Women's Sports: Breaking Barriers

[00:00:01] Speaker A: I just remembered that we're supposed to record a podcast. [00:00:04] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. What time is it? [00:00:07] Speaker A: Well, we've been on for 40 minutes. Okay. [00:00:10] Speaker B: That's way better than I thought. There have been many things happening. [00:00:14] Speaker A: I feel like, yeah, you guys, I feel like, yeah. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Anything else? [00:00:22] Speaker A: I'll just get us started. Let's. Let's just do it. Yeah. So, everyone, welcome to the but why Podcast where we explore the human experience through a psychological lens by asking but why? I'm Dr. Kristen. [00:00:53] Speaker B: And I'm Dr. Laura. And today we are exploring excluding women from sport to prevent broader progress. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Woo. Exciting. So exciting. We need to think of like a. [00:01:07] Speaker B: Catchier title for that. [00:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I literally just like your book chapter title. It's like a section from the book chapter I wrote. I was like, I don't have the capacity to edit this to sound more human right now. Oh my God. So Laura and I have already just been talking for 40 minutes and so we're. I'm highly caffeinated and very tired. Same time I have. [00:01:35] Speaker B: Guess what? I'm sorry, this is more small talk. So I have a Yorkie bar. Do you know, do you get Yorkie bars? [00:01:41] Speaker A: I've seen them before, but I don't know what you know. [00:01:44] Speaker B: Do you know about what they've now removed from a Yorkie bar on the market? [00:01:47] Speaker A: Having no understanding of what a Yorkie bar is? No. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Oh my gosh, you're going to love it. So they're very tasty and they. It's just a chocolate bar. But back, back, back in day they used. The marketing was that they're not for girls and there was literally a picture of like a girl figure, like on a toilet. Not on a toilet, but you know. [00:02:08] Speaker A: Like. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Do you know what I mean? Anyway, that with like a. No, like cross through it. So the advertisement was that Yorkies are not for girls and that meant that I ate them all the time because I was like, fuck you. [00:02:23] Speaker A: What a rebel. [00:02:25] Speaker B: Exactly. So the marketing worked on me because then I ate birds. But anyway. [00:02:29] Speaker A: But now they have totally anti establishment. [00:02:32] Speaker B: They've now removed, you know, the kind of sexist marketing that they have going on, which is great. [00:02:38] Speaker A: Well, while Yorkie has removed that, a Welsh rugby team a couple days ago came out with a marketing campaign for one of their games. Say, what did it say? It said something like, this one isn't for the like faint hearted. This one isn't for the uncommitted. This one isn't for the girls. And then like on the photo it's like, like like, you said, like, on the door of a bathroom. [00:03:05] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:03:06] Speaker A: Like, no, like an X in front of it. [00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:09] Speaker A: Like, what the hell? It's 2025. This isn't even like a historical marketing thing. It's like, why? And they were like, who? And they got this. It was the Welsh. Let me just Google it real quick. [00:03:18] Speaker B: Welsh rugby? Really? Are you sure? [00:03:21] Speaker A: Positive. [00:03:23] Speaker B: Oh, my. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Welsh rugby. It wasn't like Wales rugby. It was a Welsh rugby team. Yeah. It wasn't team Wales. [00:03:34] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. How could you, like, get that so wrong? [00:03:41] Speaker A: They. It was for a derby match. So for anyone in America, a Darby match is, like, against your, like, local rivals. It's a battle to the death. It's a. It's a battle to the death. And that's not for the girls. It's only for the boys. For the girls. It was here, look. Oh, wait, why isn't it showing the whole thing? Oh, I don't have. I'm not subscribed to the Telegraph, but it's a. It's neath, R, F, C, N, E, A, T, H. Images. [00:04:12] Speaker B: Look at not for Girls post. [00:04:15] Speaker A: Not for girls in pink. [00:04:17] Speaker B: Is that what it says? I think I found images. [00:04:20] Speaker A: Goodness, how bad is that? And after they got called out for it online, because obviously they're going to get called out for it online. They were like, see, this is what we were trying to do is highlight inequality of women in rug feed. We're like, what? [00:04:34] Speaker B: What the fuck? [00:04:37] Speaker A: It's so bad. Like, oh, I guess this fits in really well with our topic today. [00:04:45] Speaker B: It does. Look at that. Look at that segue we did. [00:04:48] Speaker A: Look at us. I think, like, one of the reasons we wanted to do this episode is because we had Jen and Amy. Jen and Amy on, like, in an episode, what, two episodes ago, Three episodes ago. Something like that and something like that. Something. Who knows? Wait, I don't even know when I am right now. And some of the comments we got from men about some of the videos were just so ridiculous and just told me how far we still have to go with women in sport. It's just. I'll read off some of the comments, but I thought first it might be useful to the main video that got the most bad comments. And I get really overprotective over my friends, people that we're going to bring on to the media side of it. I know Jen and Amy are constantly on social media and they do podcasts and they've got a lot there. And like, that's more on the, like, LinkedIn and podcast and professional links kind of side. And not on the TikTok side of it where you just get all these trolls and terrible people. So when I had all these misogynists talking shit about them, I flew into a rage. Big surprise. It's always. It's always there. But I got so fucking mad. [00:06:13] Speaker B: It's always there. It never leaves me. [00:06:16] Speaker A: It's like the Hulk. Like when he's like, I'm always angry. That's my secret. I am the she Hulk. So I got so mad. And then, because especially it's one thing to be an asshole, but then it's another thing to be incorrect. You know what I mean? [00:06:34] Speaker B: Okay, yes. [00:06:35] Speaker A: Don't be a stupid asshole. Especially not. [00:06:37] Speaker B: They tend to go hand in hand, though. [00:06:39] Speaker A: I've been learning. It's so annoying. And so I was like, okay, so firstly, I want to address these comments because they're very easy to prove wrong. And secondly, I want to address them because I think people don't realize