The Americans have a useful word – derived from Yiddish – to describe the actions of the US women’s soccer team there, chutzpah. If it were not for gender discrimination absolutely none of these women would be playing international soccer. They wouldn’t even be playing club games, nor even college. And yet the demand is that there must be gender parity.
One thing that would be useful. Anyone got any more examples here?
As has been pointed out about Florence Joyner Griffiths when she got her Olympic medal in world record time. That time would have got her, in that same year, fourth place in the Bronx High School competition among men. Or when the Matildas, the Oz women’s soccer team, played the colts side (say, 14 to 15 year olds) of an Oz professional men’s club they lost 7 Nil. The Williams sisters both lost, horrendously, to a man ranked 200 and more in the world at the time.
Did Rhonda Rousey go through with that UFC fight against a bloke? Any other examples of tip toppers in women’s sport failing dismally in open competition?
Top level darts (PDC) has no barriers to women on the pro circuit. Ana Dobromyslova was is? a pro who nudged the top 100 overall. Which ain’t bad, as you say Serena couldn’t do that. Also top ladies averages are where the top men’s averages were 20-30 years ago, so the current crop may well have beaten some well known names of the past.
i’d add that there’s nothing the marketing peeps would like more than a lady pro who could compete at the top level. She would certainly make more dosh than equivalent ranking geezer.
The male club champion – amateur – of any decent sized golf club would crush the LPGA.
Top males hit their drives 40 more yards off the tee than top women.
If US Soccer is a government business, the women have a case.
Hallowed Be: She would certainly make more dosh than equivalent ranking geezer.
Would that depend on whether or not she had a todger?
HB: Novelty value for the first few. However women are never going to be on an equal footing with men in physical sports. As for non-physical activities, they seem to be as good as men at persuading horses to do stuff, but I can’t think of an intellectual activity where they compete at the same level. Chess, Go, Poker are all dominated by men at the top level. In academia there have been outstanding women mathematicians but few & far between (e.g. Sophie Germain, Emmy Noether).
From the Guardian article: “According to US Soccer’s own financial disclosures, the women’s team brought in more revenue than their male counterparts over the last three years,”
Here on this blog, and over on the Continetal Telegraph, isn’t that what it’s meant to be all about?
Ah, Mr Reader, but since the girls are insisting it’s about money it must be about money. And sports pay is a market. Or, absent female pleading, it should be. And in the US in particular there’s ample opportunity for male earnings in other sports. Not the least the less feminised & thespian version of football played on gridiron..
Ah, but Billie-Jean King beat Bobbie Riggs, and that’s now engraved on journalist’s heads. All of these other cases get shoved down the memory-hole.
I support equal pay for women, including in sports. I do not like the jobs for the boys culture. The jobs for the boys culture discriminates against blacks,jews, women,asians, africans, foreigners.shy people, disabled people, state educated people, mentally ill people, anyone seen as a weirdo. That is the majority of people. But we’re all supposed to suck up to the elites.
@Hector
Billie-Jean being 29 at the time and ranked no 1 in women’s tennis v 55 year old Bobby who had retired 22 years earlier from the men’s game.
It’s illuminating that women get paid the same as men in tennis (where tournaments are held in tandem with the men) but are miles behind men in golf (where they don’t).
If there is a paying audience for women’s kick-ball in the USA then the women should get paid accordingly. Over here and despite the cringe-worthy fawning of the BBC no-one watches the women’s game.
I do think that netball could get a bigger audience than women’s football if it was marketed properly. The girls look good* when they play, there’s no obvious comparison. When you watch women’s football, it’s poor quality compared to the men’s game.
*and they look good too.
@Clever Trefror of the old school
“anyone seen as a weirdo”
You said it.
Beach volleyball, just saying.
@ Clever Trefror of the old school
I hadn’t noticed that there was massive discrimination against Bill Gates, commonly regarded as a weirdo.
I *had* noticed that the “jobs for the boys” culture discriminates in favour of Jews.
