So I'm sure most of us will have watched the gripping final of The US Open, and will have been mesmerised by the performance of Emma Radacanu, and we can all appreciate her sporting talent. But why is Emma Radacanu’s success quite so inspiring, and what is the impact it will have on the world's perception of women in sports?
We as women are constantly subjected to the offensive nature of the words ‘she’s good - for a woman’, and when the world around us expresses surprise and congratulations when a girl is the ‘first woman’ to do something. I know i’m always slightly insulted on behalf of the poor girl who’s success is advertised through surprise that she’s the ‘first woman’ to do whatever it is she achieved. I know that the gender barrier between men and women in the sporting industry cannot be completely dissolved, we must take into account that men are generally physically larger and stronger in lots of cases, and therefore we can never completely compare the two, but this is why Emma Radacanu’s success is quite so incredible…
The evening of her win - minutes after her victorious ace that won her the match - the news was flooded with reports of it - ‘Emma Radacanu makes history, winning the US Open as a qualifier’ or ‘Emma Radacanu is the first qualifier to win in the history of US tennis’. YES YES YES. no mention of the fact that she’s the ‘first woman’ to do so? No comparison of her success to previous man’s success? No invalidation of her victory because a man managed it first?
Anyone who wins the US open is of course INCREDIBLE, obviously, and their victory is not discredited by the fact that someone had achieved what they achieved before them, each is equally as impressive as the last, but never before in the history of the US Open, has a qualifier - man or woman - reached the final and won. Emma Radacanu did. And In the news reports of her success - her gender is irrelevant because she is the first PERSON, who went from the qualifiers to the final and won. The irrelevance of her gender has huge significance and means that her success is purely based off the fact that she won - and isn’t advertised as anything else.
I think she already has, and will continue to, impact the world's perception of women in sports, and make a small contribution to the slow, but extremely important breakdown of the gender barrier between men and women in the sporting industry.
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