Amanda Smith: Today, why bosoms sell sports magazines; and the pros and cons of creating separate sports magazines and events for women.

Hi, I'm Amanda Smith, thanks for joining me on The Sports Factor. And later in the program, we'll meet Emma George, the circus performer turned world champion pole vaulter.

MUSIC: "The Man On The Flying Trapeze" instrumental

Emma George: I think it was actually looking at it when you go upside down, you're sort of flying through the air over a bar - completely different to running and long-jumping and landing on the mats - it just looked like so much fun.

Amanda Smith: And more from Emma George shortly.

Now every four years, since 1980, the Australian Sports Commission has run a survey on the media coverage of women's sport. The last one, for 1992, concluded that women get about 4% of total sports coverage. The results of the 1996 survey are due to be released in a month or so, when we'll find out whether these relative percentages have changed much or not. But does the commercial media have any responsibility to address this imbalance between men's and women's sport? Greg Hunter is the Editor of 'Inside Sport' magazine:

Greg Hunter: People in the media don't distinguish between the two. In other words, there is no discrimination that I'm aware of, on the basis of the fact that it's women. Generally speaking it's because it's a minority sport. The situation is that minority sports, like women, are often importuning people such as myself, as if we had a duty to promote their sport. The fact is we don't see that we do, and publishers don't see that they do, neither do radio station owners or television show producers, as far as I understand it, because they don't see it as their role. In much the same way as an advertising agent will complain to high heaven about the fact that it's not his job to lead society, but only to reflect, to respond to, and so on and so forth.

People in my position, even though it might sound like a cop out, really, deep down, feel pretty much the same thing. In other words, if you haven't got the product, then primarily it's not our responsibility to pretend that you do. Take basketball, for instance. By virtue of incredibly slick marketing and promotion, based on the success of the NBA, but also their own dynamism in Australia, they've transformed that sport from being a minority sport to virtually a majority sport. How do they do it? We're not interested in promoting them outside of that virtue. But because they've transformed their image and the quality of their product, we write about them, and we televise them and we get it all happening for them. But the impetus has come from them.

And the same thing applies essentially to women - the reason why I'm saying this is that there is no difference as I say, between minority sports and women's sports. There is no agenda as far as I'm aware, of shutting women out.

Amanda Smith: Well Greg, I don't know that you could really call netball, for example, a minority sport - certainly in terms of its participation.

Greg Hunter: Well this is a conundrum we constantly get into as far as the feminist side of the argument is concerned. I mean it's constantly said, 'Well why don't you cover netball? An enormous amount of participation, surely it's discriminatory against women that you don't cover netball' and so on, and so forth. To which my reply is, 'If you extend that logic, then we'd be doing lots of articles about pub pool and fishing and other big participation sports'.

Again, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it's women, it's a fact of how many people want to watch it. And actually if you invert the logic of the whole thing, if you look at the single most important - from a spectator point of view - sporting event that's ever happened in Australia, that was the Jeff Fenech/Azumah Nelson re-match. And the whole point of saying all this is, the very reason why everyone watched it, and the very reason why it was a commercially big deal was because hardly anybody can box. Whereas anybody can play - not anybody, but just about anybody - can play netball, or fish, or play pub pool. So this notion that a sport ought to be covered in direct proportion to the number of people who play it, to me is completely ridiculous.

Amanda Smith: So what are the commercial realities of selling a general sports magazine in Australia? For example, would your sales go down if you didn't have bosomy women on your front covers?

Greg Hunter: Well we think they probably would, at least to some degree, otherwise we wouldn't have those women there. We think that on the balance, those women, and some men who refuse to buy 'Inside Sport' by virtue of the fact that we use that particular marketing tool, are probably outweighed by the number of people who like that, and that's why we do it.

Amanda Smith: Well it interests me that the American sports magazines, like 'Sports Illustrated' use action shots of athletes on their covers. Apart from the once-a-year 'Sports Illustrated' swimsuit edition, they're not using overtly sexy model shots in the way the Australian magazines are. What's the difference in the market?

