Tag: Gender

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Legend

Megan Rapinoe may not be the greatest player ever to take the field for the USWNT, though she’s not too far down the top ten list after the likes of Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, and Abby Wambach.

But Rapinoe’s legacy may be greater than any other.

She long will be celebrated as an icon for her leadership off the field in the fight for equal pay, calling out racism, and her personal work to advance LGBTQ awareness.  

Rapinoe leveraged her performance in the 2019 FIFA World Cup tournament — she won the Golden Ball as the best player and the Golden Boot as the leading scorer to lead the USA to its second straight championship — into a worldwide platform on which to advocate for social change. 

Led by Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, 28 USWNT players filed a civil rights lawsuit that forced US  Soccer to negotiate a Collective Bargaining Agreement that covers national team players regardless of gender — pooling all prize money and other revenues for equal distribution. The effect has been worldwide, spurring demands for equal treatment and mutual respect by several other women’s national teams, especially in France and Spain.

Members of the USWNT wore Black Lives Matter shirts during warmups and took a knee during the national anthem before a November 2020 friendly with the Netherlands. US Soccer banned such acts after Rapinoe first knelt during the anthem in 2016. The team issued a joint statement saying the protest against racial injustice was an affirmation of human decency.

Rapinoe has also opened up her personal life to public scrutiny, after coming out as lesbian and celebrating her relationship with WNBA legend Sue Bird.

None of Rapinoe’s outspoken leadership was without risk. For taking up these righteous causes, she has been targeted by those who oppose the ideals of equity and inclusion. Yet she has endured with the same poise and grace and bravery she displays on the field.

Rapinoe bowed out of the World Cup this week with a miss in the penalty shootout and the top-ranked USA team fell to third-ranked Sweden. Obviously, it was not the ending she would have scripted for herself or her team.

Hopefully, she will be celebrated with a proper send-off later this year, as she closes her national team career with friendlies against South Africa. We should honor her leadership and her legacy, as much as her athletic accomplishments, and thank her for working to make the world more fair and equitable.

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Swansongs

Amid all the excitement about increasing parity in the women’s game at this year’s World Cup, the excitement of greater competition will be tempered for many longtime fans as three of the all-time greats in women’s soccer likely bid farewell.

Marta, Brazil

Team Brazil forward Marta (10)

Perhaps the greatest to play the women’s game, Marta has been a presence at every World Cup since 2007, when she scored seven goals to claim the Golden Ball as the top player and the Golden Boot as the top individual scorer.

She was named FIFA World Player of the Year five years running, from 2006-2010, and again in 2018. Though she has never won the World Cup, her legacy is cemented.  She led Brazil in a victory over the USA U-20 Team at the Pan American Games in front of 60,000 fans in Maracana in 2006 and was compared by fans to national idol Pele, who called to congratulate her after the win.

At 37, with 174 international caps and 115 goals (10th all-time), Marta is unlikely to play in another FIFA World Cup tournament after Australia/New Zealand.

Christine Sinclair, Canada

This will be Sinclair’s sixth World Cup and probably her last. 

Sinclair has not yet announced her plans, but in a recent interview with Maclean’s, she was asked about retiring. “For me, it’s all about enjoyment. Can you stay healthy? Because it’s no fun if you’re not healthy,” Sinclair said in the interview. “And are you still enjoying it? Are you still waking up every day knowing this is what you want to do?”

Sinclair, who last month celebrated her 40th birthday, led Canada to the Gold Medal in the 2021 Olympics. She has 323 international appearances and has scored 190 international goals (and 54 assists) — more goals than any other player, ahead of even Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

She has been shortlisted for FIFA World Player of the Year seven times, right behind Marta in four of those years.

Megan Rapinoe, USA 

Just before the send-off game with Wales, Rapinoe announced she would retire at the end of the current NWSL season, making this her final World Cup campaign.

“I feel incredibly grateful to have played as long as I have, to be as successful as we’ve been, and to have been a part of a generation of players who undoubtedly left the game better than they found it,” Rapinoe said in a statement. “To be able to play one last World Cup  and one last NWSL season and go out on my own terms is incredibly special.”

She led the USA to the last World Cup in 2019 in France, winning the Golden Ball as the best player of the tournament and the Golden Boot as the leading scorer. The same year, Sports Illustrated named her i’s “Sportsperson of the Year.”

Rapinoe turned 38 on July 5 and has 199 international appearances. She has more assists, 78, than goals, 63, but is third all-time in assists. ranks third all-time than goals. She is the only player, male or female, to score an Olimpico (a corner kick for a goal) at the Olympic Games, and she’s done it twice.

