This week I published two articles about the upcoming Wales Sport Awards. I was particularly excited about who might win the BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year. I was happy to wax lyrical about the brilliance of Gareth Bale and the stalwart determination of Lee Selby. It was only afterwards that I realised I hadn’t gone into any detail about women’s sport in Wales.
There are in fact, two fantastic Welsh sportswomen up for the BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year Award.
Taekwondo athlete Jade Jones is nominated after winning gold for Great Britain at the inaugural European Games in Baku in June. She also won the Samsun and Manchester legs of the 2015 World Taekwondo Grand Prix series and came second in Moscow. Jade has automatically qualified for the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
Triathlete Non Stafford is also up for the award. Non returned to action in 2015 after a 20 month absence with a foot injury. The 26-year-old booked her place in the Great Britain team for the 2016 Rio Olympics by coming second in the World Triathlon Grand Final in September.
Why didn’t I write about Jade Jones or Non Stafford? When I asked two friends who their favourite Welsh sporting heroine was, they could not answer. That is not to say they are not interested in sport, but as average sport news consumers, they are only aware of the big names like Gareth Bale and David Beckham.
Thus I decided to do a little experiment. At approximately 8pm on Wednesday 25 November, I pulled up a selection of sport news websites to see just how much female coverage there was.
Sadly there was very little.
BBC Sport
Two articles about women’s football…
Sky Sports
No articles about women’s sport on the home page…
ITV Sport News
No articles about women’s sport on the home page…
As you can see – so far, there was an awful lot of football coverage and not much else! I decided to look elsewhere at the American site, Sportsnet.
Sportsnet
No articles about women’s sport on the home page…
Is it any wonder that young women with only a passive attention to sport, fail to name female sport stars? There is simply not enough coverage of women’s sport by the major media outlets.
Ofcourse there are female specific sports news sites but only actively engaged followers will visit these sites.
Unfortunately this is a complex issue. Media organisations claim that there is not enough money or interest in women’s sport and therefore no incentive to spend money covering it.
I believe that the only way to eradicate this unfortunate pattern is to grant women’s sport more air time and press coverage. This will raise awareness of the vast range of women’s sport that is out there and will therefore increase followers and media value.
I hope that one day we will live in a world where women’s sport gets the coverage and attention it deserves. Right now, the culture of sport existing within a man’s world is damaging to the prospects and progress of women’s sport.
SportiGirl 
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