Greg Hunter: There's a fairly simple explanation for that. 'Sports Illustrated' for instance is 95% subscription. In other words, you don't buy it off the news stand. Therefore, the problem that we see with having, say, Shane Warne on our cover, is the problem that people think it's going to be a cricket magazine. That doesn't apply in America because they only sell 5% of their magazines off news stands. That's always been the reason why we were reluctant to use a sports person on our cover.

Amanda Smith: So you did consider that, and you've sort of worked through that?

Greg Hunter: Yes, sure, because if you're wandering through a newsagents, subliminally you see that photo of Shane Warne and you see it as a cricket magazine; if you're not a cricket fan you don't care. So what we need is either a sport neutral colour which attracts the eye, which is what we've got, or nothing at all on the cover.

Amanda Smith: What's your ratio of male to female readers?

Greg Hunter: Oh it's about four to one.

Amanda Smith: And has that ratio changed since the magazine started in 1991.

Greg Hunter: Oh it's been pretty much the same.

Amanda Smith: So is that ratio - or those actual numbers of female readers - about the most you reckon exists in the marketplace? I mean I'm sure you're interested in increasing sales, but do you think there's more potential to increase sales to men, than to women?

Greg Hunter: I think if there wasn't the slight perception of sexism, then we might be able to go a little bit further in the female market. But as I say, the publisher thinks, and we think, that that would probably be outweighed by the number of men who just make the decision to buy on that one final bonus, or extra, and that is the fashion pictorial. I mean, you can't make any bones about it, it's not a sportswoman, it's a marketing device and that's all it is, pure and simple.

Amanda Smith: I guess something that confuses me about 'Inside Sport' is that it seems to be sending out some conflicting messages. And what I mean by that is that there's a lot of really good sports writing in there, well researched, well written stuff about people and about issues. For example, in this month, your lead story looks into the rise of sports betting in Australia and there's an article about abusive coaching in gymnastics - articles that just about any curious person, I would think, would be interested to read. But to me, the articles sit strangely with the cover and the picture spreads of the models with cleavages. What do you think?

Greg Hunter: Sure. People do get that impression, it's something that we have to battle with and I'm sure that there are some people who still don't know how good 'Inside Sport' is as a read, because they're put off by the cover and so forth. But it's something that we basically live with, and as I say, if we didn't think that overall it was to our benefit, then we wouldn't be doing it. But sure, it annoys me as the editor at times to find that people think that we're probably fish and chip wrapping, and it annoys me still further when they actually look at the magazine and realise that's not the case.

Amanda Smith: Greg Hunter, Editor of 'Inside Sport' magazine. Now the long-running American sports magazine, 'Sports Illustrated', put out its annual 'swimsuit' issue this week - at the same time as announcing that they're about to publish a new magazine that's targeting the female sports market. 'S.I. Woman' is due to hit the American news stands in April. In Australia, a similar publication called 'Women In Sport' has been going for about two years.

But in recognising a market for women's sport in this way, are we seeing a new kind of segregation, which actually does very little to shift general attitudes to female athletic achievement and interests? While I was musing on this question during the week, I found out about an event that's being held in Sydney next month, the first-ever International Womensport Festival. Is this another example of creating separate boxes for women's sport?

To tease the question out, I spoke to Tina Luton, former Editor of the Australian 'Women In Sport' magazine, and Libby Darlison, Executive Director of Womensport International. So first, why create a separate sports festival for women?

Libby Darlison: Well there are several reasons I guess, Amanda. Largely because this was the kind of feedback that we were getting from women - that they weren't all interested in highly competitive sport, not that that interest is not there, but there's a large number of women also interested in recreational sport. And we thought it would be a good idea to create an event where both community participants if you like, and elite sportswomen, could compete alongside each other and there could be an element of fun as well as an element of competition.

