This week we saw the world celebrate the 105th International Women's Day, an annual event aimed to raise awareness for women's rights, including equal pay. I must admit i hadn't realized this organisation had been campaigning for so long. It is a far cry from Emily Pankhurst and her struggles for equality of any kind.
International Women's Day
Women's sport continues to be underestimated, in our opinion, as a sporting spectacle. Athletics and Tennis aside, terrestrial television coverage of women's sport is almost non existent. Occasionally we may get an England game covered by the BBC but, the majority of sport, if given any airspace is shown on Sky Sports. This Girl Can launched in 2015 to get more women back into sport, with a campaign banner "This Girl Can is a national campaign developed by Sport England and a wide range of partnership organisations. It’s a celebration of active women up and down the country who are doing their thing no matter how well they do it, how they look or even how red their face gets." We have long supported women's sport and wish we could watch more of the England Hockey and Cricket teams on free to view tv. Team sports are great for men and women, for fitness, social interaction and general well-being. Having this to view on one of the 4 main free to air broadcasters, would increase participation levels across the UK. Women's sport is becoming so popular that many sports ball manufacturers have developed balls suitable for the women's game. Gilbert have launched rugby balls in a women's size 5 - Gilbert GTR4000 training ball and the Gilbert Vision match ball. Many cricket manufacturers have at least one cricket ball suitable for women's cricket in 5oz which sits between the youth and men's sized balls. Lusum, Readers and Kookburra all have match and training cricket balls available. It is only a matter of time when we are told there is a football in size 4.5 for women to use, although we feel this is totally unnecessary and women are more than capable of doing magical things on a football field, with a size 5 ball. As far as we are aware, Korfball is still the only sport that has mixed teams of men and women. Maybe this would bring equality if sports embraced the idea of playing mixed teams. Some cricket leagues allow women to play in what was traditionally men's leagues. Although, when women get to the highest level they must then revert back to same sex sport.
International Women's Day
