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British women will be the winners if our female Olympians succeed
Having pledged last week to enjoy these Olympics, I have found another reason to get excited. It's the very real chance that this summer's Games will be the first in which the British women outperform their male counterparts in the medals table. It seems that however few females there are in contention in the headline-grabbing track and field events, we've enough rowers, sailors, cyclists, pentathletes, heptathletes and martial artists - and more - to stick it to the guys.
The Olympics is the only two-week window in the sporting calendar when women's sport is given equal coverage to men's. Not in overall terms, of course; even the Olympics can't compete with the endless football coverage. But within the parameters of the Games themselves, the public generally considers a female achievement as newsworthy as a male one.
Maybe we're desperate to celebrate any success, because the rest of the time, articles on women's sport make up just 2 per cent of all newspaper sports coverage. I'm not inventing this statistic - it comes from a recent audit by the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), a source of plenty more depressing data. Women's sport has always been considered the poor relation of men's (and we're talking an Oliver Twist-like throw-them-in-the-workhouse-and-forget-they-exist-type poor). Until now, that is something we've tended to accept because that's just the way it is.
But a quick look around suggests that, for the first time, there is a desire for change. At government level, a Commission on the Future of Women's Sport has been set up, chaired by Tanni Grey-Thompson. With two decades' worth of Paralympic medals to her credit, she is just the woman for the gruelling fight ahead.
The sportswear giant Nike is leading an impressive charge for greater recognition of female athletes, through exhibitions, ad campaigns and community projects. Kelly Holmes's work, in a variety of leadership roles, has been particularly successful in identifying and challenging the elements of sport that are off-putting to young girls: for example, persuading schools to update the unflattering gym kits that are responsible for so many schoolgirls avoiding PE lessons.
Companies and governing bodies are finally realising that there doesn't need to be a worthy, sociological motive for reaching out to women. Lobbying bodies like the WSFF are pointing out to sports manufacturers, promoters and organisers, keen to break into overseas markets, that they are missing out on half their potential sales. Women are the ultimate consumers, but they have not, as yet, been offered the kind of "customer experience" they want from sport, either as participants or spectators.
Yes, it will take a seismic cultural shift for women to start believing that "unfeminine" sport is for them. But there is one way to create the role models needed for such a task: start respecting women's professional sport. The argument that "no one cares about women's football/ cricket/netball" can no longer be an excuse in a country that has a seemingly unending appetite for competitive sport.
When darts can progress from the back rooms of pubs to a multimillion-pound business with prime-time television coverage, don't tell me that athletic young women are a less appealing televisual prospect. It's time to bust the myth that sport is a guy thing.
Emma John is deputy editor of Observer Sport Monthly
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