Rapinoe is regarded as much for her off-the-field leadership on pay and equity and LGBTQ representation as she is for her stellar on-field performances.

This trio of legends has had a tremendous impact on the women’s game, and this World Cup offers a final opportunity to appreciate their contributions.

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Categorizing performance by gender

It’s always great to see the emergence of a young actor. 

One of my favorite examples is a bit from Game of Thrones season six. John Snow, Sansa Stark, and Davos Seaworth — trying to muster an army to face the House Bolton — travel to Bear Island to meet with the young but feisty leader, Lady Lyanna Mormont. Ultimately she agrees to help by supplying a limited number of fighters, saying Bear Island’s legendary warriors are worth many times their own number in battle. Davos responds, “If they are half as ferocious as their Lady, the Boltons are doomed.”

Bella Ramsey

The scene offers an early glimpse of the fiercely talented actor Bella Ramsey, who this week was nominated for a best actress Emmy for playing Ellie in The Last of Us. 

Ramsey is non-binary, neither male nor female. Their nomination in a gendered category is an issue that the show’s creator said he addressed with them before submitting their work for consideration. There is rightly disappointment that a non-binary actor can only be placed in a gendered acting category. And some see a silver lining in Ramsey’s nomination as a means to create awareness around trans visibility and inclusion.

But why?

Why must we rationalize these choices?

Why are we so willing to accept acting awards that are gendered, or, perhaps more precisely, segregated by sex?

It seems an anachronism; a throwback to an era where the sexes were segregated in order to preserve the idea of fairness toward women. The old separate but equal canard. The bias is implicit, leaning into the notion that when women and men are forced to compete against each other, men will prevail. So we keep them segregated in order to maintain the illusion of male superiority.

Non-binary actors disrupt that construct and ask us to reconsider sex segregation as a method to differentiate abilities and talent based on gender.

For example, three of the four co-stars of Succession have been nominated for lead actor in a drama series while the fourth, Sarah Snook, was nominated in the lead actress category. While it might be difficult to single out any of them that’s the whole point of an awards show, right? Reward the best of the best. So if Snook wins in the actress category and, say, Kieran Culkin, wins for actor, how does that reward the best performance in the series? And what is really the point of differentiating them? They are essentially the same roles in the same production. Why should they be judged separately?

Separa means to emphasize differences. For acting award categories, differences in roles, such as starring versus supporting, seem like a legit distinction based on screen time, lines, and importance to the story. So does separating awards based on categories like drama, comedy, serials, and feature-length movies. 

But gender is a constructed difference. That’s why there are no separate categories for directors, writers, producers, technical awards, etc. Just for actors.

So, rather than trying to figure out how to fit non-binary actors into binary categories, let’s get rid of gender-segregated awards categories and just give awards to the best performances.

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FIFA: Women, officially

A glass ceiling will be shattered today in Qatar, of all places.

An all-female crew will officiate a FIFA men’s World Cup match for the first time ever when Germany takes on Costa Rica at Al-Bayt Stadium.

UPDATE: In testimony to the competence of the all-female crew, the match was played without any controversy over the on-field decision-making amid intense competition. Germany beat Costa Rica 4-2 but failed to advance on goal differential versus Spain.

The crew will be led on the pitch by head referee Stephanie Frappart of France. She will be assisted by Neuza Back of Brazil and Karen Diaz Medina of Mexico

This is no low-stakes, back-of-the-desert, inconsequential appearance. It is an important match on a big stage where an upstart Costa Rican side takes on traditional powerhouse Germany with both teams looking to win and advance out of group play. 

The effect of the decision reaches beyond the field of play. 

The officiating assignment could be taken as subtle imprinting by FIFA on the tournament in a nation where women are relegated to second-class citizenship — they need a male guardian’s permission to marry, work, travel, and even study.

The tournament has been roiled by controversy over social issues, starting with the treatment and deaths of of immigrant workers who constructed the stadiums to Qatar i officials surprising FIFA two days before the tournament by banning the sale of beer inside stadiums, even after it took $75 million from Budweiser as a tournament sponsor. Qatar, a Muslim nation, strictly regulates alcohol. Beer and liquor sales in the stadium were limited to VIP areas.

Qatar also cracked down on demonstrations of support for human rights, specifically refusing to allow the German team to wear “One Love” armbands and preventing ticket holders from carrying rainbow flags in a country where same-sex relationships are outlawed. A social media video showed police refusing entry to a fan wearing a T-shirt that read “Women. Life. Freedom.” in support of anti-government protests in Iran.

