Criticism over all-male UK Sports Personality of the Year nominations
Summary of stories from BBC Newsbeat and BBC Sport Wales, November 29, 2011
Several prominent sportswomen have criticised the shortlist for this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year award for its complete absence of women.
The 10 nominations, which include cyclist Mark Cavendish and golfer Rory McIlroy, were compiled by a panel of sports editors from regional and national newspapers and magazines.
Welsh paralympian Baroness Grey-Thompson, said: “the feeling is that there’s not a woman who can make it on to the top 10 in the list”, although there are plenty of high-profile female athletes who could have featured.
She said that while she “wouldn’t want tokenism”, there are deserving female candidates who have been overlooked, such as Chrissie Wellington, the world Ironman champion, Keri-anne Payne, the 10k swimmer, and the England women’s netball team.
Nicky Ponsford, a member of the management team for England women’s rugby, agreed that the nominations are “not recognising the performances that have taken place”, pointing out the successes of Britain’s female swimmers and triathletes.
As Ponsford pointed out: “the issue is about the amount of publicity that people have had and how well known some of the women are and how well publicised some of the performances are.”
Grey-Thompson highlighted the fact that “only two per cent of media coverage in sport goes to women.”
Other sportswomen took to twitter to voice their opinions. Payne said, “Thanks for all your lovely tweets. It is a shame there are no women on the #SPOTY list but good luck to the boys tho!”
Wellington was more forthright, saying, “No women in @bbcspoty top ten. Its not about me, its about the need to celebrate achievements of so many female GBR athletes. Disgraceful.”
Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer Rebecca Addlington added: “Getting sooo many tweets about this years BBC sports personality nominations some amazing people on the list but such a shame no women!”
The rest of the shortlist comprises cricketers Andrew Strauss and Alistair Cook, golfers Rory Darren Clarke and Luke Donald, boxer Amir Khan, athletics champions Mo Farah and Dai Greene, and tennis player Andy Murray.
Fed up that a fair share of public space and recognition is seen as tokenism. We have had male only short lists for centuries now … when is that ever going to change if redressing the balance is always seen as shoeing women in, whilst men are always treated like they’ve always got their on their own merit. If that were the case we wouldn’t have so many dumber and dumbest male bankers, MPs, journalists and policemen occupying so many positions of power in the UK.
…some amazing people on the list but such a shame no women….
So, women are not people? Interesting choice of words.
No, its the new political correctness – women can’t say that all the candidates are men as that would highlight the sexism which would make them sound like feminists, so what they say is that the favoured candidates are ‘people’ rather than men, and that allows her to get her point over that women are completely left out of the awards, like we are in politics etc without sounding like a ‘feminist’. You see it the whole time in news reporting – when men riot, steal, mug pensioners etc they are refered to as genderless ‘youths’, when women break the law as individuals we are always refered to as women not genderless youths and the individual’s failing is always made into a systemic failing of our gender so every women is branded with the individual’s guilt. That’s how men keep looking like God’s chosen people, by this constant smearing of every woman with individuals faults and manage to make their own faults minimal by keeping them to just the guy concerned who is hidden behind a headline where his gender isn’t even refered to. This was exactly how racism was promoted in the 50s and 60s, and we are the new immigrants.