The other reason for doing is that there's a great need to find ways of training and assisting women to attain leadership positions in sport, and I don't just mean around the board table, but I mean as coaches, as managers, as umpires, as trainers. And that's not happening fast enough within sport, so we thought that this would be another avenue we could use to try and create an arena for assisting women to learn those skills.

Amanda Smith: But in creating this separate sports event, is there a danger that you're in effect creating a ghetto for female athletes, so that in terms of the wider sports community, they won't have to pay attention to balancing their own gender books any more?

Libby Darlison: Yes I think that's always a potential danger, and you've got to keep that in mind. But remember this is not the only event, and the aim of this exercise is I suppose, affirmative action. So that you can find a place and a space where you can give girls and women the skills and the confidence to move into the mainstream. Now I'm not advocating a ghetto or separatism. I'm saying though that there are certain times and places where it's appropriate to have separate spaces.

Amanda Smith: Well Tina, is there a need for specialist women and sport magazines that isn't being met by other sports magazines?

Tina Luton: Absolutely. I think for sure. If we look at the sports magazines on the market at the moment, they definitely cater more to the male sports person than they do to the female sports person. And the females that they use within the pages of the magazines unfortunately are more there for aesthetic purposes than they are for their sporting prowess. So I think a sports magazine aimed at women is definitely filling a niche that is needed by women out there, who do take sports seriously, and want to read about sport and learn more about the sporting industry, on all levels.

Amanda Smith: So again, with these publications like 'Women In Sport' in Australia and in the United States 'Sports Illustrated' magazine's new venture this year into producing a women's edition, are they siphoning women's sport off further from the mainstream?

Tina Luton: It's a difficult question to answer really, because there's potential that it could be, but the other thing is that to try and get women's sport into the mainstream, you need to do what other mainstream things are doing, which is increase the marketing, increase the publicity, give access to women on all levels, whether it be through a sports program or through a publication, just to let them know that it's out there and that it is as accessible as it is for men to access their own sport all the time.

Libby Darlison: The other thing Amanda, if I could just comment on that, is that I think that we're talking here, and we're making the assumption that the mainstream is a given, it's a taken-for-granted assumption. Now I think it's quite possible that there may be different models of sport that might be appropriate for different groups.

And if I look at the future of sport, I see things like much more commercialism, much more professionalism, sport becoming more work rather than play; the role of multinational corporations becoming more important, less government funding. And all of these things point to a picture of sport at the elite level anyway that isn't necessarily the kind of picture that most women would be attracted to.

So I think that if we want to be part of the game, shall I say, we've got to make our presence felt, and we've got to be in there, but not just to adapt and adopt to what's already there, but to make attempts to change to suit our values, our needs and perhaps even to share experiences in a way with men that might change the model of sport that we currently have.

Amanda Smith: So Libby with this women's sport festival which embraces different levels of competence from high performance to recreational level, it's I guess a model along the lines of master's games, or the gay games?

Libby Darlison: That's right.

Amanda Smith: What's it possible to do in an event organised along these lines?

Libby Darlison: Well it's able to have elite events, and elite competitors competing with non-elite competitors. For example, you might have a triathlon where you've got elite competitors, and they might start a few moments before everybody else, but the bulk of the competitors are not. There may be international competitors, for example, you might have a soccer or a volley ball competition where you've got a schoolgirls' team, not playing with, but playing alongside a couple of international teams. It's possible there to have the element of fun, the element of enjoyment, as well as the element of competition going side by side. It's a very good role model for young girls and women. We'd even like to have school teams entering, in fact we do have some school teams. We have a top group from Japan coming out to do martial arts.

Amanda Smith: Well Tina, in your experience, what do women want out of a sports magazine?

Tina Luton: I think they want to pick up a magazine and look between the covers and understand that they're being taken seriously. I think they want to look at more than sport as in mainstream sports, big sports; they want to look at health and nutrition issues related to sport, psychology...

Amanda Smith: Well in your opinion, how can and should a women's sport magazine cover stories differently from other sports magazines that are currently around?