I think that triathlete Chrissy Wellington has a pretty good track record even when you take the men’s performances into account. I seem to recall that a few men could beat her but there were a lot more that couldn’t.
Sat through televised cover of the European indoor athletics championship a week or two ago – including most of the women’s events. It was entertaining stuff. They may not be able to go toe to toe with men but it remained competitive and watchable.
There’s a woman named Jasmin Paris (Edinburgh-based vet), an endurance athlete, that ran the last Montane Spine Race, a 268-mile winter assault on the Pennine Way, along England’s hilly backbone. Longer than 10 marathons, and requiring a total ascent equivalent to one and a half Mount Everests, it is among the toughest races in the world. She beat the course record by 12 hours, destroying the field, most of them men. There’s an argument that such extreme events can favour women. There hasn’t been much in the way of research but some believe attitude, ego and personality counts for as much if not more than legs and lungs in extreme races.
That said, women’s football – even at international level – is dire. You wouldn’t pay money to watch it.
@Tractor Gent
Chess, Go, Poker are all dominated by men at the top level.
As is Bridge. In all these ‘mind sports’ women can compete directly against men (though there are usually women only competitions to give them a chance of winning something) – often bridge clubs (being dominated by the elderly) will have more female than male participants. But there’s no more than one or two females* ranked in the world top 100.
* excluding chicks with dicks
“Clever Trefror of the old school
March 9, 2019 at 3:14 pm
I support equal pay for women, including in sports. I do not like the jobs for the boys culture. The jobs for the boys culture discriminates against blacks,jews, women,asians, africans, foreigners.shy people, disabled people, state educated people, mentally ill people, anyone seen as a weirdo. That is the majority of people. But we’re all supposed to suck up to the elites.”
Are they doing equal work though? Same work, same quality?
Because it seems to me that the men are providing a higher quality product in sport. They are more efficient. Hence they get better pay.
You might say that there’s no practical difference between a soccer game played by a male team and one played by a female team. I would counter that those *actually paying for that product* see a massive difference. Which is why they’re willing to pay more to see a male team.
Clef/Tref= Meiac/Jesus and I claim my free ticket to view Bedlam inmates.
It’s the same with the Rugby, the BBC is constantly pushing it
It’s the same with the Rugby, the BBC is constantly pushing it
Its all they can afford to broadcast.
I think we need to be a bit careful with expectations, especially in skill sport like, say ,darts.
You can’t just flip a switch and expect there to be loads of women who can compete on equal level with men. The best may not have gone in to the sport, being put off by lack of opportunity. Its quite likely the women that will compete on an equal footing with men haven’t been born yet. Girls at the age of, say, 8 will need to know there’s an opportunity before they and their parents start putting in the long hours of dedicated practice and travel to competitions that are needed to get to the top.
As it happens I was doing safety boat cover for a national Laser sailing event today. It was strong winds and that normally favours heavier, stronger, sailors. However sailing events tend to be run over a couple of days or even a week or series of weekends, and light winds favour lighter, more skilful, sailors and so it tends to even out. Overall women can hold their own in smaller dinghies, but with bigger, faster, boats women do struggle and are given their own class with slightly smaller sails.There is also a move to have mixed crews in non-single handers.
Chris Miller,
In the clubs I play at round here most of the women are there for the social, many of them being widows, whereas the men are there for competition. Obviously there’s the exception but at the end of hands its usually men who analyse what happened and the women who just want to move on.
I thought women got paid more for tennis. Men do five sets, women do three sets, both for the same money. That means women have to do 2/3 less work for the same money.
@ Bernie G
When I was in short trousers the British Cycling Champion was called Beryl: her husband was male champion.
Very occasionally you get women on top in minority sports – not so long ago Sandra Brown won the British Race Walking Association’s 100 mile race (her husband has won several of them but he has slowed since he turned 60); she has also completed 100 mile races in five continents. That is pretty tough – sadly the FT completely ignored her in its splash about women doing better in endurance sports: I reckon a race with a 24-hour time limit is *probably* an endurance event.
