Myths and facts about girls in sports

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Myth 1:The women’s game needs to be more exciting

Fact:Some people claim that women’s sports are too boring and then wash their hands of it all. But Will Leitch convincingly argued that if you find sports boring, it’s because you are most likely ignorant of the larger context of the match you are watching. If Leitch is right, there is an obvious need for the media to make that context easily accessible and digestible for fans. Sometimes, though, the boredom threshold might be insurmountable. If someone finds that all the sports that they think are boring just happen to involve women, especially team sports, the problem has nothing to do with how the women play or the backstory to the match.

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Myth 2. If women supported women’s sports more, all would be well

Fact:This all leads to the most popular idea given when people are challenged to improve the situation: if more women watched women’s sports, a critical mass of fans would be reached, and the media would have to pay attention. This is an old refrain. In 2003, the New York Times ran a piece titled, “Why Don’t Women Watch Women’s Sports?” Two years ago, Frank Deford spoke directly to women when he said, “Ladies, want women’s sports to get more attention? Pony up.” Swin Cash recently said, “I think women have to start supporting women.”

Myth 3.Women’s sport needs to improve the level of play

Fact:This is probably why the “it’s boring” defense often goes hand-in-hand with the one that if women want people to pay attention, they just need to be as good as men. But the same people who believe this probably watch the Little League World Series or college football, or some version of any sport that is not the very highest level. If you are a fan of sport, you consume all levels of it because sport is fun to watch in and of itself. For many observers though, women are not allowed to exist as athletes in and of themselves, but instead in direct comparison to men. This is unfair in a world that vastly under-resources girls and women when it comes to sport, and still in many places actively discourages their participation.

Myth 4. The media just show what people want to see

Fact:The media is often excused from their role in the marginalization of women’s sports because of claims they simply doesn’t generate enough interest to justify coverage. In a recent poll, though, “when asked why women’s sports often receive less attention, the most common reason given is simply that the media doesn’t give them enough airtime (42%).” Kavitha Davidson recently argued that the media need to give more space to women’s sports in order to grow that business: “It’s up to program directors to decide not just which sports fans want them to coverage [sic], but also which sports are worthy of coverage.”

Myth 5.Women’s football is not global

Fact:Women’s football is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. It is a myth to suggest that women’s football is not global for it has a growing presence in more than 138 countries.
The FIFA Women’s World Cup is the largest sporting event in the world for women. Since the USA beat Norway 2–1 in the 1991 inaugural World Cup final in front of a crowd of 65,000 people at Guangzhou’s Tianhe Stadium, the competition has doubled in size.
While 12 teams competed in 1991, 24 teams, from six confederations have qualified for the event in Canada: USA, Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, England, France, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Nigeria, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, China, Japan, Republic of Korea and the hosts Canada.
The FIFA Women’s world rankings include 138 countries. Of the teams ranked in the top 20 in the world, only Italy, North Korea and Iceland did not qualify.