Today is the day when the Irish Times Sports Woman of the Year is announced in Dublin. Last week we looked at the 15 contenders each drawn from monthly winners throughout the year.
Earlier in the week Katie Taylor was named as the most popular sports star in the country with more than double the votes of her nearest challenger. The Women’s Rugby Team were second in the voting for Team of the Year behind their male counterparts.
In the UK half of the contenders for the BBC Sports Personality were women and their Rugby players did win the team accolade.
Enda Kenny has announced that he hopes to have 50% of his cabinet in the next Government as women, on merit, and the Irish Independent this morning has broken, ahead of time, the news that a Women’s Gaelic Players Association will be launched early in the New Year.
The speed at which Women’s sport has entered the mainstream has rapidly accelerated in the past two years. From sponsorship and attendance to TV coverage and recognition, the reality is catching up with the aspiration towards our oft stated campaign for parity of esteem.
There is still a way to go here and 2015 will be a crucial year for driving on a number of new initiatives aimed at achieving precisely that.
We need to move here, as has already happened overseas from one off celebration to genuine interest and engagement with our feet, rather than just our fine words.
We should formalise a bid to host the Women’s Rugby World Cup in Ireland, a tournament for which yesterday we were formally qualified by virtue of our Top 7 finish in France this August.
We should build initiatives to get people active in supporting Women’s sort so that attendance rises faster and interest becomes sustained.
In that way we will build the environment in which young girls think of sport as for them just as much as young boys. The difference that new mindset will achieve can be transformational. And it will be.
Today we celebrate the achievements of our top women sports stars. Next year the work continues. It’s already off to a great start with this inspiring video from the Irish Sports Council…
“Belong” – Women In Sport from Irish Sports Council on Vimeo.