that how these people are still out there. So, like just. They're just everywhere. Right. There's a reason why online abuse towards women went up by 1,400% the day after Trump's election. [00:07:08] Speaker B: Wow. [00:07:08] Speaker A: It's because these people are there. And so I think I'm going to be able to navigate this well with the technology as we know. My technological abilities are not amazing, but I think I can share my screen so that you can see. I think so. This is like I said, new ground. Let's see. Can you see it? [00:07:32] Speaker B: Yes. [00:07:33] Speaker A: Okay, look at me go. And then. So this is. [00:07:35] Speaker B: I'm wearing like the same thing. [00:07:39] Speaker A: Whoops. [00:07:41] Speaker B: This is what I wear every time. [00:07:43] Speaker A: I wear the same colors. Oh. Oh, that's freaking hilarious. So I'm going to play this. Let me know if you can't hear it, but this is the specific video I'm talking about. [00:07:56] Speaker C: If you like, if you look at soccer in America, women are like absolutely outperforming the men, yet the men were still getting way more money and investment. So that for me is a really good example of, yeah, like visually, that sport women are getting, you know, doing well, getting loads of fans. There's fans support, but underneath that it's very, very unequal. And I think so. I guess that's the point. And Kristen, I always think back to when you and I delivered a session for our master's students around sexism and working in sport and the like, lovely, really like kind of open minded males in the room. And I put the hand up and said, but this isn't an issue anymore because women look at women's football and you're like, well, yeah, look at it. It's developing, but it's nowhere near the same level as the men in terms of support and like, you know, TV time and finances and funding and everything else. [00:08:58] Speaker A: So that's the video. Right. Seems pretty standard. Right. Nothing like this is all well known information. Insightful, but like well known. Right. Okay. Do you want to hear some of the comments we got? I'm so happy that you're not on our TikTok. [00:09:11] Speaker B: No, don't want to hear. No, thank you. [00:09:17] Speaker A: So one person, man. Sorry. I should be clear on that said, because the viewership is lower, which means lower ticket. I don't know what that means. Which means lower ticket. [00:09:28] Speaker B: It does mean lower ticket. [00:09:30] Speaker A: Yes, comma, winnings and advertising revenues. It's got nothing to do with skill level. Although the USA women's team got beat by beaten, I would say beat. Does it grammatically make sense? But by under 15 boys teams anyway. And they said teams plural. That's not true. So basically saying like viewership's lower so they're not going to get as much money. And also like then completely undercutting the skill of the women's team by saying they got beat by some 15 year olds. Right. And so I want to address that one first, because this whole the US women's team got beat by a 15 year old academy team argument is constantly used to undercut the Olympic women's football team, soccer team because people don't want to see the women succeeding this much. Right. And so this did happen and they've addressed it multiple times, but what actually happened was they weren't trying to beat this Academy team. That was not the point. So essentially what had happened was. And this was ages ago too. [00:10:39] Speaker B: They. [00:10:40] Speaker A: What was it, 20, was it 2016 Olympics? So like nearly a decade ago, something like that. Yeah. So they've been, they've been knocked out of Rio pretty quickly and that was devastating for them. Their defense just did not work at all. It was absolutely ripped to shreds. So they decided that it would be a good idea to expose as many flaws as possible in their game so they could improve. And speed was the biggest factor. So they wanted to like choose like a really fast team. They had access to this academy team and so they basically got the fastest Academy team they could play against and try out various combinations and do the wrong things to see what happened, like the reasons they got kicked out of Rio and see how they could like plan to fix it, find the holes that they're trying to fix in the non Olympic situation without trying to win. So they're trying to think, figure out what they're doing wrong to involve to like kind of adjust that. Right. And so the co that information was super valuable to the coach. It's more useful than trying to like just demolish some boys team. Right. So the whole point was to, it was an exercise in losing so they could kind of target. That was the whole. They weren't even trying to win. It was like an experiment in. It was like give us your best, we'll give you our worst so that we can kind of find the holes. And that's like a very woman way of dealing with things as well. Like let me give you my worst and try and fix that instead of I just need to win because like, because to show these 15 year old boys that are Olympic teams, it's just amazing. Right. [00:12:20] Speaker B: And they would say something bad if we beat them anyway. You know what I mean? [00:12:24] Speaker A: Like that's such a good point. Yeah, that's such a good point. Like, or I just wouldn't get brought up, you know what I mean? [00:12:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There'd be somebody like making fun of the fact that like they were playing like this 15, you know, like under 15s or whatever. They were like team anyway, you can't win. It's just, and it's frustrating when you think about like I guess when we, we talk a lot in I guess like high performance about how we need to be comfortable failing and exploring kind of I guess where those weaknesses are and I guess it links to the psychological safety stuff. But now, I mean you wouldn't be surprised if they were then afraid to do something like this because of the backlash and how they then get viewed as a team and how that then might have an impact on even things like sponsorship and so on, which is something that's significant. So it's just so frustrating that people take these stories and twist them to be something negative when actually it's kind of something positive. Do you know what I mean? It's them trying to grow, them trying to evolve and not being afraid to lose against a team that I guess on paper it's like, yeah, we should beat them. [00:13:45] Speaker A: Exactly. And it's like these people, they're not even like in, in their heads twisting a narrative because they don't even care enough to look at whether it's true or not. They fit it into their own patriarchal narrative that's already in Their head. It's just like. And it's. So tell me you're never, you've never been involved