Tanya Lee | Prioritising women’s sports

So the Reggae Girlz's qualification for the 2019 Women's World Cup has once again put into sharp focus the possibilities that exist when women are prioritised and given a fair opportunity at participation in sports.

Kudos to the Jamaica Football Federation, which answered the call, as FIFA has a mandate that all federations must develop programmes around women's football. Sadly, many haven't to date, with some 40 football-playing countries having inactive programmes for much of 2018.

Even Panama, which played in the recent CONCACAF championships and fielded a men's team at this year's FIFA World Cup in Russia, had an inactive women's team that had not played since 2014. Their first match was the CONCACAF qualifications in August of this year ahead of this month's CONCACAF Women's Championships.

BLATTER'S LEADERSHIP

This is one of many attempts by FIFA to put more of a focus on the women's game and is certainly an improvement from the days of Sepp Blatter's leadership, where he suggested in 2004 that women footballers should wear tighter shorts to attract more viewers. So improved is FIFA's tone that the word to global broadcasters ahead of Russia 2018 was to desist from featuring women in the stands as objectified eye candy.

But while there are some improvements, there is a bit of way to go for FIFA to pay stricter attention to improving the women's game. According to FIFA, the total attendance at the FIFA Women's World Cup 2015 was more than 1.35 million, with up to 50,000 spectators at some of the matches. The TV audiences were also staggeringly impressive, with some 750 million viewers, 86 million watching online and on mobile.

But, still, the pay disparity in the sport remains a major concern. The 2015 USA women's team pocketed US$2 million in prize money for winning the Women's World Cup, while the FIFA Men's World Cup winners, Germany, had gone home just one year earlier with US$35 million. Appalling disparity. Even more incredible was that the US women's national team had bigger TV audiences than their men's national team but had significantly lower salaries.

SCHEDULING CONFLICT

Now while FIFA has, to some extent, prioritised women's football, there are instances in which much is left to be desired. I was shocked to learn that the Women's World Cup final in 2019 is slated for July 7. That's the same day as the Copa America Final and the CONCACAF Gold Cup Final. I can't recall FIFA ever scheduling another football event during the men's World Cup Final. It is unheard of, and does not lend itself to attracting the biggest TV audiences for the women's version of the sport.

The additional insult to injury is that the women's final is also scheduled as a morning fixture. The biggest TV audiences in sports are usually garnered during prime time, which, coincidentally, has been reserved on that day for the other two male tournaments. There seems to be no real intention by FIFA, based on that observation, to prioritise the women's game in a bid to create the parity that they themselves have mandated.

So, while we cheer our Reggae Girlz, I urge all of us to place focus on the development of women's sports. We must continue to value and expose our female athletes to the sort of sponsorship support, audience numbers, and respectability that we afford our talented male athletes. Levelling the playing field is everybody's business.

Our reporters should give more sharp focus to women sports, our coverage should be more balanced and inclusive, our marketing and promotion should make our female faces into household names, and we will need to legislate to close the gender disparity. FIFA and our federation have to continue to make changes to ensure that we do not continue to leave our women behind or perpetrate systems that discourage.

One love.

- Tanya Lee is a Caribbean sports marketer, author, and publicist. Follow her @tanyattlee on Instagram.