Football equality still lacking

If the names Ablett, Franklin or Pendlebury are mentioned, there is a 99 percent chance the Melbourne community at large would have heard of these names. If you venture to Sydney or Brisbane and mention Slater, Hayne or Thurston, it's almost certain that citizens will know who these people are and what they represent.

Words and images by Craig Stockdale

And with the World Cup currently gripping the nation right now, no doubt the names Cahill, Bresciano and Jedinak are synonomous with our efforts to contest against the very best in the world in the coming weeks. Australian sports fans will acknowledge all of the names I have mentioned in this introduction and the sports they relate to.

So, if the names Catley, Kerr and De Vanna ar mentioned, what response would you get? You would envisage the response would be a blank stare. A shrug of the shoulders even. If you added that between them, they have represented their country internationally some 144 times, they had won an Asian Cup against some of the most competitive nations on the planet in their sport and are currently ranked in the top 10 in the world, would that make any difference? Probably not.

And if I told you they were women and not men, then I guess I have even less chance you would have even heard of them. Well the statistics back all that up. And so do the pay packets – or lack of them I should say.

Such is the travesty of gender inequality today – the year 2014 - in football across Australia. The two biggest issues facing equality for women in the majority of sporting codes but especially football are remuneration and media coverage. Of course, they are both very closely linked.

Lance “Buddy” Franklin made headlines last year when he inked a ten million dollar deal with the Sydney Swans Football Club that will see him end his career on an annual income of over one million dollars ($1,000,000.00). The media coverage around this went on for a year in the lead up to the decision and dominated papers and television screens across the country.

A Tier One elite female footballer playing for the Matildas earns $30,810.00 per annum. She trains just as hard, just as many hours, and holds down a full time job to make ends meet. You can’t survive as a professional athlete on that amount of money without an additional source of income. And do you think any of this makes the papers?

“Buddy” Franklin, like Samantha Kerr, is of indigenous decent, both are elite players and both are incredible athletes with silky skills in their chosen sports and I would be bold enough to state – equally as commoditable in the media if they each received the same airplay. But to rub salt into the wound, why is it that “Buddy” earns 33 times more than an elite Matilda’s player in a single year? And how many times has Buddy represented our country on the international stage? It’s laughable and a fucking joke really. Someone needs to make a stand – we all need to make a stand to change the modus operandi.

The Matilda’s male counterparts - the Socceroos - will according to the press, receive between $150,000 and $200,000 for the world cup campaign over an 8 week period and will come into this tournament as the lowest ranked team at number 62 in the FIFA World Rankings. Hardly equivalent to the annual contract for the females who are ranked inside the top 10 in the world and were runners up in the Asian Cup a few weeks back to the World Champions Japan. And by the way, the women have also qualified for the world cup in 2015 but I guess you wouldn’t even know that either!

Pick up a paper or iPad, turn on the TV or the radio and see if there is any sign of a female athlete. According to the University of New South Wales Journalism and Media Research Centre who have recently updated the Australian Sports Commission’s report called – “Towards a Level Playing Field - sport and gender in Australian media”, women have little to no coverage compared to men. The heading of the report makes me cringe – level playing field is nothing more than hyperbole.

The report confirms that there is a stark contrast in media coverage between male and female sports – holy shit bat man, tell me something I didn’t already know.

The report states, ‘Coverage of women in sport made up 9% of all sports coverage in Australian television news media, while 7% of non-news programming content on television was devoted to female sport. Male sport, on the other hand, occupied 81% of television news reporting, and 86% of non-news programming on television. Television news reports on female sport had the lowest average duration of all the types of sport analysed, with reports on male sport having an average duration of 30 seconds longer than reports on female sport. To put this into context, horseracing received more air time than women’s sport in Australian Television news.’

So you have to ask who is to blame for the publishing of such revealing statistics? Is it the editors, journalists and media moguls of the press corps or the subscribers lack of interest in female sports? How can such a huge gap like those reflected in the study exist today when sexism and gender equality are such hot topics of discussion in today’s society?

I would like to mention the ABC is an exception to the rule and I challenge the other media outlets and TV Stations to take a long hard look at themselves – ask not what your paper can do for male sport but what you can do for women’s sport in your paper.

Be brave, be bold and take a stance against the inequality that exists today – seek out some of the inspirational stories of our female athletes and publish or broadcast to the public their fight to be equally recognized and lauded like their male counterparts for similar if not greater achievements under far more adverse conditions. You may just find a real diamond amongst the many boring stereotypes filled by the many male athletes.

Step up and speak out about the inequality in sport in this country – its about time we all respect the fact that legally women have the same rights as men, the same voting rights as men but yet they are so badly disadvantaged on the many sporting fields in this country. And especially the world game as its known.

Wake up Australia. Football equality for the genders is the mantra for 2014 – spread the word and socialise the topic when and where you can. We may actually impact change for all the right reasons.