Tina Luton: I think women's sports magazines need perhaps a little bit less hard core than men's magazines...

Amanda Smith: What do you mean by that?

Tina Luton: They're a bit blokey perhaps in their terminology. They're gratuitous when it comes to women within the context of the magazine. Whereas I think women readers are a bit more interested in human nature, they like to know what's behind the sports person, whether or not she juggles her career with family and other issues that are involved - without being a women's magazine like 'Woman's Day' or 'Women's Weekly' - but I think there's a way in which you can combine sport and human interest issues as well, which give it a nice broad appeal.

Libby Darlison: Tina, can I just ask you a question about whether you think from your perspective that a lot of women have been turned off sports magazines and one of the difficulties is now trying to bring back that market and give them something they want?

Tina Luton: Oh without a doubt, Libby, that's one of the biggest hurdles that anybody who brings out a women's sports magazine will have. Because again, looking at what's on the market, as far as sports magazines go, yes, they give you the content, they're full of advertising, they give you the variety. But they do turn women away, they turn women away in droves.

Amanda Smith: Do the bosomy covers on sports magazines turn women off?

Tina Luton: I think covers are the biggest turn-off of all, completely. The covers - obviously they attract the male eye; I think they very rarely attract a female's eye. In fact if anything, they're quite insulting in a sense. I mean a lot of the time they don't use sportswomen, they're using models. It's totally unrelated to the product that you're trying to sell.

So with a women's sports magazine you really need to be very careful that you don't emulate that problem by then using males in that same role, or even to the point where if you use glamour shots of athletes, you have to be very careful about what you're putting on the cover because in a sense you're duplicating. Even though I think females look at other females in a very different way than the way men do, and they can appreciate Sam Riley or Michelle Timms, or whoever it is, sweaty and looking sporting, in action, and then they can also appreciate the same person done up and looking beautiful. I think you still need to be very careful that you don't fall into that trap.

Amanda Smith: Tina Luton, past Editor of 'Women In Sport' magazine; and Libby Darlison, Executive Director of Womensport International. Well aside from magazines that cover a variety of sports, like 'Inside Sport' and 'Women In Sport', what about attitudes to men and women that come through in the specialist, single-sport publications? For example there's a perceptible difference between the surfing magazines, that have been around for yonks, and the newer body-boarding magazines. Why the difference here between these two closely related sports? Simon Ramsay is the Editor of 'Riptide Body Board' magazine:

Simon Ramsay: I think one of the reasons is that because body boarding didn't have the history of surfing, that we were able to build our base from scratch, if you like. And stand-up surfing has a history of being a very blokey, very parochial, very chauvinist, very sexist kind of lifestyle choice, if you like. And we've never had to deal with that in any way. And the other thing being that because body boarders have been like marginalised from the start by the stand-up surfers who felt they were a threat or whatever, that we were quite happy to take on board whoever wanted to be a part of this.

Amanda Smith: Right, so you're saying because you were regarded with some sort of disdain by the stand-up board riders, that there's a bit more tolerance within your sport?

Simon Ramsay: Yes well our attitude is a direct reflection of the way they feel about people: stand-up surfers don't like any other surfers except stand-up surfers, and we take the attitude of 'Well, people can ride what they want, and people can be whoever they want to be'. So girls have as much of a right to be there as anywhere else, and you don't often find that with stand-up surfing.

Amanda Smith: So what's your ratio of female to male readers?

Simon Ramsay: Females represent about 15% of our readership at the moment, and that's up from maybe 5% two or three years ago, and it's an increasing share of our readership, so we intend to focus on it a little more.

Amanda Smith: So who are your readers?

Simon Ramsay: Our readers are basically young males between the ages of 15 and 25, and young females about the same age, but as I said, a smaller proportion.

Amanda Smith: Right. Grommets.

Simon Ramsay: Yes. That's them.

Amanda Smith: So do you need saucy shots of girls in bikinis to sell your magazine?

