Cape Town - For many years women have been marginalised from participating fully in political, religious and other social activities.
At one point there were even laws preventing women from engaging in certain aspects of life, while men enjoyed limitless benefits.
This has been, and continues to be, the case on the sporting front.
Globally, sport has become a massive industry through which millionaires and billionaires are made, but the gap between men and women is way too wide when it comes to pay scales.
A lot of ground has been covered in the struggle for equality in pay, but it appears that the many centuries of marginalisation will not be addressed completely in this generation.
Data from the Women’s Sport Foundation found that by age 14 many girls drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys. In addition, some schools’ sports programmes do not cater for girls, who are either forced to play with boys or stop playing sport altogether.
Later in life, women face even more challenges when participating in sport.
According to a 2021 survey conducted by Runner’s World, involving more than 2 000 women, a significant number of female runners reported experiencing harassment while on their runs.
This is part of the reason women continue to get the short end of the stick in sport. There is no denying that even sponsorship is heavily tilted in favour of men.
While Bafana Bafana, the national football team, can afford to attract investments to make it easy to manage the team, Banyana Banyana struggle to spend enough time together when preparing for major tournaments.
The imbalances are the same with the Proteas cricket teams and the Springboks. Male squads are awash in luxury while their female counterparts do not enjoy the same care.
It is in this context that authorities in business, government, and sports federations must be encouraged to speed up their plans to close the gap.
Currently Proteas Women are playing in the Women’s T20 World Cup, and in July and August Banyana will be in the Fifa World Cup Finals in Australia and New Zealand, while our Proteas Netball side host the Netball World Cup in Cape Town.
These teams have already created a template to build on – it would be great to use their achievements to turn them into professionals. They must be contracted and supported in the same way as the men.
Cape Times