But the assignment also could be taken as a sign that FIFA is coming to grips with its own unequal treatment of women in a sport where, according to estimates by Statista, 37% of football fans worldwide are women, and the women’s World Cup in 2019 drew a total television audience exceeding 1.1 billion viewers.

In May, FIFA announced the officials selected for the World Cup matches, the head referee pool of 36 included three women: Frappart, Yoshimi Yamashita of Japan, and Salima Mukasanga of Brazil.  The pool of 69 assistant referees also included three women: Back, Díaz, and Kathryn Nesbitt of the United States.

FIFA said at the time it wants to make the appointment of women referees in men’s competitions more commonplace, and has been deploying women in men’s senior and junior tournaments as a sort of proving ground.

“In this way, we clearly emphasize that it is quality that counts for us and not gender,” said Pierluigi Collina, chair of the FIFA Referees Committee. “I would hope that in the future, the selection of elite women’s match officials for important men’s competitions will be perceived as something normal and no longer as sensational.”

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Welcome to the gun show

Maybe the best thing about Heaven Fitch is her flex.

Fitch won the 106-pound division of the North Carolina 1A high school wrestling championships. In a bracket with seven boys, Fitch made history as the first girl to win an individual state wrestling title. She was named the meet’s outstanding wrestler. “It’s, like, insane what I’ve done. It’s not fully sunken in yet,” Fitch, a junior with a 54-4 season record at Uwharrie Charter Academy, told WRAL-TV in Raleigh.

Fitch won the title with an incredible reversal in the final seconds of the match and celebrated with a mighty flex to demonstrate her domination, as any champion would.

http://a.msn.com/09/en-us/BB10xEjm?ocid=scu2

But Fitch’s personal accomplishment resonates in a much more profound way.

It is yet another bit of evidence that demonstrates women can (and probably should) compete against men. Wrestling is a great example because of its weight classes, which acknowledge that smaller wrestlers can’t fairly compete with bigger wrestlers. Wrestling by weight classifications means technique and mentality, the real hallmarks of good wrestling, become just as important as strength.

Fitch showed that a female not only compete on a level playing field with males, but can excel in a way that can’t be denied or diminished or dismissed because of her gender.

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Selling out

In the effort to subjugate women as athletes, many people (usually men) like to argue that nobody watches women’s sports.

Sold-out Matthew Knight Arena, Eugene, Ore. Photo: Oregonlive.com

It’s not true.

We could talk soccer or tennis or gymnastics, but let me use the past week or so in women’s basketball as an example.

On Monday of last week, 13,163 fans packed Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, SC, to watch No. 1 South Carolina edge No. 9 Mississippi State, 81-79. And that wasn’t the biggest crowd of the week. On Thursday, 13,659 showed out at the XL Center in Hartford to watch No. 3 UConn drop a close one to No. 23 Tennessee, 63-58. The same night, at the KFC Yum Center in Louisville, 7,756 paid to see No. 5 Louisville beat unranked University of Virginia, 71-56, and then, on Sunday, another 11,624 saw the Cardinals rip Pitt, 83-49.

Over the weekend, women’s games drew tens of thousands of fans.

  • In Spokane, No. 13 Gonzaga ran away from Loyola Marymount, 78-52, in front of 6,000 people at a sold-out McCarthey Athletic Center.
  • In Knoxville, 10,230 showed up at Thompson-Boling Arena to see Tennessee defeat the No. 14 LSU Tigers.
  • In Tucson, a rowdy crowd of 10,160 saw No. 18 University of Arizona defeat its in-state rival, No. 16 Arizona State University.
  • In Eugene, No. 4 Oregon sold out 12,364- seat Matthew Knight Arena for a rivalry game against No. 7 Oregon State. Oregon won 76-64
  • Two nights later, 50 miles away in Corvallis, the Beavers drew a near capacity 9,301 fans to Gill Coliseum for a rematch with the Ducks, who won again, 66-57.

Two nights ago, 13,919 turned up at XL Center in Hartford to see the US Women’s national team fend off UConn, 79-64, with a fourth-quarter surge.

To sum up: eight days; ten games; 108,176 tickets sold.

Get the point?

It’s simply not true that the public isn’t interested in watching female athletes.

The myth is propagated by TV networks, especially ESPN and Fox, who invest so little in broadcasting female athletes.

Let me use my alma mater to illustrate the point. At 1 p.m. Sunday afternoon, the No. 4 Oregon women played No. 7 Oregon State in Corvallis in a back-and-forth contest that was heightened by likely player of the year Sabrina Ionescu’s friendship with Kobe Bryant. The game was broadcast on ESPN2, although ironically the first half was bumped to the ESPN app because of the news of Bryant’s death. Meanwhile, at 2 p.m. Fox TV aired the No. 14 Oregon men hosting a mediocre UCLA team in a snooze fest that was over by halftime.

