Ask any sports fan what the most memorable women’s sports story was in the past six years and many will say the Black Ferns win in 2022. There were a number of factors but perhaps most important was the fact that we saw the journey. We weren’t just fed controversy and then the victory, we saw the throughline of their redemption.
Telling the whole story takes time and resources but it’s what journalism is for. Women’s sport is frequently told to trust the process but then have no visibility on progress. How can we assess if something is the good start we were promised if we don’t ever check back in before it’s finished?
By missing the middle, we miss the lessons and the chance to improve. We miss the stories of athletes that were good enough to be champions but who fell agonisingly short.
If men’s sports operated this way, we wouldn’t have told the story of any All Blacks team at a World Cup between 1987 and 2011. A ridiculous suggestion but the reality for women is borne out in this Sport New Zealand report.
In its sixth year, the report itself now has become a story, one that started with a bang and has now hit the messy middle. The first gains came easy, driven by three back-to-back World Cups on home soil. The trick has been holding that ground as newsrooms and budgets shrink.
Parallel narratives are emerging: TVNZ and Stuff peaked in 2023 but are now back below their 2021 figures. NZME remains more steady across the years while the Otago Daily Times and RNZ keep pulling up the overall average with their commitment to women’s sports. Independents, meanwhile, are in a league of their own. Newsroom and Waatea News may not provide a lot of sports coverage but what they do is focused on women more than 50% of the time.
The Media and Gender report is telling us the story of the coverage of women’s sports in this country. It began with the publication of its first edition in 2021, holding a mirror to the industry and laying out the pathway for improvement.
Six years on, we have seen the early gains level out to a new baseline of 26%. How this story will end depends on what lessons we learn from the journey.
Sports columnist Alice Soper is a former provincial rugby player and current club coach, she has a particular interest in telling stories of the emerging world of women’s sports.