Criticism of women’s sport is healthy but the right balance can be hard to strike

Criticism is as inevitable as breathing, or so TS Eliot would have us believe. But the debate over whether criticism is applied fairly to women in sport continues to do the rounds, questioning why our female athletes are not criticised for their mistakes in the same way their male counterparts are. The problem is of course that this question springs from an assumption that we have equality in sport in the first place. That it is only a lack of fair criticism holding women’s sport back from achieving its peak.

With the rise of women’s sport over the past five years, you don’t have to look very hard to see female athletes described as “golden girls”, role models or being compared favourably to male athletes for their behaviour and composure. The likes of Ash Barty, Ellyse Perry and Liz Watson are often given as examples of how an athlete can be talented and successful as well as gracious and humble.

While that may seem complimentary to these women, it only adds to the messaging of what is acceptable for girls and women. It conjures the image of a primary school teacher admonishing the boys for misbehaving and praising the quiet and obedient girls. It tells girls and women that you must be subservient to succeed, but even then you won’t get the same opportunities as your free-spirited male equivalents who are rewarded for their misdemeanours with more media coverage and higher pay.

The other problem arises when our “golden girls” fail. When Barty exits a tournament in its early stages or Perry drops an easy catch in the outfield, the instinct is to preserve their reputation, to avoid criticism lest we recognise that these athletes we have put on a pedestal are in fact only human.

For those who have followed and nurtured