Women do not take part in sport as much as men and one suggested reason was a lack of confidence in their abilities, the ABS book shows.
“”Women have higher rates of participation than men in some areas of leisure activities, e.g. arts and crafts, and entertainment and cultural activities,” it said. “”These tend to be the more passive recreational activities. Discussion papers such as Equity for Women in Sport have suggested that part of the reason why women participate less in active leisure pursuits such as sport is a lack of confidence in their abilities.”
Overall, men and women spent a similar amount of time a day on leisure (327 minutes for women, 332 for men) _ about a quarter of the day. Married women with children spent three hours less a day on leisure than over 60s. Non-English-speaking background women spent 45 minutes less.
Men spent more time on sport and exercise; women more on hobbies. Half of men regularly played sport; only a third of women. The disparity was similar across all age groups.
The reasons women gave were dislike/uninterest (38 per cent) and lack of spare time (35 per cent).
At the top end, women have increased representation on Australian Olympic teams from 12 per cent in 1948 to 28 per cent in 1992 with a peak of 31 per cent in 1984. At nine of 12 Olympics since 1948 the proportion of medals won by women exceeded their proportion on the team.
Newspaper coverage of women’s sport rose from a pitiful 2.0 per cent of sports coverage in 1980 to a still pitiful but better 4.2 per cent in 1992.
Television was worse. Women’s sport occupied 0.9 per cent of sport time on five metro stations in 1988, rising to 1.2 in 1992. Of 42 sports-program comperes/presenters on television in 1992. only one was female.
Thirty-six per cent of women took part in handicrafts compared to 5 per cent of men. Other activities with women’s percentage first were: Art (7.3, 4.9), music 7.0, 7.4), writing (4.1, 2.7) and photography (6.8, 8.6).