On Women's Sports
Rod Dreher writes:
I’m not a sports fan, but it seems pretty clear to me that almost nobody wants to watch professional women’s sports. The question is why. I suppose the feminists would say that the market actually is there, if only the people who run TV sports would notice. Really? You think that people who really only want to make money, and don’t care how they do it, are turning their nose up at an opportunity to exploit an untapped market? Highly doubtful. The more interesting question is why, in a sports-crazy nation, people — even many women — only really care about male sports. Thoughts?
As a general rule, the answer is that people want to watch the most skilled competitors available, and the best athletes in most popular America sports are men — few if any women could compete on teams in the NFL or the NBA, for example (imagine a woman trying to tackle Barry Sanders or guard Shaq) and if you look at the most popular highlights in men’s basketball, you’ll see that what people like most are spectacular dunks, the aspect of the game that women are least able to mimic. (Interestingly, John Wooden once said that he preferred female basketball due to its greater emphasis on fundamentals, but it’s still hard to imagine him choosing to coach in the WNBA.)
Then there are the sports where women’s competition is more popular: ice skating and gymnastics, for example, two Olympic events where female competitors can perform routines that men can’t manage. Were men and women competing head to head, its easy to imagine lots of competitions in these sports where the women would absolutely dominate.
Ski-jumping is a case where men are the ones who compete in the Olympics even though the world record is compete for among women. It seems like straight up sexism is at work in that sport. There isn’t any reason why men and women can’t compete against one another, and if it must be single sex, it should be the women who get to compete.
I also wonder whether women’s tennis is going to wind up more popular. Men are certainly better at the game. Certainly the top 50 men in the world would be able to beat the best woman, especially in the longer best of five set match to which men are accustom. And on clay, I prefer to watch men’s matches, though I very much enjoy the women’s game too. On grass, however, men’s serves are getting so much more powerful — due to equipment changes, the greater height of competitors, and more emphasis on weight training — that it’s getting less and less fun to watch them play at Wimbledon. I’d much rather watch a women’s match with longer rallies and a greater emphasis on placement and strategy that unfolds over several shots than a succession of on-serve sets where most games have three or four aces or service winners.
Discussion on this subject is prompted by academics at USC who analyzed sports on television, and concluded that coverage since 1989 “has declined to a level of outrageously small numbers.”
Christina Hoff Summers makes the obvious rebuttals here, and also notes:
The latest USC report is silent about the near-total absence of sports in women’s media. The limited coverage consists mainly of human-interest stories about women athletes. By the logic of the USC authors, shows such as “The View” and “Oprah” should be offering sports highlights and scrolling tickers with scores. Magazines such as Vogue, Allure, Cosmopolitan, and Better Homes and Gardens should be bursting with stories about draft picks, photographs of awesome plays, and up-to-date information about fantasy teams and brackets.
I think this actually misses something important. Sports journalism has changed a lot since 1989, and contrary to what the USC study implies, anyone who wants to follow women’s sports is actually a lot better off now due to niche media that both offers coverage of practically any team one would want to follow, and helps explain why mass market programs like Sports Center and network news sports shows cover teams or athletes with niche audiences less — if you’re interested in the WNBA, you can buy a package through your cable company to get all the games, follow the season on ESPN.com, join a fantasy league, etc.
As a high school athlete, and a recreational athlete still, I’m totally behind the move to give girls an equal opportunity to benefit from college athletics, and if I have daughters one day, I’ll encourage them to play sports by installing a basketball hoop on the driveway and buying them surfboards. Upon going to college, I’ll want them to have an equal opportunity at getting an athletic scholarship. But there isn’t any reason why network news and ESPN should give equal time, or anything approaching it, to women’s sports — they should follow market demand (and when they depart from it, they should televise less golf, a sport with a tiny audience of very rich consumers).
You’re too young to remember, but there has been a major decline in interest in (or at least in media hype for) women’s spectator sports since the 1990s, other than for World’s Greatest Princess sports like figure skating.
One reason, among many, is the growth in the Hispanic audience, which has virtually no interest in women’s sports.
— Steve Sailer · Aug 13, 12:32 AM · #
So it’s the fault of Hispanics? Can Steve Sailer come up with an explanation for anything that doesn’t boil down to “blame the brown guy”?
— Jeff Westcott · Aug 13, 01:26 AM · #
Conor: I agree with you that “people want to watch the most skilled competitors available”; a reason that explains not just the discrepancy in interest between men’s and women’s sports, but the discrepancy in interest between, say, a local minor league team and a distant major league team.
Dreher’s “I suppose the feminists would say” section irritates me. Does he not know a few feminists whom he could call to reality check his suppositions? And if he doesn’t, then does he really know enough about how feminists think to suppose anything? Irritating, malevolent laziness.
— Steve Casburn · Aug 13, 02:59 AM · #
Golf is middle class now. The courss around here couldn’t survive on rich consumers only.
— Mike Farmer · Aug 13, 03:05 AM · #
I personally like women’s soccer a lot. Like tennis, there really is no difference in the game itself compared to men. It’s a bit slower, but not noticeably so. The footwork of Marta is poetic.
Steve Sailer, what exactly is the metric of choice to demonstrsate a “major decline in interest in (or at least in media hype for)”… anything? Ratings? If so, why not cite those metrics?
— Derek Scruggs · Aug 13, 04:44 AM · #
I like to watch Woman’s Beach Vollyball.
— cw · Aug 13, 05:02 AM · #
I’d like to see the major media browbeaten and pressured into giving equal coverage to women’s sports. I like it when they lose money.
I’m glad women who like to participate in athletic competitions have the opportunity to do so, like my daughter did in high school.
I also like the fact that Title IX has revealed the iron fist of the federal government inside the soft glove of the hand that gives out goodies. It’s an ongoing example of how federal funding means federal control. (This kind of brutality didn’t start with Obama.)
There is so much to be glad about, even in these trying times.
— The Reticulator · Aug 13, 05:43 AM · #
“Steve Sailer, what exactly is the metric of choice to demonstrsate a “major decline in interest in (or at least in media hype for)”… anything?”
1. Women’s professional leagues started or mooted
2. Patriotic feminist chauvinist outbursts such as the huge to-do when the American women’s soccer team won the Women’s World Cup in 1999, when we all celebrated how much more liberated are women are than those poor women of Milan, Paris, and London, who aren’t up to date enough to trade in their spike heels for spikes, or the somewhat smaller one’s for women’s ice hockey in the 1998 winter Olympics or softball at the 1996 summer Olympics. That all seems very long ago now.
— Steve Sailer · Aug 13, 06:20 AM · #
Women become less attractive the faster they try to move.
— KVS · Aug 13, 03:00 PM · #
No, they don’t
— The Reticulator · Aug 13, 07:32 PM · #
I’m not sure I entirely understand your tennis comments. The grass at Wimbledon has been slowed down considerably since the mid-nineties, and the serve has become less and less of a determining factor since that time. Nadal has won the event twice with one of the worst serves in the top ten. Also, I’m not entirely sure that the women’s game is the place to turn for strategy, as the WTA has been dominated far more by power players than the ATP has in recent years.
— purephase · Aug 14, 05:40 AM · #
I’m not sure I agree with Conor’s comment on women’s gymnastics, another one of the World’s Greatest Princess sports. Men’s gymnasts can do all of the things that women’s gymnasts can do. And a lot more, because men’s gymnastics is largely about upper-body strength these days.
I’d also note that (the best) women seem physiologically better than (the best) men at ultra-endurance sports. However, one can easily explain the lack of interest in these sports without resorting to sexism. Or maybe not, considering the popularity of cricket and auto racing.
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