I never tried to run the Pennine Way – had a couple of goes at walking it and, quite frankly, it is not fit to be run in places: certainly not where you have a steep uneven path down to the M42 where if you don’t break an ankle you’ll get run over by someone driving at 70mph.
You can’t just flip a switch and expect there to be loads of women who can compete on equal level with men. The best may not have gone in to the sport, being put off by lack of opportunity. Its quite likely the women that will compete on an equal footing with men haven’t been born yet. Girls at the age of, say, 8 will need to know there’s an opportunity before they and their parents start putting in the long hours of dedicated practice and travel to competitions that are needed to get to the top.
I don’t think you can say that girls/womyn have lacked the opportunity to obsessively play darts. For chrissake, all you need is a dartboard and a set of darts.
This goes back to the old male brain/female brain thing. Men tend to be obsessive about whatever it is they’re interested in – whether its darts or playing guitar or trainspotting or whatever – and women much less so. Hence all the woke poobahs at Google trying desperately to get moar wimminz into its technical departments and failing because very few women want to slave away at coding the way that Google expects its coders to slave away.
Women drive much faster than men around here.
Evening traffic is horrid, because husbands are in no hurry to get home to their ugly wives.
Men tend to be obsessive about whatever it is they’re interested in – whether its darts or playing guitar or trainspotting or whatever – and women much less so.
So true.
Victoria Coren won some European poker titles and got 2nd place in a world championship. Which doesn’t disprove your point, but just shows she’s brilliant.
“Girls at the age of, say, 8 will need to know there’s an opportunity before they and their parents start putting in the long hours of dedicated practice and travel to competitions ”
Yes but there is a very full and open opportunity in darts. The would-be-best need to know they’ll have access to the pro circuit to put in the effort. Well its open on ability. Perhaps knowing there’s a ladies pro circuit would encourage more, well there is one of those too. But when it comes to requiring the ladies pro circuit pay as much as the open (but male populated) pro circuit then that’s a sticking point. I don’t find it hard to believe that people do want to find out the best female player but its certainly not as much as they want to find out the best player overall.
By the way i’ve always thought that if you have a daughter and you put her into ballet classes the absolutely worse outcome imaginable is that she becomes a pro ballet dancer.
Women don’t do too well at snooker either, in spite of the beebs insistance on having a woman present it.
Professional sport is a branch of the entertainment industry. Pay should be determined by the number of tickets sold and the price they are sold for plus any advertising revenue. Whether people are watching for the athletic prowess, the eye candy, or the chance to virtue signal shouldn’t matter.
“there have been outstanding women mathematicians but few & far between”: it’s a little known fact that Leibniz was a trannie.
Of course it’s little known for excellent reasons.
“the less feminised & thespian version of football”: that’s interesting, it’s always looked rather gay to me – have you seen the antics when someone scores a touchdown?
@TomJ
Having appeared on Only Connect (trounced by the eventual winners of the third series), I can confirm that Victoria is indeed brilliant. She would be one of the ‘one or two’ females in the top 100, though I remain to be convinced that winning poker tournaments doesn’t have a healthy slice of random luck involved. Duplicate bridge is the only ‘mind sport’ played on a level field.
Chess Chris?
I’m not a (decent) chess player, but my former bridge partner (now a senior international) was also a county chess player, and he insisted there was more luck in a chess tournament than at bridge. Since all don’t play all (they’re generally in a ‘Swiss’ tournament format), it depends to a significant degree on whom you’re drawn against (and they can play many fewer matches over the course of, say, a weekend congress). This is not so much the case at the very top (probably).
I think its all great
If we are serious about all this nonsense soon the most professional sports people will either be male or former males competing in female competitions
Delicious irony
There’s circumstantial evidences that Bobby Riggs throw his match to square a lot of his gambling debt to some dangerous people.