australian sports teams smashing out some huge successes on the international stage.
The Southern Stars hammered England by 161 runs in a Test match last week, and then the Australia’s Diamonds won their third straight Netball World Cup with a 58-55 win over New Zealand over the weekend.
The one thing these teams have in common? Apart from being outstandingly successful?
They’re women.
Go you good things!
As well as celebrating their victory, take a moment to appreciate that this made the news in every major outlet in Australia. The ABC, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, The Herald Sun, and all the TV networks covered the Diamond’s win.
It niggles a bit that we have to notice this, surely it should just be par for the course that when an Australian team wins a big international event, the Australian sports media will report on it. A lot.
But we do notice it, only because it has not always been the case. A report by Australian Sports Commission earlier this year found that women’s sport features in only 7% of sports programming in Australia and only 9% of the media’s coverage of sport. The report also showed that this result was actually worse than the coverage 10 years ago.
Still, rather than complain about the fact that the media is late to this particular party, let’s just embrace the fact that they turned up at all.
Women’s sport is finally getting some of the recognition such superb athletes deserve from a sports mad nation, and that really is worth celebrating.