Simon Ramsay: To a degree, yes. It's something that I've battled with for a long time, because I initially was really reluctant to do it, but the reader surveys were overwhelming in their wish for more swimsuit shots, and we've had to cater to them to a degree.

Amanda Smith: So for you, is it a question of balancing what some of your readers respond to - and I presume it's the young men who wanted the swimsuit shots - so balancing what young men respond to and what young women respond to?

Simon Ramsay: Yes, well there's a saying that you have to give the readers what they want, but you also give them what you think they should get. And to that extent we increased the number of girl shots from none to a few in terms of swimsuit shots, but at the same time we've tried to encourage girls to get involved, and we've been putting more and more female surfing content in there with each issue.

One of the complaints that girls have had in the past is that they don't get enough photographs run of them surfing, but to a large degree, it's a vicious cycle - the photographers didn't think there was a market for it, so they weren't out there shooting it, and so they weren't getting photos run, and that was reinforcing the belief that there wasn't a market for them. I think there is a market for them, and I think that it's never going to be the majority of the market or anything, but we can certainly redress the balance a little.

I'm of the view that women should be treated equally, and encouraged to get involved. I just think it's an incredible joke and it's a very tired cynical way of selling magazines to plonk girlie shots in there, and it excludes women from those things. I've seen magazines with contests like 'Show us your tits and win a surfboard'. And I think it's deplorable.

Amanda Smith: Although it sounds like from what you're saying that there is still a tension for you - in that you say that you have increased those sorts of shots in your magazine, or felt compelled to. So there is still a tension that you're trying to juggle within your magazine?

Simon Ramsay: Yes, well I'm trying to please our readers while at the same time trying to encourage people that would otherwise feel disenfranchised to become part of the magazine and to become part of the identity that the magazine presents.

Amanda Smith: Simon Ramsay, Editor of 'Riptide Bodyboard' magazine.

MUSIC: "The Man On The Flying Trapeze" instrumental

Last night, Emma George contested her world record in the pole vault at the International Grand Prix track and field meeting in Melbourne. And for the second time in two weeks, and the ninth time in two years, she broke her own world record, clearing 4.55 metres last night. Now, it's only in recent years that the pole vault event has been open to women. But what was it that attracted Emma George to flinging herself off a 14-foot pole?

Emma George: I think originally it was from my circus background that got me interested in it. Doing trapeze and tower of chairs and tumbling. And then I moved away from that to start doing long-jumps, sprints and hurdles. So when I moved down to Melbourne I started training at Box Hill and they've got a really good pole vault set-up there, and I found out it was in Australian championships for the first time for women in, I think that was '94. So I wanted to have a go, and I went there and I was fairly hopeless at the start, and I just sort of had to keep going back. It's one of those things that take a very long time to learn, and I'm still learning now.

Amanda Smith: So what was it particularly about pole vaulting? Obviously you talk about this acrobatic background, and you were competing in other sports, other track events. What was it about the pole vault that lit up your eyes?

Emma George: I think it was actually looking at it when you go upside down and you're sort of flying through the air over a bar or something, completely different to running and long-jumping and landing on the mats. It just looked like so much fun, and I didn't realise when I first started how long it would actually take me to be able to do that. You have to start of one step and then two steps, and gradually work it back, and it just takes ages before you can actually do it properly. But I enjoy it as well, because it's mentally challenging, you really have to think about what you're doing every jump.

Amanda Smith: So you talk about being an acrobat, that was with the Flying Fruit Fly Circus based in Albury-Wodonga when you were a child. Why did you move from acrobats into straight competitive sport? Whereas for example, a number of the other Fruit Flies have gone on with performing into groups like Circus Oz?

Emma George: It was a really big choice that I had to make. I was in the circus from about the age of eight, and even then it was a fairly big commitment, especially living in Beechworth. We used to have to travel 45 minutes there and then back again, more than three times a week. So often we would miss out on birthday parties, and our whole school holidays we would be away travelling with the circus. So even at that stage, it wasn't a real lot of freedom for someone of 8 to 12 years old.

