I’m sorry I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently. I’ve been just so busy, plus I’ve lost my creative mojo a bit. I haven’t found much to inspire me recently, and I have been preoccupied with some personal development decisions which has rendered me more selfish and egocentric than usual.
However I heard something on the news this morning that was enough to spark me into breaking open the ol’ WordPress app and putting a metaphorical pen to paper.
The cricket Twenty20 World Cup kicks off in Sri Lanka this week and both women’s and men’s teams have flown out there, the men in Business Class and the women in Economy. While out there the ICC pay them a living allowance. The women get £37 a day and the men £61. Clearly those burly men need feeding up more than the women. At the end of the tournament the winning team can look forward to a million US Dollar prize money. No hang on – that’s for the men. The women get £60,000 USD. Good job girls, just not quite good enough.
Now I cannot find any reason to justify the disparity in daily living allowance. I have just returned from a work trip with a males colleague. Imagine that when we both put in our expenses claims forms when we return to work, that our company gives me nearly half the amount they give him, because I am a woman. There is no justifying the ICC’s decision here so I’ll just move on.
Perhaps, perhaps there is the argument that men’s sport brings in more revenue. Well, I’m sure it does, but that’s because it dominates the media. Are we in a vicious circle here, whereby the media thinks no one is interested in women’s sport so they don’t show it, so people don’t get a chance to be interested in it?
Were any of these people actually awake during the Olympic period? Did that not demonstrate the support for niche sports, women’s sport and para olympic sport? After all the celebration of our athletic heroes, male, female, able bodied or not, are we just going to go back to the status quo of football as the national game, with a bit of rugby, cricket, tennis and F1 thrown in, all male dominated. Did we learn nothing from our Summer of Olympic Love?
The ICC need to come out of the dark ages and stop expecting the girls just to be grateful that the boys are letting them play their game, albeit not actually with the boys. They might catch cooties from the girls, you know. Maybe that’s why they had to fly them different classes…
Dilly Tante 