Women and sports
Being a sports fanatic myself, I have been keeping track of the news around women and sports for a while, and that’s a lot. The number of medals for Dutch women at the Beijing Olympics clearly showed that women have to be taken seriously, also in the top of sports.
In some sports disciplines, women are competing on the same level as men, or even winning from them. I recently watched a documentary on Laleh Seddigh, also known as the ‘little Schumacher’, competing with men in the Iranian 1600 GT class. Wearing a headscarf and with the permission of her husband obviously, but anyhow. Her struggle for emancipation, demanding the right for women to race, turned her into a cult icon for Iranian women as well as the world press. However, Iranian race authorities were not amused, and she had to give up her own racing licence. For further reading, here’s an article on Laleh Seddingh.
Another female race hero is Danica Patrick from the US, who won an Indy race last year, something that no other woman achieved before. The enormous popularity of these women makes them an important role model for young women, who have much broader possibilities in the field of sports than their mothers.
Happily, female sports is no longer only aerobics. Today, I read in the Second Sight newsletter: football isno longer a male thing. The Dutch football league KNVB now has almost 10% female members (more than 107.000) and female football is the fastest growing part within the organization.
No surprise that sports brands are now catering to female target audiences. If I only count my own yearly spendings on sports articles, this must be an enormous opportunity…
Marianne van Leeuwen on October 14th 2008 in Insights & ideas