I watched both. The women’s game was far more compelling. Hands down.

By the way, the Oregon women have been outdrawing the men at home, averaging 10,363 fans at the Matt compared with an average of 7,502 for men’s games.

One last point about the networks:

From Tuesday of this week to Monday of next, 125 mens basketball games will be televised; 45 of them on Saturday alone, including primetime gems like UMass (8-12) at Davidson (10-9). CBS will carry three games and Fox will carry one. Another 19 games will air on ESPN or FS1. The others will air on subESPN channels or regional broadcasters like BTN or the Pac12 Network.

Compare that with the 41 women’s games that will air the entire week. ESPN and FS1 will air three of those games. None of the major networks will carry a women’s game.

It seems the lack of interest isn’t in fans who choose to buy tickets and attend games, but in network executives (almost entirely men) who fail to recognize the untapped potential that exists in women’s sports.

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Kobe’s legacy

My immediate reaction to reports of Kobe Bryant’s death was sorrow.

I’ve never been a big fan. I certainly appreciated his skills, although I take exception to Magic Johnson’s statement that Kobe was the greatest Laker ever. (Fine for you to abdicate, Magic, but what about Jerry West or Kareem?) When it comes to the NBA, I’m more of a Bill Walton girl. Then again, the news of someone’s death always brings an outpouring of love. The sadness and grief make us want to look for the goodness.

Kobe Bryant at a WNBA game with his daughter, Gianna.

Among the praise was considerable focus on his love for the women’s game, from coaching his 13-year-old daughter, who also died in the helicopter crash along with seven others, to his mentoring of Sabrina Ionescu, the University of Oregon phenom who tearfully took the court for a game Sunday afternoon, shortly after the news broke.

Even so, after more than an hour of hagiography, I started to get annoyed. ESPN reporters failed to provide any context to Bryant’s life and career. Yes, he was an incredible athlete; a hall-of-fame lock; a prolific scorer. He was also an “alleged” rapist.

In 2003, while the 27-year old Kobe was rehabbing an injury in Colorado, a 19-year-old hotel staffer accused him of rape. The police reports verify her account of a brutal attack, including bending her over a chair and choking her hard enough leave bruises. He told police, according to a transcript of his interview, choking is “my thing” and said he didn’t stop until he asked if he could ejaculate on her face and she said no. A month later, he admitted to being unfaithful and bought his wife, Vanessa, a $4 million, 8-carat purple diamond “apology” ring.

He was charged but never tried because the young woman, whose reputation had been publicly smeared by Kobe’s legal team, declined to testify. In exchange, Kobe made a public apology. “Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did,” he said in a written statement.

It is critically important, amid the public sorrow and grief, to provide the details of the case against him because, it seems to me, that experience helped reshape his life in a profound way.

Perhaps the charges against him helped him see his actions through a different lens.

I’m certain that rearing four daughters also helped him reframe what transpired that night. What father doesn’t worry about the predatory culture in which we raise boys to become men and pursue women, even to the point that President Trump can talk about grabbing women by the pussy and dismiss it as “locker room talk.”

The redemption for Kobe, I think, was in his involvement in sports for women and girls. His second child, Gigi, was an aspiring basketball star. He became her personal and team coach. They were often photographed together attending major sports events featuring women’s teams.

Kobe became a huge supporter of women’s professional basketball and the women’s US national soccer team and professional women’s tennis.

He had a close bond with Ionescu, a California kid who went to Oregon and has posted more triple-doubles than any other player, male or female, in NCAA history. She surpassed the Pac-12 conference record for assists last week, besting the mark set by Gary Payton, who became an NBA star. On Sunday, after the fourth-ranked Ducks defeated the seventh-ranked Oregon State Beavers, Ionescu said she was dedicating the season to Kobe: “Everything I do, I do it for him,” she said.

Kobe’s legacy as a supporter of women is as important as his accomplishments in the NBA. It also shows that we as people can learn and grow from even the worst mistakes we make.

Kobe was not perfect, and it’s important to remember that, as well as the 81-point game, the 18 all-star teams, and the five NBA championships. Perhaps we can conclude that his transformation as a human being was even more meaningful than his success as an athlete.

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The WNBA’s minimal wage

WNBA MVP Elena Delle Donne. (Photo from cnn.com)

After celebrating the Washington Mystics and their remarkable run to the WNBA championship, it’s important to take a minute to think about how we treat these athletes the rest of the year, especially whether or not they are fairly compensated.

