Claire Balding tweeted today ...



She was refering to this list ... [urlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/sports_personality/15895642.stm[/url

Does she have a point, is the world of sports reporting totally dominated by males and male sport (I know that Mintball has experience of this) to the almost absolute exclusion of females, are we really bothered about female sport at all in non-olympic years, has anyone seen the BBC's attempts to "big up" female boxing recently by showing a couple of bouts and some background history on the participants and what did you think of the standard ?

Is there a place at all in the media for professional female sport or is it still seen as a bit of a joke ?

I'd say the representatives picked weren't picked for the fact that they were male, it was what they have achieved. I'm sure if Woman had achieved similar they would've been put into the shortlist. As far as I'm aware there hasn't been any outstanding solo female performances this year? I may be being ignorant however.

as lineker said there are no major tournaments this year.with the olympics next year it maybe different and it could be a female dominated one next time!!

I genuinely asked if the SPOTY finilists were for the mens section this morning



Who votes for these people to be up for the award?

journos i believe.

[iNuts, Zoo[/i and [iThe Sun.[/i

Well if boxing were to have a representative, I think Carl Froch would be a much better candidate than Khan

Which unfortunately illustrates the point: women's sporting activity continues outside of Olympic years as well as in Olympic years.

And if coverage of women's sport is poor, then the general public won't know about it, and many will assume that means it isn't happening.

Incredibly [iNuts[/i and [iZoo[/i never nominated a pair of breasts between them.



Bit of positive discrimination from [iThe Voice[/i with some coloured representation.

Good to see the misogynistic idiot doesn't consider the [url=http://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/index.htmlWomen's World Cup[/url to be a major tournament

Perhaps you could use your media position to bring paddling pool custard wrestling to a wider audience.

In my view it depends upon the sport ... (n.b. I'm not saying I like all these)

Athletics - women's events are taken very seriously, especially by athletics fans, Olympic year or not - a big tick for that one.
Tennis - disparity in pay but generally taken seriously - tick
Show jumping - tick

Rugby (either code), football, cricket - treated by most people as a novelty.
Boxing - many people don't even like the idea of women boxing.

So, I'd say it's mixed.


Among the journos though? ... oh dear.

What Mr Field referred to in his opening post: in my days as a sports ed, I made a point of trying to ensure that we carried things like fixtures lists for women's sport (mainly football and cricket), and of trying my damnedest to get reports and, where relevant, news items. It was a struggle to get such data.

Women's sport has, in many cases, suffered from years not simply of underinvestment, but active campaigns against it.

And there is general lack of understanding that women's achievement in, say, the 100m sprint, cannot be directly compared to men's achievement – but that that does not mean there are not serious record-breaking performances etc.

It's something that's also reflected in the number of female sports journalists. It is improving, but to give you an idea, when I was covering football regularly, it was incredibly unusual to have more than one woman in a press box at any time and, at Euro '96, I didn't see a single other women journalist at any of the 13 games I went to live, across the country. With RL, you might see one other woman at Wembley for the Challenge Cup – but she'd usually be doing 'the colour piece' rather than the actual report.

25 female nominations from 280.

What's that, about 9% of the total?

A woman boxer gets a couple of shouts though EB.

It doesn't help when you've got hugely-influential dinosaurs like Blatter suggesting that it would be better if women footballers dressed more like beach volleyball players. It also doesn't help when you see niminations for Rebecca Adlington, who by her own standards of 2010, would admit herself that she's had a quiet year, here nomination seems to have been more knee-jerk than well-considered

The whole SPOTY is a load of BBC bollox isn't it?
Something you may have enjoyed as a kid but escalates in cringeworthyness, annually.

Zara Phillips ffs.

Agreed, it's now similar to the televising of Children in Need, the Royal Variety Performance, Comic Relief, or Noel Wears a Hideous Jumper and Visits Sick Kids at Christmas - something that leaves you thankful for a myriad other channels to be watching

For me it comes down to is it an equal or better product than the male equivalent.

Womans football is vastly inferior as are most sports.

Tennis is a better product only because the men have mastered the game to a boring level of smashing the ball so hard the other guy can't return it which isn't what people want to see, there are no sports off the top of my head in which i think if both men and woman competed woman would actually be better.

To me that's what it comes down to, people want to see the absolute pinnacle of the people who compete in any sport, unfortunately it's usually men.

In a team sport think it is probable that a male team would always be physically at an advantage.
Single sports the same would apply for most with the exceptions that Women should be able to compete as equals in table tennis, Darts, pool, Snooker etc ( Not sure why they do not at the moment).
Probably easier for the BBC to have a Male SPOTY and a Female SPOTY.

Do you judge disabled sport only against male, abled-bodied sport? Do you not see that, in both, there are different pinnacles, and that both groups will achieve things within that situation – and both will provide entertainment within their situation. Or do you dismiss disabled sport on the basis that they don't compete with able-bodied males?

And I remember Garth Crooks being astonished at the standard of women's football when commenting on it at the Olympics some years ago. It can be very good – and that's against a background of women not having had the opportunities and encouragement to play for very long (in fact, their playing football being worked against), as with athletics (and other sports), where women have only very recently been able to compete in all events.

I thought Payne might get a nomination, although probably not many votes.

The programme is slowly descending into farce. Its not helped by the BBC having hardly any sport worth showing, much preferred it when it was Sports Review of the Year. Nowadays it just seems to be full of cringeworthy attempts at humour. Buts its long had a tradition of daft awards and nominations

It does seem though that over a period of say 5 years sportswomen have been reasonably well represented on the nominations. It has to be said that, apart from in Olympic years, the populaity of womens sport is fairly low, including amongst women themselves. I reckon there'll be roughly 50,000 women paying to watch a mens professional football match at the weekend. There'll be a decent turn out of women at the RU games. And we know that RL games attract a sizeable female audience. But how many of those women would go to a womens sports event?

Why do the Manchester Evening News and the Daily Post get a vote (never mind Nuts FFS) yet not the Yorkshire Post or another regional paper?

Not sure that this would have redressed the balance re female nominees, but seems to show a flawed system. The MEN voted for 3 ineligible candidates FFS

Can only be with the brand new BBC studios having moved up that neck of the woods.

I make it at least four female world champions are missing off that list, while the likes of Darren Clarke and Andy Murray are in on the basis of winning a couple of high profile tournaments (although in Murray's case, not a "major" among them).

Sadly, the sports where the UK has a strong female representation aren't the sort of high profile ones where names of the winners pop straight into your head - rowing, track cycling, open water and indoor swimming, triathlon etc get the same recognition as lower league football in the national media.

Imagine the carnage if there wasn't a black candidate....