with elite sport without tell me, telling me you've never been involved with elite sport. Right. It's like anyone that's actually involved in elite sport, especially aside from maybe that Welsh rugby team, would know this is an exercise in losing. So that's one of the comments. There was another comment that said, no one watches the woman, exclamation point. So that was one. And I was just like, what? Like the woman. Do they mean women's sports? Do they mean a single woman? I'm very confused. I'm not confused. I know what they're trying to say. But come on, at least. If you're just stop being an idiot. At least, come on. And so firstly, I would like to note that as of last year or in 2025 now, as of 2023, 37% of women compared to 48% of men watched sport consistently. So that's not that much of a difference. And if you take into account multiple factors, like there's hardly any visibility of women's sports, women weren't society societally allowed to be really big sports fans until more recently. Then it makes sense. And it's probably going to be a lot like that gap is going to close a lot like a 10% gap. I mean, not even half of men watch sports consistently. Right? Like, so chill out, dude. And so that's going to continue rising as access and visibility kind of continued to rise. Excuse me. And that visibility factor is something that is really important. So as of 2018, only 10% of coverage, sports coverage in the UK was dedicated to women's sport. 10%. [00:15:57] Speaker B: So those panel shows are gonna be. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Well, it's all those panel shows. Yeah. I'm not talking about total airtime, I'm talking about sports airtime. So airtime, not total sports. So men's sports have 90% of the sport airtime, women's have 10%. So there's no, there's no sports to watch on the TV because there's. They're not buying the rights to those sports and not playing them on the television. That's obviously increased over the last six years, seven years. But as of 2022, the average viewing time per person of women's Sport increased by 131%. So, like, the amount of time people are spending watching women's sport has increased over 100%. Right. But the airtime still dedicated to women has hardly increased. How crazy is that? [00:16:54] Speaker B: That Is mad. [00:16:56] Speaker A: Yeah. I think the fact that I said before that ties into this comment, which was if the women who complained about the pay actually watch the games, then the problem wouldn't exist. So I think that's the one I meant to tie to, like 37% of women versus 48% of men watch sport consistently. That's that one. So. But yeah, they're all related, aren't they? And so, like, it's just complaining that women don't watch sport. Yes, we fucking do. Right? Yeah. Tell me that you don't have any female friends, right? [00:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:28] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. The last comment that. This is the one that just made me the most angry and like, feeling protective is only lies coming out of that mouth. Right. Doesn't it just make you feel gross? [00:17:42] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Yes. [00:17:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's why I was like, you go, you've got something to say. [00:17:50] Speaker B: Gross. And then just like, scary. Right? How this is. I was going to say, like, these comments. I don't know, I was going to say, do, I suppose, do these comments kind of represent the average person's understanding of, you know, representation of, like, women's sport and, like, airtime and who's watching it and so on and so on. Like, I do think that there is still like, so little awareness about how women's sport is, I guess, equally, like, valid and equally. Yeah, I think, I guess equally valid. [00:18:29] Speaker A: My perspective would be that, yes, this is a reflection of the average person's understanding because it's. We have this misunderstanding from people who work in sport. Right. From our study that we did, down to just seeing people discussing how to coach women on LinkedIn, which I, like, posted about a week or two ago, because I was seeing all these people talking about how it's different to coach women. And they're not talking about the reasons why we're different. They're not taught. They're just saying women are more people pleasers. Women are just different to coach. Like, are we or have we been socialized to be people pleasers because of the society? Things like that that will influence how you're coaching people. But it's not that women are like that. Right. So it's just. It really bothers me. Yeah. [00:19:16] Speaker B: And I think as well, it's frustrating when we think about. I don't know, I think there's like, there's like a kind of gif I show sometimes when, when we do that sexism lecture, if you remember. But it's like how now there is technically like a 50, 50 split between, you know, men and women who go and participate at the Olympics. And I feel like that is almost people then being like, oh, great. So we've solved it like. Like, we have just as many, like, women participating as we do men. But actually it's not just like those numbers which are allowing us to find, I suppose, that kind of equity. Like, it is still hard to be a woman in sport. [00:19:59] Speaker A: Mm. And just getting to that 50%, a lot of these women will be self funding. They won't have, like, sponsorship deals. They will be getting probably a lot of personal meaning and purpose and just like this awesome feeling from being at the Olympics. But it's not gonna give them, like a career in terms of beyond sport. Right. Where a lot of men, not all the men. Right. But the percentage of sponsorship deals for men athletes in the Olympics versus women athletes at the Olympics is astronom. Right. It's not that simple. And it's all marketing. It's all like crafting the reality that we see to say, yep, 50%. 