Is Mumsnet the Way?

Lizzie fails to mention that cricket stadia just aren't equipped for mass female attendance- ie there isn't nearly enough toilets but here is her now infamous skinny jeans comment.

Patronising women is not the way to boost participation.
Elizabeth Ammon.

The Times.

Wednesday, 22 March 2017.

PTG 2081-10540.

Every week brings an announcement from one sports governing body or another — a new initiative to increase engagement, participation or crowd sizes. Almost all of them seem to be aimed at getting more women and girls into sport. More and more I hear adminstrators saying “we’ve got to the get the mums” and therefore by default their kids.  Surely that’s a good thing? How can you possibly object to that?

The England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) latest participation initiative, 'All Stars Cricket', has a strong element of pitching to mums, so much so that the press release had a quote from the chief executive of ‘Mumsnet', the online parenting forum (PTG 2080-10533, 21 March 2017). One of the main stated objectives of the ECB’s new T20 competition is to attract more women and children. Last year's “This Girl Can” initiative has been pretty successful and is well intentioned and well marketed but I find myself slightly horrified that there was any prior belief that “this girl couldn’t”.

I have been told that many women don’t go to sporting events because the stadiums aren’t nice enough. That they’re grubby and the facilities are terrible. That not enough families go to our sporting events because it’s not a nice spectator experience for the mums.

There are two problems with statements like these. First, they imply that the reason fewer women go to watch football, cricket or rugby is because there are no Laura Ashley cushions on the seats and no hand lotion in the toilets. And second, they imply that men are alright with stadiums being unpleasant places (they aren’t).

Yes, many of our stadiums in the UK are terrible. They don’t have facilities that make things a bit easier if you’ve got kids. But that’s not because we’re women. It’s the same for dads — particularly if dads are taking their daughters. Taking two small girls to the toilet when you are a man is a particularly challenging experience especially when they’ve got to the age that they want to go to the ladies themselves. The poor fellas find themselves loitering awkwardly outside the ladies loos.

How about making your stadiums more comfortable and user-friendly because it’s the right thing to do, not because you have a notion that women are delicate flowers who can’t handle the rough-round-the-edges elements of playing or watching sport?

The increasing rhetoric that women need help to access, engage with, or participate in sport drives me potty. Women aren’t special cases that need extra help. We know what sport is. We know how to access it. We understand it. We know where and when you can watch it. We understand the rules. And if we don’t, we know how to find them out. We don’t need to have them explained to us. Honestly, football is far less complicated than buying a pair of skinny jeans.

Yes, more men watch and play sport than women do. More women watch 'Strictly Come Dancing' and 'The X Factor' than men do but we don’t see the launch of special initiatives to explain singing and dancing to men.  Every time I see one of these new initiatives pitched to me as both a woman and a mum, it’s invariably being pitched by a middle-aged bloke. Always with the best of intentions, always coming from the right place. Always trying to work out how they can support us to be more engaged with their sport. Admirable but patronising as hell.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m delighted that sport has woken up to the fact that women exist. And particularly delighted that my own sport, cricket, is recognising the need to try and broaden its appeal. But the language being used grates on me.

Please stop thinking women don’t know about sport. Stop thinking that the reason many of us don’t watch or play it is because we don’t understand it. Please stop thinking we’re more likely to go if you dumb the sport down a bit, make it shorter, make it easier to understand or put flowers in the aisles.

We don’t need your help. We get it. We can use the internet and read the newspapers and watch the telly just like you can. If you want to increase engagement and participation in your sport, be more targeted than just “get more women”. There’s probably a whole heap of men not accessing your sport either.

But if you do want to tap into the “female market” (that’s a phrase one man said to me), think about who we see leading the sport, who we see in your sport’s workforce, Think about the role of women in sport being so normal that it doesn’t even need mentioning.  “We cannot be what we cannot see” is a phrase often used by feminists. Perhaps if we saw more women running sport, working in sport, talking about sport that would be the catalyst. Perhaps then we could get to a stage where we could just stop mentioning gender.

This isn’t meant to be an uncharitable rant. I know you are trying to help and I don’t want to be churlish about anything that gets people to engage with sport. But language matters and I urge you not to talk to women as if we don’t get sport without your help.

Some Laws Code changes to apply for ECB’s 2017 season.
Elizabeth Ammon.
The Times.
Monday, 20 March 2017.
PTG 2079-10522.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is set to announce new playing regulations for its 2017 season that include some of the amendments that are to be introduced by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in its new Laws Code which is to come into force in October (PTG 2067-10462, 7 March 2017).  The ECB sets the playing regulations for all English domestic competitions and has decided to introduce some of the changes six months early.

From the start of this season, ECB Playing Conditions will allow batsmen to be caught off a fielder’s helmet. In addition they will not be given out run out if they or their bat have made their ground when the wickets have been broken, even if the bat has bounced up off the ground in the momentum of their dive.  The ECB made the wearing of helmets by batsmen, and in some circumstances wicketkeepers and fieldsmen, ahead of its 2016 season (PTG 1698-8377, 28 November 2015).  

However, the ECB has stopped short of an early introduction of a restriction in bat sizes and increased disciplinary sanctions and will not bring the changes involved on line until the 2018 season.  

In a radical move which goes beyond the recommendations of MCC though, the ECB has decided that when it comes into force next year, the up-graded, so-called ‘red card’, arrangements will be extended beyond just players to coaches and support staff. Coaches could therefore accumulate disciplinary points for dissent against umpires, abuse and, in the most serious cases, be sent off if there is violence or threat to an umpire (PTG 2068-10464, 8 March 2017).