I was in America in the early 1970s when there was a massive houha about a tennis match of all things. A braggart by the name of Bobby Riggs, who was then well into his 50s, opined he could easily beat any of the world’s leading female players. And he proved it by beating the then world number one, the Australian, Margaret Court. But the Riggs-Court clash was only a sideshow, an aperitif for the main event.
A bit like a modern day Trump, Riggs was great at self promotion and was after much bigger fish so after the Court win which gave him the platform he needed he then challenged America’s tennis sweetheart, Billie Jean King, to a match and within hours it was headline news in both the broadcast and print media.
As a friend of mine likes to say – it caught the zeitgeist of that era.
And in typical Barnum and Bailey style that’s so beloved of the Americans the circus came to town big time. Television rights were secured to broadcast the game live on prime time across the States, big money was put on the table (about a million dollars in today’s money!) and in every house and home, pub and club there was only one topic of conversation – would it be the man or woman who came out on top? To this day it is known as the ‘Battle of the Sexes’. (Google it if you want to check it out!)
What was really happening, of course, was that feminism was taking off in America back then. World War II was long over and women were now being educated to university standard but were still earning less, a lot less, then men. A man could have any number of relationships with women and was often put on a pedestal by his counterparts as a playboy; a woman playing the same game was considered a slut. In employment there was a ‘glass ceiling’ with women debarred from just about every top job – no female judges, no police chiefs, few elected public representatives and certainly very few female CEOs. To mix metaphors, it was only a matter of time before the gates burst open.
In bible belt America the most outward sign of the feminist movement at that time was controversial -bra burning. For the feminists burning the bra was symbolic of women freeing themselves of oppression and domination by a patriarchal society – not a sentence I ever thought I would write in my life!
( I remember as a young student living on Long Island at that time thinking that they might need to re-think this one because most men were ardent supporters of the ‘no bra’ look -myself included – but not for the reasons feminists were.)
To cut to the chase – Riggs lost.
King’s victory was seen by the feminists as a watermark moment. Soon the women tennis organised themselves into a very effective association and not too long after that the big tennis tournaments were forced to acknowledge the women’s game, and though it took some time eventually at big tournaments – like Wimbledon – the men and women’s champion were deemed to be worthy of the same prize money.
Yesterday morning in the Irish Times former Irish athletics star, Sonia O’Sullivan, wrote a very interesting article in which she stated that it seemed ‘far fetched’ to her to think a woman could ever break the four minute barrier for the mile. 1,500 men have.
It’s generally accepted that the world’s number one male tennis player, Novak Djokovic, would probably lose very few points – never mind a single game – in a match against the world’s top female player.
It’s even more doubtful if the the American women’s soccer team, crowned world champions just a year or so ago, would even get near a ball in a game with, say, Barcelona or Liverpool.
And, just to finish the point, I doubt if Anthony Joshua, the world heavyweight boxing champion, would be too worried about a female opponent, or Brian Shaw, the world’s strongest man, would be shaking in his boots when challenged by Jessica Fithen, said to be the world’s strongest female.
So this is where I lose the female vote: can it not be argued that when it comes to sport women are not doing the ‘same work’ so should not be getting the same pay.
I await the deluge…
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