50%. It's. It's, you know, we're good now. When actually when you look at the problem from like a. More you're looking at the gray area, you're breaking it down. That's really not the case. Yes. Which is something we're going to really dig into in this episode. So. So that's why we decided to do this episode. Right. Is because there's that very clear misunderstanding amongst the general population. But also working in sport. And so I did a chapter for Amy and Jen for this book that they have coming out soon about women's stories in sport. And part of one of the chapters was about this. And so I thought I'd start by reading a quote. I'm quoting myself mainly because I was too lazy to try and figure out a different way to say it. So I say even now there's considerable discourse about the validity of women's sports through topics surrounding women's bodies, the gender, pay gap, viewership, and allocated resources. As if a primary reason for the lack of space occupied by women, women in sport. And the slow in heavy quotes progression of women's sport was not driven by active exclusion through policy and culture, often giving men's sport a significant head start at really pivotal periods in history. Because at the advent of like, the television and certain media bits is when sport took off. And that's right around when women's sport was gotten rid of. Because. So I think that's like something really important is it's not just that women's sport isn't popular, it's because it's actively been repressed. So not only were the people in these comments wrong, but there are reasons people think this way and why women's sport is so far behind men's sport. Just like women's rights are behind men's rights, women's like medicine and the knowledge of our bodies is behind because they only started testing on women in the 90s. So it's just like everything, it's just behind. It's quite frustrating. [00:22:48] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, definitely. [00:22:50] Speaker A: Yes. So I thought I'd start with some facts. I do love a fact. Do you know anything about American basketball? [00:23:02] Speaker B: No. [00:23:04] Speaker A: So last basketball season, so this would have been the 2023, 2024 season. So there's NCAA is the like the college university athletes kind of, that's like that, that athletic association for universities. [00:23:22] Speaker B: Okay. [00:23:25] Speaker A: So in. So on Division 1 is the best division and it goes through Division 3, which is like where you're not allowed to give sports scholarships and stuff like that. So it's a bit lesser in terms of, you know, they won't attract the same kind of athletes because D1 has all this money to offer their athletes and they make a huge revenue off of their sports. So last season, Caitlin Clark, who just came onto the scene like just an amazing player, but and also her teammates and competitors absolutely shattered NCAA Division 1 viewership records for women and men. Completely shattered the records because they were so good, especially Caitlin Clark. It was a really interesting season. There was a lot of one on one competition between various players and it's completely shattered the records because for the most part people aren't as bothered by NCAA as they would be by like the NBA. Right. But suddenly people were tuning in to the NCAA to watch Caitlin Clark's crazy like ascension. Then she was drafted to the wnba, so the women's National Basketball association to the Indiana Fever. And. And her jersey became the top selling jersey of a professional draft pick of all time, regardless of gender. So of all time. That's amazing. But however, the top pick in the NBA averages over $10 million. Right. To start with in their initial contract. Can you guess how much Caitlin Clark's salary was for her? Like her top being a top draft pick in the WNBA? [00:25:15] Speaker B: So the top men's was 10 million. [00:25:17] Speaker A: It's over 10 million. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Over 10 million. [00:25:20] Speaker A: It's usually over 10 million or it averages over 10 million. [00:25:24] Speaker B: Okay, so how much is she getting paid? [00:25:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I know I'm not giving you like anything to go. No, you have zero contacts like like 2 million? Yeah. $76,000. Yeah. Okay. Like, I have a thing like, people don't need to be making hundreds of millions of dollars playing sports. I have a real ethical opposition to that. But at the same time, that's $76,000. Especially nowadays in America with how expensive it is, is not that much money for a professional athlete. The top pick, like, it's crazy. [00:26:12] Speaker B: Do you know if that has changed since, like, she, you know, got like these top picks and things? I don't really know what that means. [00:26:22] Speaker A: This was only a year ago. This was only a year ago she was the top pick. [00:26:26] Speaker B: She was. And this is how much she is getting paid. [00:26:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:31] Speaker B: Even after being like top pick or currently being top pick, this is what she's getting. [00:26:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And get this, get this. [00:26:39] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. [00:26:41] Speaker A: So some WNBA athletes have been really good at being outspoken on podcasts and stuff like that, but basically saying like, we need to be paid for paid more. Like all over the news when this kind of argument was happening last, I think it was like around last summer, people were like, they're not LeBron. They. They're not, like, they shouldn't be getting that much money. And she's like, we don't want to be paid by like, paid like LeBron. Right. We want what we have earned. So she said, we're not asking to get paid what the men get paid. We're asking to get paid the same percentage of revenue shared. So she says that women, women in the NBA don't receive any percentage of Jersey style sales like the men. So they're not getting. They're just getting a base salary and that's it. They're not getting any percentage of revenue share. They're not saying like, the NBA is as popular as the wnba. And they're not saying, like, even though the WNBA isn't watched as much, we still want to make, you know, tens of millions. They're saying, no, whatever the revenue of the WNBA is, we would like the same percentage as what the men get of theirs, which I feel is very fair. [00:27:53] Speaker B: Extremely fair, for sure. [00:27:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:57] Speaker B: And then in a way there's like, not that it's like incentive makes it sound too businessy, but in a sense there's like, then incentive for them to try and promote themselves or to try and, you know, whatever if there's some kind of like financial gain in it kind of for them. But I think it's frustrating when the reasoning is then like, oh, well, you should just be doing it because it's something that you love and it's something that you're passionate about and it's like, yes, like, of course there's going to be that. Like when you're playing a sport that you've, like, trained for your whole lives, but you also want it to become a career and something that is sustainable and something. And I suppose you could say, like, yes, okay, that much money would be sustainable for somebody to live a good life. But it feels like a bit of a punch in the face if you're then comparing it to what the men are getting. [00:28:49] Speaker A: Right, right. It's that equity, like, even equality, without even trying to access equity in this aspect. I