#this could be the philippines

[kamreadsandrecs]

By Natasha Frost

Fans celebrated in central Melbourne this week after a national triumph: The Matildas, the Australian women’s soccer team, had defeated Canada, the reigning Olympic champion, 4-0.

It was a glorious victory after a dismal start to the Women’s World Cup for one of the two host teams. In Federation Square, Australians held up gold and green scarves and bellowed, “Up the Matildas!”

Two years earlier, the same city had seen a similar outpouring of support for the Australian women’s cricket team. Inside Melbourne Cricket Ground, more than 86,000 people had gathered to watch the final of the Women’s T20 World Cup, while 1.2 million people tuned in from elsewhere in Australia.

For Ellyse Perry, an Australian sporting legend who has represented the country in both the cricket and soccer World Cups, the 2020 match — the largest crowd ever to watch a women’s cricket match — was a milestone for women’s sports in Australia.

“It’s really now starting to become embedded in general society, and it’s commonplace,” she said. “We don’t think differently about it. It’s not an oddity any more.”

For as long as there have been sports in Australia, women have clamored to play and participate. What is believed to be the world’s first cycling race for women took place in Sydney in 1888; the country’s first golf championship, in 1894, was women only; and at the 1912 Olympics, Australian women won silver and gold in the first women’s Olympic freestyle race.

Yet even though Australian women’s sports have an extensive and proud history, only recently have they received significant mainstream support. A strong run in the World Cup — Australia will face Denmark in the round of 16 on Monday — was seen as an opportunity to change that, to cement the place of women’s sports in the country’s daily rhythms and conversation.

Australia’s win over Canada saved it from an early elimination, and sent it to a game against Denmark on Monday.Credit...Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

Sam Kerr, the Matildas star who is widely regarded as one of the best players in the world, said the impact of the tournament on women’s soccer was all but unimaginable.

“For years to come, this will be talked about — hopefully, decades to come,” she told reporters last month, citing an uptick in young boys and girls coming to women’s soccer games.

A longer view on the history of women’s sports in Australia involves many moments of triumph, but also times when able and enthusiastic sportswomen were simply shut out.

“There are peaks and troughs all the way through,” Marion Stell, a historian at the University of Queensland, said of women’s sports in Australia. “Women make advances — but then it goes away again. It’s never a smooth upward curve.”

Only in the past couple of decades had female athletes been able to make consistent strides on pay, opportunities and representation, she added. Today, half of all Australian girls play sports at least once a week, according to the Australian Sports Commission, compared with about 30 percent of girls in the United States.

“I don’t think anyone would have dreamed that it would happen so quickly,” Dr. Stell said. “On one hand, it’s been very slow. But on the other hand, when it happened, the floodgates just opened.”

Yet despite their enthusiasm, and their prodigious talent for bringing home Olympic medals, female athletes in Australia have, like their international peers, historically been sidelined, blocked or simply not taken seriously.

In 1980, women’s sports made up about 2 percent of print sports coverage in Australia. By 2009, women’s sports made up about 9 percent of television news coverage, according to a report from the Australian Sports Commission. But the balance appears to be shifting: A poll last year found that nearly 70 percent of Australians had watched more women’s sports since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Fans watching the Australia-Ireland match in Melbourne on the World Cup’s opening night.Credit...Hannah Mckay/Reuters

“A lot of it has been in line with the way that social perception has changed more broadly, in terms of how we perceive women’s role in society, and particularly the workplace,” said Perry, the sports star.

Dr. Stell, the historian, pointed further back. She saw the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where Australia failed to win a single gold medal, as a turning point. The country’s lackluster performance spurred a significant backlash in the Australian news media, which described the results as a “crisis for the government” and called for action for Australia to “regain its lost athletic potency.”

Women had historically been something of a golden goose for Australia at the Olympics, making up a minority of the country’s total athletes but often winning the majority of its medals. At the 1972 Games in Munich, for instance, 10 out of 17 Australian medals were won by women, even as they made up only about 17 percent of the team.

And so in 1981, Australia established the Australian Institute of Sport, a high-performance sports training center for both men and women that, for the first time, gave women the financial support to concentrate on their sports full-time — beginning with Australian rules football, basketball, gymnastics, netball, swimming, tennis, track and field and weight lifting.

That was followed a few years later by the Sex Discrimination Act, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender or sexuality.

“Those two things together might be some kind of watershed,” Dr. Stell said. “But not, I guess, in the public imagination — more in sporting women’s lives.”

The Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, established in 1981.Credit...David James Bartho/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images

The facility offered dedicated training space to women in a variety of sports.Credit...Andrew Rankin/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images

Even after that, female athletes in most other sports often had no alternative but to play in a semiprofessional capacity. In the mid-1990s, as male Australian cricket players were on the cusp of striking over what they felt was inadequate remuneration, female players in the sport barely had their expenses covered, and often had to pay their own way to compete. Most juggled jobs and other commitments alongside their sports careers.

“How did it make me feel? I just wanted to play as much cricket as I possibly could,” said Belinda Clark, who was the captain of Australia’s World Cup-winning women’s cricket teams in 1997 and 2005.

She added: “We all structured our lives — our working lives and our personal lives — around being able to do that. That comes at a financial cost. We all accepted that.”