Consider that the Sacramento Kings pay Dewayne Dedmon $13.3 million a year, which barely allows him to crack the top 100 among all NBA players, according to data compiled by ESPN.com.

That’s enough money to cover the WNBA’s entire payroll this season.

It’s outrageous that the total compensation for the 200 women on WNBA rosters doesn’t even add up to what a mediocre NBA team is willing to pay a journeyman center. The top salary in the WNBA is capped at $117,500. The median salary is closer to $55,000.

If you think that’s simply a reflection of their value, it is not. If you think it’s because the WNBA is losing money, it’s not. If you think it’s because nobody attends games, it’s not.

The NBA spends about 50% of league revenues on payroll, according to an analysis by Forbes magazine. On the other hand, the WNBA spends about 25% of league revenues on payroll.

The sports giant ESPN paid the WNBA $25 million a year for broadcast rights in 2018. This year, the league also cut a deal with CBS sports to televise 40 live primetime and weekend games. The league realizes at least $27 million a year in ticket revenue, with ticket sales this year again topping 1.5 million. That, by the way, is just about where the NBA was at its 23-year-mark. The WNBA also receives support, as a subsidiary partner, from the NBA. And there are other revenue streams such as concessions, merchandise, betting sites, etc. Exact numbers are difficult to come by in most cases because the leagues finances aren’t public. But even using the artificially low $52 million a year as a baseline revenue, the WNBA payroll is remarkably low by any objective business standard.

The economics don’t argue that the WNBA players should be paid on par with NBA players, but it does suggest that the players are undervalued by at least half, and probably more.

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Kicking up a fuss

Carli Lloyd, one of the best players in the history of U.S. women’s soccer showed up this week at a practice for the NFL Philadelphia Eagles and almost on a lark booted a 55-yard field goal.

Lloyd kicked a 55-yard FG at an NFL pre-season practice between the Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Ravens.

The feat lit up the Twitterverse, made headlines and had a run through two full news cycles on ESPN. The tone of the reaction was almost entirely surprise, although anyone who follows the US Women’s National Team would hardly be shocked by Lloyd’s leg strength. In the 2015 World Cup final against Japan, she scored the third of her three goals from beyond midfield. (Watch the video: https://youtu.be/mBosyOJ3PIY)

But Lloyd’s practice kick, in a more serious vein, showed that the NFL may be moving closer to gender desegregation.

“Honestly, I don’t think it will be long before we see a woman break through this NFL barrier,” tweeted Gil Brandt, an NFL hall of famer and the Dallas Cowboys’ vice president of player personnel from 1960 to 1988. “I’d give her an honest tryout, if I were, say, the Bears.”

The Chicago Bears experience with kicker Cody Parkey in 2018 was a disaster, including the notorious “double-doink,” when a potential game-winner from 43 yards out was tipped at the line, then hit the left upright and the crossbar. The Bears lost that wild-card game 16-15 to the Eagles. The Bears released Parkey in the spring. This pre-season, they’ve looked at nine kickers — six rookies, three free agents.

Lloyd caught the eye of current NFL team managers, but was ambivalent about a career change.

“I’ve definitely got some inquiries, I’ve definitely got some people talking,” Lloyd told SI TV’s Planet Futbol TV. “Anything is possible but right now, I’m strictly a soccer player and we’ll see what the future holds.”

But are the rewards worth the risk?

As a rookie kicker, she would likely make the league minimum salary of $495,000. That would be a lateral move financially for Lloyd.

In 2017, she reportedly earned $400,000 after signing a three-month contract with Manchester City in the English Premiere League women’s division. After her EPL stint, she rejoined the Houston Dash in the National Women’s Soccer League, where the maximum salary was about $40,000. She was also on the roster of the USWNT for sixteen matches.

This year, playing for the national team in its run to the a second straight World Cup in France, Lloyd stands to make $260,000. (Of course, if the women received the same pay as the men’s national players, Lloyd’s compensation would have topped $1 million).

The cost to her reputation might be more dear.

To step up as the first woman to play in the NFL she would bring notoriety, but not necessarily in the same way as Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Maybe more in the way of Bill Veeck signing Eddy Gaedel to the Chicago White Sox.

It would follow her everywhere.

It would be in the first sentence of her obituary.

It would likely overshadow her accomplishments on the soccer pitch, where she has won two Olympic gold medals (and potentially a third in 2020 if she remains with the USWNT), two World Cups, the golden boot and the golden ball awards as the leading scorer and best player in the 2015 World Cup, and was named FIFA Player of the Year in 2015 and 2016.

At 37 years old, Lloyd has already established her superstar credentials. She has nothing left to prove. Risking her stellar credentials for a  cameo in the NFL seems like the wrong choice.