mean, firstly, they've dedicated their entire lives and their identity is likely to this. Right. They're experts in their fields. Right. You don't see many experts in their field making like, that little money. Right. It's so. It's just like. It makes no sense. And it's very obvious that people just don't give a shit. Okay. I think it's important to note that this is on purpose. It's not just like a coincidence that there's this massive gap between men's and women's sports and how much they're paid, because it's across the board for the most part. I mean, I'm sure there's a couple sports, maybe like gymnastics or something, where women might make more, but there's actually. There's also not like, professional. Professional teams. That's more of, like, the Olympic. So men have used sport historically to prevent women's broader societal progress. So we touched on this last episode, how it's two steps forward, one step back for women's progress. And sport is often a mechanism for doing that. Like, remember we said about Bicycle Face last week, which I'm sure we could just talk about for ages because it's such a crazy and interesting topic. But I wanted to say to, like, say a quote from a magazine in 1896 that says, to men, the bicycle in the beginning was merely a new toy. To women, it was a steed upon which they rode into a new world. The bike was how they were able to progress. And obviously then this mysterious women's disease that only happened to women made them, like, not, like, be able to ride these bikes. So. Sorry, I really need a drink of water. I'm thirsty. One second. You can talk if you want or you can just stare at me. [00:30:36] Speaker B: Oh, and I'll just stare. [00:30:43] Speaker A: So, like, going to this time period of the early 1900s is when we started to see women being banned from sports because of various things which I'll get into. But this kind of 1900-1930 period was really defined by pushback by men in sport administrators, leaders, even medical professionals, as we talked about last episode, saying that like a lot of physical and mental reasons for why women were not suitable for sport. So they would say like hysteria, which isn't a thing. They said that running or riding a bike or all these things would lead to damaging our reproductive organs. Gotta, gotta avoid running to keep that uterus safe. Because I mean, if you can't deliver a child, what's the point of it existing? [00:31:37] Speaker B: What is the point? [00:31:40] Speaker A: Yeah, and this was the reasoning they used to ban women from basketball in 1899. So they were banned from college level. [00:31:51] Speaker B: What was that? What year was that? [00:31:53] Speaker A: 1899. [00:31:54] Speaker B: 1899. So they banned them because of this. Yeah, you don't want to damage your yourself, basically. [00:32:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's too much. Women have been playing basketball already for a couple decades and really enjoying it. And I, I also think, oh, I'll get it. I'll say this after I explain actually all of this because. But just think about what sport offers to groups of people, right? Getting together, talking, sharing your experiences, things like that. So women were banned from college level basketball in 1899. And then some in the US and some states made it illegal to play basketball in high school as well. So like just completely like, nope, you can't play basketball. And it didn't experience a really big resurgence until the 70s after women were banned for decades. So like how long do you think it's going to take to rectify that damage? Women's basketball wasn't around when, or like the. Think about how men's basketball was around so long and how that time to evolve as a sport, do you know what I mean? And, and have that. The development of, of like coaching styles and play and like if you see the old videos of basketball when they're like throwing it under their arms into the hoop, like it's evolved a lot as a sport. And so, so it's just like, of course, you know, women's basketball will be behind and they're not gonna. And the other thing is, is they weren't even really around when people started investing in sport because of the new media coverage, like TV and stuff like that, television. So they wouldn't have enough, they wouldn't have the money to invest in the sport, things like that. Similarly, in the UK by 1921, there were about 150 women's football. So soccer Clubs. Some of these matches drew like 45,000 spectators. And at the time, like right now, Old Trafford, right now, I think for United is 70. So think about in the 20s, like, you've got half of Old Trafford filled because there weren't going to be stadiums as big as we have now either. So they were fully packed stadiums, lines outside, men and women watching, and they were beating the men in viewership at this point. So kind of as a result of men's resentment, really, of the popularity of the women's game, women were banned from playing football from 1921 to 1970 until 1970. They were banned from the game again right along that time. And like that advertising time in the 50s and 60s leading into the 70s, where you're getting all this money into sport, men's sport, they're not even existing there. It's illegal. [00:34:48] Speaker B: I'd never thought about it like that in terms of the kind of media kind of rise around that time and how women are then basically just excluded from it. [00:35:00] Speaker A: Think about media in the 50s and 60s and early 70s. It's very much centered about that around that housewife, family person that we discussed last episode. It's very like, you've got this dress on, you've got this weird. Probably like, jello encased, like, weird 50s food because. Because you've had a lobotomy or you're on, like, on tranquilizer drugs. Like. [00:35:27] Speaker B: Classic. [00:35:27] Speaker A: Yes, Classic. Yeah. [00:35:31] Speaker B: But it's also my. Like, I don't think I realized how. How good, like, the spectatorship was then, like, before they banned it. Like, I think I always just like, assumed, like, well, they must have just banned it because it didn't really. Maybe it didn't really make that much difference anyway. But that is a surprising fact to me in that the viewership, the spectatorship was. Was really strong. And then that's just been cut. Like, that makes it even more, like, horrific that they've just decided off some whim that this is something that women now can't do. Like, it's something that was established. Do you know what I mean? Like, it was well established, they were successful and they've just taken that away. [00:36:18] Speaker A: Like you said, it's a whim. The whims of men are why women are, like, constantly facing backlash. It's because if they're just so many in a patriarchal society, it's threatening