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Enrique Miranda, Manuel Castillo, Mari Carmen Morales, Ana Barreales, Sergio Cortés, Alhambra Nievas (on the screen), Adriana Martín, Dana Cervantes, Laura Pérez and Ester Requena at the SUR offices.
Promoting gender equality in sport

Promoting gender equality in sport

Several local female sports stars and professionals will work with SUR in a bid to improve coverage of women's sport

ENRIQUE MIRANDA

Monday, 14 May 2018, 12:32

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Should women's teams take up the same amount of column space as men's? Does there have to be some positive discrimination? Are sexist expressions still being used? How do you promote gender equality in sports? These questions and many more have led SUR to create an advisory committee in a bid to help promote equality in its sports coverage and across the newspapers.

Malaga captain, Adriana Martín; former Olympic athlete, Dana Cervantes; rugby referee, Alhambra Nievas; former basketball player, Mari Carmen Morales 'Largui'; and journalist Laura Pérez attended the committee's first meeting on Monday. Sole López, Rincón Fertilidad handball captain, couldn't attend because of personal reasons.

Alhambra Nievas called up for the Rugby World Cup Sevens

  • Local referee Alhambra Nievas has received the call to participate in her fourth Rugby World Cup and will head to San Francisco at the end of July for the sevens competition.

  • It's a great honour, she said. But in truth it was already part of my plans.

  • The competition takes place from 20 to 22 July and will see 24 men's teams and 16 women's teams compete.

  • Nievas is among an elite list of referees in rugby, having been named the top official in 2016 by World Rugby.

  • This is, however, her first Sevens World Cup as a referee (in her first, in Moscow in 2013, she was an assistant), but she has overseen games in the 2014 and 2017 tournaments, as well as taking charge of the women's final in the 2016 Olympic Games.

On behalf of SUR, editor-in-chief Manuel Castillo; local newsdesk editor, Ana Barreales; sports editor Sergio Cortés; and SUR.es editor Ester Requena joined the debate at the SUR offices in Malaga which focused on the way women's sports news is reported.

While it was roundly acknowledged that women's coverage had improved, Mari Carmen Morales insisted: Men and women should have the same amount of space devoted to them in the media.

Manuel Castillo said that the aim has to be to reach this equality but stressed that, as with all news, certain criteria always had to be applied.

How the news is reported

Dana Cervantes, as a former elite athlete, spoke from personal experience: I was always given equal treatment by the federation, in championships, in prizes, in grants... the problems came afterwards when the reporting contained wrong information or focused much more on the personal angle than the results.

Cervantes added: There is a preconception that force and strength only exist in men's sports while women's sport is more a thing of beauty, a spectacle.

Alhambra Nievas, who took part via conference call from Santander, said that while her experience with the press has been mostly positive, a female athlete is often used as a sexual object to sell more newspapers and the media themselves should do more to denounce this sort of practice.

Nievas also stressed that training at youth level was the most important thing, showing that boys and girls can compete together.

Journalist Laura Pérez agreed, adding that having female athletes was not enough and that schools and clubs needed to welcome female coaches and referees too.

Adriana, Malaga captain and top goalscorer, also stressed that clubs often prioritise their men's teams: We have had difficulty even in finding somewhere to play.

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