Faced with the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus, the question arises of the fragility of female professional sport. Are we going to witness the reinforcement of gender inequalities within world sport or, on the contrary, the development of female practices? In an interview with "Le Monde", the Australian sociologist Madeleine Pape, from Northwestern University, argues for a paradigm shift toward increased feminization of professional sport.
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In a column for the Guardian in March, you were concerned that the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus was stopping the growth of women's sport. Do you fear that this will serve as an adjustment variable?
I hope not, but we find that the real support for professional women's sport is relatively weak. Women's clubs have been aggregated with clubs previously exclusively reserved for men, in a sort of public relations exercise and demonstration of goodwill on the part of men, rather than in a real investment in women's sport. Women's clubs will always be seen as a "weighty" project that is tolerated when everything is going well, but which is no longer justified when the economy is bad.
What is frustrating to me is the speed with which the media and the public express their lack of male sport, evoking its importance for the morale of the nation and completely forgetting female sport. It’s not just male sport that can be fun and exciting.
In Europe, women's football clubs are dependent on professional men's clubs. Is it a danger or a security?
It is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it gives women access to the structure and resources of well-established leagues, of course not to the same degree as men. But on the other hand, they remain subject to the whims of the leaders, for whom male sport remains the main and universal while female sport is only its charitable complement.
Alice Milliat (ex-activist and pioneer of women's sport) knew well that female sportsmen could not count on sports organizations directed and turned towards men to support them.
Is the situation in the major Anglo-Saxon sports countries, in Australia and in the United States, better?
It is possible that the WNBA (The American Professional Women's Basketball League) is in a better situation than the others because it has its own independent governance and its own funding structure, although one must remain cautious about how it will be affected by the pandemic.
In Australia, I think the AFLW (Australian Women's Professional Football League or Footy) and women’s cricket can do better than other women’s professional sports, simply because they have had more support from their governing bodies before and after the pandemic started. Again, this remains to be confirmed.
Do you think that the crisis could be a trigger for women's sport, in particular football, to develop and find its own economy?
Perhaps. Although I think it will depend on our ability to recognize that male sport is only self-sufficient to the extent that we, that is, fans, sponsors, media and states, have chosen that 'it is.
We could just as easily spend our time and money investing in women's sport. Right now, we see the considerable effort required to maintain the dominance of men's sport as we know it. You just have to look for example at the English Premier League clubs, which are rushing to get bailouts.
We have a unique opportunity to deconstruct our historic investment in men's sport alone, to reset everything, to change the funding and governance structures of sport and to make it more equitable on the issue of gender.
Achieving this will require broad consensus and recognition that another way of doing things is possible, and that the sport will ultimately only be more enjoyable and rewarding to follow.