that power, right? Women showing that they're not some delicate little flowers in. By playing sports like contact sports, like basketball and football slash soccer, but. And then they're going to use women's bodies against them by saying, oh, even despite decades of you doing this, actually this isn't good for your baby making like prospects. So we're going to fully ban you from doing it. But the other point I wanted to make, and I think I read another chapter about this somewhere is somewhere one of my many chapters I was trying to remember if it was in this book or a different book and is think about how novel and amazing it is for women, especially 100 odd years ago, to be able to go into groups of other women and just communicate and talk about what's happening, what's going on in their lives, what's positive, what's negative. And there's so much repression of women's community, active repression. And that was not just like, oh, women are competing in sport, they're competing with men's sport. We don't want that go away. It's also, women are building community and that's a threat to patriarchy. Let's get rid of it. And so that's why from my point of view and other people's other scholars points of view, sport is such a vehicle for preventing women's progress. And we still see it today like women working in sport like we do is still. Sport is still largely occupied by men. Right. We're not actively excluded by being banned, but we're excluded through. Where am I? Oh yeah, there I am. We're actively excluded through sexism and harassment at various levels. Right. So it's just really frustrating. Like in this time we have a less conspicuous version of exclusion, but now we're dealing with sexism and things like that. But I think, sorry, what I was trying to say was every surge forward in demonstrating women's competence and right to autonomy in whether that's be sport or society has resulted in this backlash we discussed last episode, especially in professional and recreational sport. And a big thing that I always try to tie into my arguments is that sport, I think his name is Anderson, wrote about how sport was designed for men to demonstrate their kind of reserved right and heavy quotes to power through their kind of toughness and their, I don't know what we think of as toughness, masculine toughness through their kind of like hyper masculine traits. And so that's how sport is used as a tool to demonstrate men's right to power, essentially. [00:39:30] Speaker B: And what you were saying before around how it's like, it's not like women are actively banned. It's not like, it's almost like in a way like the, the barriers have become so much more like covert in a sense. Like, you don't see them as clearly. Which is though, like, yes, like, it's a good thing that we don't have these really like, overt barriers anymore where we're like banned from stuff and literally not allowed to participate or compete. But sometimes it's more scary with these like, covert ones that we can't see. And then I think that's where we get a lot of these, you know, like the comments that we were talking about earlier. Like, you see people having that sort of understanding of what's going on because it's like, well, all of the barriers have been taken away. Like, women are allowed to do what they want. Like they can compete as much as they want, but there's not, I think, like you mentioned before, like digging underneath that and kind of understanding, I guess, yeah. What those kind of barriers still are to progression. [00:40:41] Speaker A: I feel like those barriers and kind of general exclusion are so ingrained in the system, whether we're talking about sport or society, that people don't think outside of that, that it's so easy to gaslight other people and yourself because it's just accepted an accepted reality because it's presented to you this way your entire life and you're always taught to see, well, look how far we've come. Like, great. I will totally acknowledge how far we've come. That's great. However, look at where we are now. We can't even post a video on the Internet without men deciding to tell us to shut up. Right? And especially women existing in sport, which has actively been crafted for men to demonstrate their right to power over the last hundred years. It's bad, right? Because like, we had that. This desire of maintaining that patriarchal structure. It's just like they use sport to just put women back in their place by employing those sexist assumptions about women's capacities. So like in the late 1800s, early 1900s, we had the bicycle face with the suffragette movement. We had the active banning of women from Sport. Now in 2000s, we have sexism. But it's like you said, it's so built into the system. It's just like, what do you do? We get such pushback from a lot of our work. That is, sometimes it's well meaning. Like Amy said in the video I shared, like the. The men in the class will say, well, it's not really an issue anymore. Women's. Look how well women's football is doing. The women's World cup was so viewed like, yes, but do you know how hard it was to get there. Did you see the sexual assault happen on the biggest screen in the world at that Women's World Cup? Yeah, it's very frustrating. [00:42:35] Speaker B: It is, yeah. And I think this is where it's almost like. I think sometimes this is where I feel as well, like, if I'm having conversations about these sorts of things that I need to have all of these, like, facts and figures. Because sometimes it can be hard to, like, fight your position with. With kind of topics like this without someone just throwing something that they think is, like, common sense. Do you know what? Like, back to you. And it's like, well, no, actually, because you're not looking beneath the surface of what's happening. And then there's like that extra work that we need to do in making sure that we can construct these arguments which are really, really solid and, like, unbreakable. And I often worry I'm just stood there like shit. Like, I don't know how to argue back to you, but I know you're wrong, but I'm not going to be able to give you a good enough answer that's going to change your mind. And I find that really frustrating. [00:43:30] Speaker A: I think that is such an important point because. And this is pro. There's that burden on the person that is being oppressed is probably a very large word in this. Like, we're oppressed by a system. Right. But that person who is trying to fight upward for that upward mobility. Right. The burden is placed on that person who's already struggling to do that work. Right. And it just makes you even more tired. There's a reason that women are so tired. I mean, a lot of this research comes from how the burden is often placed on black people to fight racism and