So when I started secondary school, that was also in Albury, and I wanted to make a choice whether I wanted to be in a circus for maybe quite a lot more years, or whether I wanted to do something different. And I felt I'd already achieved everything that I wanted to do while I was in the circus, and it was great fun. But I couldn't really see me going anywhere else. And I think I wanted to try a few different things as well. So I was always interested in doing athletics, and I'd done it at primary school, so I did that, and I did a bit of hockey and just something different.

Amanda Smith: And you moved from being a circus gypsy to being a sports gypsy!

Emma George: Yes, that's about it. It's sort of strange now. I think even the background in the circus at that age teaches you that if you're not dedicated, and if you don't put in, then you're never going to get out. And I think that's why it's quite easy for me now to know exactly what you have to do if you want to succeed. And you do have to give up a bit, with training and competitions, you just can't go away when you want to. But that's the sacrifice you have to make, and there's a lot of benefits, and I really enjoy what I do.

Amanda Smith: In a sense, because pole vault for women has only fairly recently been competed internationally by women, was it a kind of niche in the market that you identified for yourself?

Emma George: I think there has been a big opening for me in that respect. But when I first started, I did it for fun. I really hadn't had a chance to train properly for sprints and long-jumps, although that was my aim - to actually go to the track and compete and see if I could make it to international level. I'd done quite well at Australian championships and juniors, so I didn't really know how I could go. But then when I started pole vaulting, I realised that there really was quite a gap there, and that I was going to do much better at that, not only because it was a new sport, but because my background being a gymnast and being a sprinter, suited me perfectly for that event.

Amanda Smith: Having now broken several of your own world records, do you have to work at managing your own or other people, the public's, expectations that you'll just keep doing it?

Emma George: Yes, that's really difficult. I found it very hard, especially before I broke the first world record. I was able to jump those heights in training, but I could never do it in a competition because when the height went up to say 4.25, when I was running down I kept thinking, 'This is a world record', rather than thinking I had to lower the pole and plant it, and what I had to do to actually get over the bar. So when I got the first world record, it was much easier for me to get the next one because instead of thinking of it as being a world record, I just thought of it as being a personal best. And that's what I try to think of now.

Amanda Smith: So is improvement for you now basically about technique? Is it a real technical exercise, improving now for you?

Emma George: Yes, there is still a bit of room for me to work on, especially my plant could be a little bit better. It's very difficult to know to lower the pole at the right time, and it's quite a small box that you have to put it into, and if it's that fraction late, then it doesn't work, and if your foot's a little bit out - it's sort of complicated in a way, and that's the biggest thing I have to work on. Whereas a lot of people may have trouble with their swing, which is where you swing upside down, because I've had the trapeze background - they are so similar that it sort of just came naturally to me. So I can improve on that, and also I can improve on my strength and my speed. The faster you can run, and also the stronger you are, the bigger poles you can use. Often the poles I use are 14-foot poles, but I may travel with six of those, because they all have different stiffnesses, and the stiffer the pole the higher you can vault. So at the moment I'm looking towards using longer poles, even maybe half a foot longer, and work it from there.

Amanda Smith: It's likely that women's pole vault will be on the Sydney 2000 Olympic program. Is that where you're timing your peak for?

Emma George: Oh I'm looking forward to that immensely. I've always wanted to compete in an Olympic Games, and especially being in your own country, it's going to be fantastic. So that's still another nearly four years, a bit less, for me, and I'm hoping by then that I will have improved my technique and also be more consistent with my vaulting, and hopefully stronger by then.

Amanda Smith: How much more consistent can you get than ten world records? Champ of the pole vault, Emma George. And that's The Sports Factor for this week. Hope you'll join me, Amanda Smith, same time next Friday on Radio National.

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The Sports Factor can be heard on Radio National, 8.30am Fridays (Repeated Friday evenings at 8.00pm).