Praise must be extended to the IOC for putting decisive structures in place that level the playing field. For instance, this is only the second time it’s been made mandatory for every country participating in the games to include women in their teams. We’ve come a long way.
But for all these positive steps, there are still several backward ones being taken. The persistence of casual sexism in the Olympics has never been more evident.
One obvious example is the Australian media’s incessant referral to female athletes as girls rather than women. Janice Crosswhite, the vice president of the International Association for Physical Education aptly pointed out the damaging connotations of such language, explaining:
“We don’t call men boys; we don’t call them gentlemen. In the consistency of sport, I think for equal recognition we should use the term women.”
Every time I hear a middle aged, white, male commentator reference “our girls”, I’m left mystified by the television networks that fail to recognise why such language could be considered demeaning.
In a similar vein, this Olympics highlighted how we can often treat women who win as somehow secondary to the men around them. Hungarian swimmer, Katinka Hosszú shattered a world record in the 400-metre individual medley last week. But when the race ended, cameras panned over to her husband/coach Shane Tusup, with the commentators crediting him as “the man responsible” for Hosszú’s athletic turnaround.
How about we give Katinka a little bit of credit for that one, guys?
Australia’s certainly not exempt from this kind of bias. Kim Brennan (who won gold in the women’s single sculls) was interviewed on The Today Show on Monday morning alongside her husband, former Olympian Scott Brennan.
But the limelight was quickly taken off Brennan’s achievement, when The Today Show’s host Tim Gilbert chimed in with a question for her husband:
“Scott, we might ask you, you’re in Canberra this morning, she’s obviously followed in your footsteps by winning Olympic gold, it must have been an incredible experience for you to watch this all unfold?”
Scott Brennan’s response, however, was priceless:
“I’m probably challenged that Kimmy’s followed in my footsteps. I think she’s really blazed her own trail, and she’s turned herself into one of Australia’s greatest athletes that we’ve ever produced. So I certainly don’t want to stand here and say, oh, she’s followed me—I think she’s done an incredible job on her own”
You could hear a pin drop as The Today Show team let the words sink in. Kim Brennan blazed a trail without the help of her husband? Amazing. Surely her talent is inextricably linked to the ring on her finger?
Examples like the above may seem harmless, but they’re not. When our natural instinct is to treat women’s sport as secondary, or to subtly diminish the achievements of female athletes, we are doing a great disservice to sport in general. We are fortunate to experience an Olympics where both men and women are rising to the challenge and doing their respective countries proud. It’s time our patriotism reflected that.
