Since 2020, Sport New Zealand has been tracking the media coverage of women in sport here in Aotearoa. The latest report, looking at 2023 has just dropped as has our overall coverage. Now just 26% of coverage is afforded to women. BOOOOOO!
I think some lady, oh yeah, me! Wrote about this when the half year figures came out. My comment at the time was that…
“The numbers themselves tell a story. A story of our media landscape not fully realising the potential of women in the game. The women who tell the stories, the women who live them and the fans here waiting, ready to devour it all.”
It is a failure. A failure of our biases and the myths they continue to perpetuate. What these trends tell me is that media will only still cover what can’t be ignored. So as always, it is falling on the athletes to be exceptional in their exploits to get any coverage.
My goodness, the way people cheered for the 28% of coverage in 2022. It was a 7% jump on 2021 but that was always, to my mind, pathetic. Just 28% in a year in which we hosted two women’s world cups and headed to the Commonwealth Games. Rather than a marker of progress it should have been a red flag of just how entrenched this gender bias is in our sports coverage.
What these graphs tell you is you basically have to host a World Cup in order to get any coverage over 20%
This lack of coverage is holding us all back. Women’s rugby, we went from a high of just shy of 22% of rugby stories in 2022, to a miserable 11.1% in 2023. In this context, no wonder WXV struggled to launch. In fact, this tournament was played during a record low of women’s sports coverage in this reports history. A global tournament, which should have been a reunion for fans that rode the high of our World Cup victory, was instead missed by many. Making it’s future less certain and with it, the development of emerging rugby nations.
I am beyond frustrated with this passivity of media in regards to their role in the growth of women’s sport. They simply choose to report on events without ever interrogating which events it is they choose to report. Media are not outside of the sports bubble, they are at it’s centre. They blow them up, they burst them. The wand is in their hand and they decide which solution they want to dip into.
Another depressing graph. A home World Cup ranked behind domestic men’s rugby :(
What do the success stories in women’s sport all have in common of late? They have someone there to tell them.
The growth of those people and their expert coverage as much part of the success as any action they are covering. Ruby Tui, Sam Kerr, Caitlin Clark are all stars but what’s exceptional is their coverage not their talent. It could have just as easily been Vanessa Cootes, Pat O’Connor or Lynette Woodard had more cameras been trained their way.
With the Otago Daily Times (ODT) doing the bulk of the work to buck trends, it’s a worry too to see women names on bylines drop as restructures have ripped through our media companies. Past Alice had something to say on this too.
“The demographics of who is in your newsroom matters. Assembling a stable of journalists who resemble those whose stories you are looking to tell will help insulate you from your unconscious bias and any perceived disconnect with the community.
And when a story is of a sensitive nature, athletes are even more discerning in who they share it with. Without a woman in the room when these stories break, the media may struggle to tell them.”
I often lament all the stories I can’t tell you, simply because I’m just one person. Next month, I will have written a weekly sports column for the Herald on Sunday for two years. I wasn’t asked to exclusively to write on women’s sports but that’s what I’ve committed myself to. My overall stats will be sitting at above 95% women’s coverage in those reckons.
Alongside this, I of course write to you here, on ScrumQueens and host the weekly WOMENZSPORTS podcast. By the end of the year, we will have interviewed 50 women across the 50 different sports they play for us on the world stage. We will wrap with at least that many more sports and women we could cover.
All of that is to say, there is more than enough work for me. More than enough work for us all. And the great privilege of that work is that it will shape the future of the sport’s landscape. We just need the collective sports media to realise their power. To wield it, so together we can grow the coverage and grow the game.
With you,
Alice