2024 has been a difficult year for women. The statistics don’t lie. One in four women who have been in a relationship have been abused by a current or former partner according to Women’s Aid who work to prevent and address the impact of domestic violence.
Since 2020, 25 women in Northern Ireland have been killed violently, in all cases but one, by a man. It is not uncommon to hear of women being beaten, abused and murdered by their male partners but has the silence become all too common? Where is the outrage?
It may be silent outrage but collectively we need to start to hear and be part of a crescendo of angry voices. Lawmakers need to increase sentences and we want to see judicial courts consistently impose maximum sentences on the perpetrators.
Sport has always appealed to me as it shifts your mood, encapsulates you in the here and now and genuinely helps you forget your troubles for the time that you are engaged at a sporting event.
But even in this space, women last year have not been immune. Rebecca Cheptegei the Uganda long distance runner who participated in the Paris Olympics was doused with petrol and set on fire by her former boyfriend and died from her injuries.
I am heartbroken for these fabulous women and their families whose light was extinguished way before it should have been.
When the 20x20 movement was established in 2018, it looked at increasing media coverage, boosting attendances, and growing involvement of women in sport and physical activity by 20 per cent by 2020.
The tagline of the campaign was ‘can’t see it, can’t be it’. It has been a successful drive in creating visibility and enabling conversations to highlight women in sport and online platforms like HerSport have done so much since then to promote female athletes.
For the eighth year in a row, the boxer Katie Taylor is the most admired athlete in the annual Teneo Sport and Sponsorship Index that looks at attitudes of the public towards sport and sporting athletes.
Rhasidat Adeleke, the 400m sprinter and Kellie Harrington who won back-to-back gold boxing medals at the recent Olympics are in second and third place.
It has been a huge year for female athletes in swimming, AFLW, rugby, soccer, boxing, athletics, cricket, cycling, GAA not to mention the success of athletes at the Olympics and Paralympics.
The names of Rhasidat, Kellie, Katie, Ciara Mageean, Danielle Hill, Róisín Ní Riain, Katie George-Dunlevy and Vikki Wall stand out and their achievements will inspire so many young boys and girls in the years to come.
It is positive but in the recently published report Gender equality in media representation of sport in Ireland, commissioned by Federation of Irish Sport in collaboration with Dr Anne O’Brien of Maynooth University, they found that even though 40 per cent of all sports participants internationally are women, their sports receive only 4 per cent of all media coverage (UNESCO, 2018).
The report also quoted the Global Media Monitoring Project (2020) noting that sport is among the top three topics in which women are least likely to appear.
Women comprise only 14 per cent of news subjects in sports-related topics worldwide, while men comprise 86 per cent of subjects (GMMP, 2020). This underrepresentation is consistent across media platforms.
It is right that we are positive about where women’s sport has come from to where it is now, but as this report shows, we cannot become complacent in how we promote and publicise female sport.
We are at a stage where visibility is at a higher level, but it is also important to make sure that the gains women’s sports has made continue and do not regress due to lack of media coverage, fan engagement and publicity.
One of the hopes six years ago was that the sport be treated in the same way as men’s sports and we are seeing that in the way it is now analysed and criticised.
If athletes and teams are not performing to a high level it is spoken about.
Eileen Gleeson, the coach of the Irish women’s soccer team did not have her contract renewed as she did not achieve the goal of qualifying for next year’s European Championship.
It is hugely disappointing for her but it shows there is accountability and expectation which is to be welcomed.
2025 will be another huge year for women and sport and I look forward to watching it all unfold.
One of the findings of the same gender equality in media representation report was that more male allies are needed.
This allyship is key in helping to promote and endorse the sport, to get involved and show up at sporting events that women are participating in.
We need collaboration. It’s not just in sport but in society as a whole.
My hopes for women’s sports in 2025 is that we continue on an upward trajectory of increased coverage of sporting events but also that we will see and hear more men speaking up about fairness in how we treat female athletes.
It’s not just in sport that my hopes for this lie but also in society as well.
The former President of the USA John F Kennedy in a speech said that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
Let us hope that 2025 will be a much kinder place for women. We all play a part in this.