educate, when really it should be us as white people doing the work to research it and take that responsibility and become. Become better people. Right. It's so. It's. The same thing happens with women is like the burdens on us to explain how either they're wrong, why they're wrong. Why should you. Why should they listen to us? Right. To explain that we're human beings and not just baby receptacles. We just like, if we want to pick up a basketball, receptacles seem like such. [00:44:37] Speaker B: It seems like such a horrible word. Receptacle tickles. [00:44:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Especially when you say it that way. Yeah, probably. [00:44:52] Speaker B: That probably wasn't what I was going. [00:44:53] Speaker A: To take from what you said. No, I like it, though. Yeah, it's. That's a good point because, like, how, how do you then firstly change things when you're constantly tired from constantly having this burden put on you? And then is it kind of, I don't know, going along with that system? If you actually do put in the effort every single time to change that person's mind, where do you stand on that? [00:45:25] Speaker B: What, in terms of how much effort do I put in to change somebody's mind? Like, is it my job almost to change somebody's views? [00:45:35] Speaker A: Because I struggle with this a lot. Obviously with this being my area and special interest and having a very high justice sensitivity. I always feel the need to like do this change and like educate that person and be like, no, you're wrong because of xyz. Because I have this, like, I have this misconception that if I present somebody with, with facts that they're gonna be like, okay and change their mind. [00:46:00] Speaker B: That definitely that's what I always think too. Yes. [00:46:03] Speaker A: But then I go, well, philosophically, why is it on me? I shouldn't, I'm, I'm like, like engaging with the system by putting this burden on myself and like, ah, it's like a constant back and forth. [00:46:18] Speaker B: I mean, I guess it would be less stressful, right, if we said, you know what, that's not my thing to deal with and we stood, stood back from it. But I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if I did like challenge people on these things or if I'm not challenging, at least like asking questions and almost like trying to understand or trying to like understand where their understanding comes from. So is it from a space of. Actually they've done loads of research on this and they know those are things or actually are they just chatting a load of like shit and do you know what I mean? [00:47:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:05] Speaker B: So I think I feel the need to like understand why people, you know, say things that might be sexist. Like do they understand that that is sexist in the first place? And if they don't understand, then yeah, I'm going to tell them, like, do you know that, that that is something like, like that sexist. And maybe I'm not trying to like, you know, get them to communicate differently or get them to stop being sexist, but maybe just to get them to think twice about something, even if it's just in that 30 seconds. Yeah, but I guess I recognize that that isn't gonna like change a bigger picture, but it's probably in a sense like selfish in a way because I don't think I'd be able to live with Myself, if I just ignored comments like that, I'd always be like, ah, I should have said this or I should have said that or yeah, why didn't I stand up for like that group of people, you know? [00:48:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think I agree totally with that. It's like I can't, can't let it go. Like, it's. It would be difficult to let it go. Like last night when the met. That man kept calling me and my friend girls. And I was like, are we girls, though? Like, and you could see him like, not really able to figure out what was wrong with what he was saying. Yeah, but maybe next time he'll think when he sees a full grown ass woman, think twice about calling them a girl. [00:48:33] Speaker B: Yeah, right, Totally. And I think sometimes things like that when it's like a kind of. I guess we could say it's like a semantic thing. I feel like often people think I'm being really pedantic and I'm like, no, but it has meaning. Like the words that you use have meaning, meaning and like have power. Absolutely. Using like saying girls instead is like, are you being minimizing? Like, I talked to Matt about this and. And he's like, yeah, but I'll call like the guys like boys. So should I not be calling them boys? And I'm like, what is a good, you know. [00:49:05] Speaker A: Well, there's no power dynamic there. There's no societal structure in place that makes it condescending. Right. Yeah, it's like you can say that to your. And just like how a group of women friends say, I'm going to go hang with the girls. Right. That's fine. I wouldn't say that. I would always just say I'm going to. Well, I don't usually have groups of people that I know. I got to go. Yeah, I'm going to go hang with my one friend and then another day I'll hang out with another friend. But it's not going to be at the same time. But I think either way I wouldn't use like that kind of vernacular. I don't know if that's just me. I would just be like, I got to go hang with my friends. Friends. Yeah, but not like. But you might say, like if I have a girls trip or something like that. But that you're saying that about your own group is fine. I would call a group of guys boys. Like, that's weird and it seems condescending. [00:49:54] Speaker B: But it's even true. Yeah, like, you got to go hang out with the boys. Like, I just didn't say that. [00:49:59] Speaker A: Oh, you're going to go hang out with your boys. Oh, nice. And it gets even more condescending. But it's from the group that in the structure that you are existing in says it like, it's literally boys and girls is children. Right. You're equating them to having like the brains of children. Literally. I think it was Matt Walsh, I don't know if you saw my post on this, said last week or two weeks ago, women have the minds of a child and they shouldn't be involved in politics. It's literally the argument that was from freaking 100 years ago when people were saying women. Some, like, right wing. Like, he's not like a politician, but he's an influencer. But, like, he sits there gross. It's like women have like literally said it and the guy was like, of course. Of course they do. Like what? Yeah, it said a woman is like. Oh, that's what it said. It said a woman is like a child. Yeah. And I, I just don't understand, like, no. [00:51:08] Speaker B: Why. Why would anybody say that? [00:51:12] Speaker A: Because they're dicks. [00:51:15] Speaker B: Because