Siren 24: Australia/NZ 2023, Women in Boots & an AFLW off-season update
A Women in Sport Collective
The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is coming to Australia and New Zealand and WE ARE EXCITED!!!
There will never be enough feel good stories and heartfelt tweets to express all the emotions felt by football fans as the impacts of the announcement resonated across the two countries and really, across the world.
And it’s not just football fans. Everyone who wants to see women’s sport thrive got around the announcement which truly illuminated the best quality that the women in sport community has: that we all support each other.
Australia’s national women’s teams all shared in the celebration of the announcement. Just as they did when the T20 Women’s World Cup was here earlier this year and the Australian women won in front of a record breaking crowd. Just as they did when FIBA announced the 2022 World Cup would be in Australia. And just as they will do for netball as Netball Australia announced today that it has taken its next step towards hosting the Netball World Cup 2027 in Sydney by submitting its official bid.There are no code wars in women’s sport. We’re here for each other, and we’re stronger for it.
Bring on 2023, 2022, the return of women’s sport post Covid-19 and more and more amazing women in sport moments.
Our badges are back!
Our Siren Sport badges sold out in two weeks! Thank you so much to everyone who purchased them, we were blown away by the response. Our second batch is in so if you missed out the first time around, don’t miss them this time!
The profits from these badges go right back into creating feminist sports content that challenges the status quo of sports media. We really appreciate all your support.
Covering the coverage - the final numbers
We have been monitoring the coverage of women’s sport in mainstream media for the past twelve weeks as part of an ongoing project in partnership with Swinburne University of Technology.
This week on the back of the #AsOne bid winning the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup hosting rights, we saw the highest percentage of women’s sports coverage in this time. However, considering the gravity of this announcement, 17% is still significantly low. And the number disappointingly continued to drop back down over the next few days.
Today marks our final day of collecting the daily numbers as part of this project to collate meaningful data about how women in sport were covered during the shutdown of sport due to Covid-19. It has been a pleasure to work with Swinburne on this project and we thank them for partnering with us and for their support of Siren.
The final numbers for the project are here. We are looking forward to the academic work Swinburne will produce with this data and to a time in the hopefully not too distant future where these low numbers are a thing of the past.
Securing the Women’s World Cup: Emotions running high
By Angela Christian-Wilkes
In the wee hours of Friday morning, FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced that Australia and New Zealand will host the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Emotions are still running high.
A place of protest and empowerment: Women in Boots and the story of the 79ers
By Kirby Fenwick
A few weeks ago, we published a review of Marion Stell and Heather Reid’s Women In Boots: Football and Feminism in the 1970s by Professor Jean Williams. This week, we catch up with the authors Marion Stell and Heather Reid to discuss just why that 1979 series is so important.
Catch up on the AFLW off-season
By Gemma Bastiani
Image: Megan Brewer
In a huge sigh of relief, the AFL Commission has confirmed that the 2021 AFLW season will go ahead as agreed in the 2019 CBA, and this isn’t the only update we’ve had so far in this AFLW off-season, so here’s the rundown.
Kasey Symons was interviewed by SBS about the impact of Australia and New Zealand winning the hosting rights to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Kate O’Halloran also wrote this excellent piece on the historical moment being our biggest moment in sport since the Sydney Olympics.
Halftime Huddle
In this week’s episode of the Halftime Huddle, Sarah and Taylor spoke to marathon and 10,000m runner Ellie Pashley.
Pashley represents Australia all over the world and qualified for the Tokyo Olympics this year. She tells us the journey of how she started running for ‘fun’ and then how she took it to that next level.
The Halftime Huddle is now available on iTunes, so make sure you like and subscribe to stay up to date with all their episodes as they drop! And don’t forget to leave a review!
Well, how much more can we celebrate Australia and New Zealand winning the hosting rights for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup? A lot more!
And credit where credit is due, let’s celebrate the amazing Ann Odong and all she has done for the game.
Samantha Lewis writes on how Australia and New Zealand's winning Women's World Cup bid is a moment of optimism for football and also interviews Matilda midfielder Emily van Egmond about what it means to her. And also read this by Sam, she’s got your football writing needs covered!
Last week SuperNetball announced the biggest rule change in the game’s history. It’s been met with a lot of criticism. Erin Delahunty questions the timing of the rule changes in the midst of a global pandemic and there are those who wonder who the rule change is for if the game’s fans have indicated their opposition to it. Kate Cornish writes her thoughts on how the rule change appears gimmicky and about her fan connection to the sport.
Netball Players' Association President Nat Medhurst gave her thoughts on the way the news was communicated, labelling Super Netball as 'disrespectful'. Netball legend Liz Ellis also penned her thoughts on the move.
The AFL Commission ratified a recommendation for no change to be made to the current AFLW CBA despite fears surrounding the competition post Covid-19. Fantastic news.
Roy Morgan released new data on the TV viewership of the AFLW competition which has increased with now 2.78mn people watching on TV, up from 2.42mn a year ago – an increase of 360,000.
Australian Sports Commission Chair John Wylie has written an open letter to support the ongoing growth of sport for girls and women.
At only 23, Hannah Green is already giving back to golf.
If you missed Akec Makur Chuot sharing her story of experiencing racism on The Project, go have a look and listen to her, we need to do better.
The NWSL re-started on the weekend, the first professional league in the US to do so after the coronavirus shutdowns. Some players used the opportunity to show solidarity to the Black Lives Matter movement, ensuring the conversation endures to drive change.
And a big Congratulations to Clare Connor who was appointed as the first female president in MCC's 233-year history.
Nothing was ever going to come close to beating this tweet this week.
And we’ll see you in a couple of years Megan! Bring Sue ;)