In recent decades, cricket has led the charge on fair pay for female athletes in Australia. While male cricketers still significantly out-earn their female counterparts, the majority of female players earn at least 100,000 Australian dollars, or $66,000. By comparison, female players of Australian rules football, rugby league, netball and professional soccer have a minimum salary of less than half of that — a source of ongoing tension since it is far below the country’s living wage.

Across all sports, perhaps the most important factor for female athletes was having women in positions of responsibility across journalism, management, coaching, umpiring and administration, Dr. Stell said.

In the early 1980s, Australian universities began to offer the country’s first sports management degrees. “That kind of allowed women to get a kind of professional qualification so that they could take the administration of sports off the kitchen table and make it more professional,” she said.

Belinda Clark next to statue of herself, with Quentin Bryce, the former governor general of Australia, at left.Credit...Brett Hemmings/Cricket Australia via Getty Images

Women are gradually becoming more visible as sports people in Australia. But it was not until earlier this year that a female cricket player was celebrated in statue form for the first time, though the country claims more than 70 statues of male players.

A bronze statue of Clark was unveiled at Sydney Cricket Ground in January; it is the first public statue of any female cricket player anywhere in the world. Representation of that kind sends a powerful message, especially to younger players, Clark said.

“What are the photos in the club? Who’s on the honor boards? What are we saying to the people that walk in this door?” she asked. “Are you part of this, or are you a guest or a visitor?

“It symbolizes that you’re actually part of it. You’re no longer coming, cap in hand, to beg for an opportunity.”



[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

sorry but if you immediately disbelieved that the Haitian immigrants were eating the cats and dogs of the people who live in Springfield, you’re too “educated” for your own good. you’re too “empathetic” for your own good.

Haiti is the poorest, most sociopolitically unstable country in the Western hemisphere. they are not “just like us” over there. plenty of third-world countries have eaten cats and dogs merely as a matter of cultural significance, no poverty necessary.

of bloody course they were eating the cats and dogs in Springfield.

[tequiilasunriise]

If no one got me, the interns running the official Netflix Philippines branch accounts got me

From this vid featuring the Poe Cup Race and DAMN RIGHT was it gay as hell tag that Wenclair

[netsue101]

Hamilton tour will first premiere tonight at the Philippines!

So here is an art to celebrate it AHSBAHSBAJA

If we premiere a play about the American Revolution here. Should we do a play about the Philippine Revolution + USPH war and premiere it on the US? 👀

[ghost-y-toast-y]

Just tuned into the Hermitbaths Podcast™ episode with Mumbo in it and he said he’s not a big fan of sticky rice. If you didn’t tune in, here’s what Mumbo said: “There’s like this Filipino dessert, it’s like sticky, slimy rice and I was not a big fan. I can’t remember what it is. It’s in, like, a banana leaf.”

I am in shambles.

[sexynetra]

I’m just so in love with Marina Summers

[thelivingsin]

happy birthday to the game that found me when i was at my lowest (kris portrait because i have art block and couldn't afford creating big fanart)

[radyo-kabaw]

MARCOS HITLER DIKTADOR TUTA

there is no justice at the expense of the filipino people

Martial Law Proclamation Summary from the MARTIAL LAW MUSEUM & LIBRARY / header of Proclamation No. 1081 / Dark Legacy: Human Rights Under the Marcos Regime, Alfred W. McCoy / On the Eve of Dictatorship and Revolution, Petronilo Bn. Daroy / Never Again, Raissa Robles / Gone too soon: 7 youth leaders killed under Martial Law, Katerina Francisco / #NeverForget the killing of Archimedes Trajano, Antonio Montalvan II / from a newspaper article with headline of President Marcos declaring Martial Law / On Repentance and Repair, Danya Ruttenberg

[astro-naut9]

RAHHHH I WANT MORE KALAMAYYYYYY so have Shadow eating Kalamay !!

if u dont know what kalamay is, it's

it is the BEST !!!

[heretherebedork]

Aww, sad not throuple moment! Come on, undo it! You can totally get together with your boyfriend and his ex-boyfriend and build a whole loving relationship. Just do it! For me? Please? Throuple, throuple, throuple! Junjun needs more than one person taking care of him in the city, apparently, and it'd be better if they were both looking out for him.

Oh man. So, yeah, they're not likely to do real throuple. Maaaan. Come on! Just give me this!

And we could have had so much more. But noooo. But nooooo.

[puppyeared]

18 and 24 for the ask game :]!!

18: do you believe in ghosts and/or aliens?

24: what's one thing you're proud of yourself for?

[caleohateclub]

Oh and another thing, Calypso probably really wants to make it work with Leo because asides from him, Percy is the only person alive who's ever seen Ogygia. The idea of someone you love never knowing, understanding, or being able to see such a big part of your life is probably horrifying in some ways. At least Leo got a peek at what it's like living on Ogygia, he understands that part of her, at least a little bit.

[couldpolyamorysavethem]

Re: character name meaning plastic bag:

May I ask what language you speak cause that’s so funny

Ah, so this is how the polyamory mod gets outed as swagapino...

[namorslutfanfiction]

He's so amazing. Like hearing him be so passionate about his cause and talk so eloquently. I respect and adore him so much.

[sexynetra]

Girlfriends and wives…….

[paperleef]

May 13 1887, Jose Rizal and Maximo Viola visit the town Litomerice to meet Ferdinand Blumentritt