they're just gonna stay mad. [00:51:17] Speaker A: Because they have a lot to gain by subjugating women. They have a lot to gain. Patriarchy and capitalism have a lot to gain by taking women out of the picture. But unfortunately, the world has a lot to lose by doing that. Not just individual women, but everything works better when you've got all the genders just existing and adding, you know, to the, to the table. It's just really frustrating. [00:51:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. [00:51:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Put me in a room with that person for one second. [00:51:53] Speaker B: I would pay to see that. Oh, my gosh. Maybe that's what we need to do. Get people like that on the podcast. Oh, my gosh. No, I think could get be dangerous, actually. [00:52:01] Speaker A: It'd be hilarious. I think you would just become a moderator. You would have to take some, like, you have to like, take some lessons in how to like, diffuse like a hostage situation. [00:52:14] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. But how's everyone feeling? You are okay? [00:52:18] Speaker A: I would probably have a great time, actually. I think they would probably leave not feeling so great. Because they don't base anything off of facts. They don't base. They don't live in reality. [00:52:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:30] Speaker A: It's so dumb. [00:52:31] Speaker B: It would be easy to pull apart. [00:52:33] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. This makes me kind of wonder, like, if anyone is interested to hear our work on sexism in sport because, like, discussing a little bit the history of it, we've kind of gotten to where, like, we are modern in modern Times with women experiencing exclusion from sport through sexism. So in our paper we talk about how this happens from the outside at interpersonal levels. So that's between people. So like active sexism through like banter and. And stuff like that or like the broader organizational level. Like there's no pathways for support when they're experiencing negative things. There's no facilities for women. Like my first club I worked at didn't have a women's bathroom. Obviously I'm not allowed in the men's bathroom. So I had to use like the extra disabled toilet that all the boys would just use to poop in. And it was clogged half the time. So I would have to drive off the freaking facility to use the petrol station toilet every time I needed to use the toilet. It was horrible. And then we also talk about the social, more social, Broader cultural level of exclusion that influences it as well. So if you guys want to hear about that, let us know and we'll talk about it. Do you have anything that like pops into your head that like, is relevant from our paper or anything else? [00:53:49] Speaker B: Well, I was just gonna say how it links in to the episode we did on this socio. Cultural, socio ecological model. Sorry. [00:53:57] Speaker A: Right. [00:53:57] Speaker B: We did that. We did that. Yes. [00:53:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think that was a fever dream. I'm pretty sure we did it. [00:54:01] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure that happened. [00:54:03] Speaker A: Yes. So yeah. [00:54:04] Speaker B: How it kind of links into that. So that was very much how we were. Yeah, that was kind of the framework we used to analyze and to understand these women's experiences. [00:54:14] Speaker A: So we like to add the nuance and that's why I think we struggle so much when people don't have this nuance is you and I are looking at it most of the time from that. Individual influences. How are these interpersonal? How is this broader social. How is. How have even just like a simple law influenced how this individual's person. Oh my God, I'm so happy. It's Friday. [00:54:40] Speaker B: It's Friday. It's great. [00:54:41] Speaker A: Oh, I'm so excited. This individual person's experience are the words I'm trying to say. [00:54:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:54:51] Speaker A: So if you want to hear about it, let us know. If not, we're probably gonna still talk about it anyways. [00:55:00] Speaker B: Tuned reflections. Yes, I'm trying to think. So I haven't written any reflections down yet, but I suppose on reflection of kind of what we've spoken about, I think it's for me, like, I guess just interesting. I suppose again we're like, we're challenging, I guess Some of these assumptions about women, about women's sport. And I think that it's useful to almost check, not check our knowledge, but I suppose try and, like, deepen it and really understand kind of what are the facts beneath the things that we might be sharing, or what are the facts that aren't beneath some of the things that we hear other people are sharing. And I suppose, like. Well, I suppose with like, the theme of the podcast almost, we're always kind of asking, like, but why? And I guess it is. It's that. Right? It is. If we hear something, if we see something online, checking it. And I think that we reflected on something kind of similar when we spoke with Jen and Amy. So what are those things that we can kind of question and ask for a bit more facts kind of beneath that, rather than just taking things at face value. I think it's just a reminder. Yeah. Of that. [00:56:20] Speaker A: I love that. It's like, what can you approach with more nuance? What can you explore more? What can you be curious about? And I think that's a really good thing to apply for if you're looking at deconstructing why people have certain rights or why there's certain barriers. But I think more broadly as well, I love that. As a reflection, but specifically for this episode, explore the nuance on women's rights, because that's what we want you to do. [00:56:47] Speaker B: Yes, that's the one. [00:56:50] Speaker A: That's the one for. Selfishly, for how we want the world to be better. Yeah. So thanks everyone for listening. As usual, we probably have more questions. Questions that answers. But we enjoyed exploring how women are excluded from sport to prevent broader progress. So did this leave you with any questions? Please comment and let us know. We'd love to know if you have any topics you'd like to explore, so get in touch. Be sure to, like, follow or engage however your platform allows. And tell your friends or friend based off of our conversation before. [00:57:23] Speaker B: Your individual friend. [00:57:25] Speaker A: Your individual friend. You could tell them all separately or in a group. Whatever works for you. You can find us on various social media platforms. The link is in the bio of our but why Instagram page and in the Show Notes. Show notes. And remember, the first step to understanding is asking, but why.