The Chance to Compete

I saw the Women’s World Cup game on television and I cried.

I felt powerful emotions as I watched the United States Women’s National Soccer Team play the Chinese Women’s National Soccer Team for the world championship. But what I felt was not about soccer, and not even about sports. This game transcended sport.

It was a landmark event in the lives of women. The world changed as a result of it. That is what touched my soul and made me cry.

The most important thing women have been fighting for, generation after generation, was publicly acknowledged in this soccer game in California. For the very first time women had a chance to compete at the highest level of competition, on a world stage, with the greatest pressures and the highest prestige -- just like men do.

And the women proved themselves more than worthy of the long-sought opportunity.

Never before have the achievements of a group of women received such extraordinary recognition. For the first time ever more than 90,000 people attended a women-only sporting event. For the first time ever, millions of people across the globe watched a women-only sporting event on prime time television.

The American and Chinese women’s soccer teams played 90 minutes of ferocious, aggressive, highly skilled, superb soccer -- to a zero to zero tie. Then they played 15 minutes of golden goal (the first to score wins the game) over time -- to a zero to zero tie. Then they played a second 15 minutes of golden goal overtime -- to the same dead even score of zero to zero. And then each team shot five penalty kicks, the best of five to be the winning team. It was one woman kicker against one woman goalie, with tens of thousands of screaming fans, and millions upon millions of television viewers, watching them compete, one on one, as athletes and as women.

It was an extraordinary event, on the most public of stages ever afforded to women. Two teams of women executed strategy with selfless teamwork, extraordinary skill, and fierce determination. They performed as well as, or better than, any men’s team that has been at the pinnacle of any sport.

And the major difference was that at last the competition was acknowledged and recognized outside the clan of women.

I could not help but think of my mother as I watched this game. She was a gifted athlete. She played softball and basketball and ice hockey and swam and dove, in any competition she could enter. But no matter how much talent she had, she could never compete outside of recreation leagues. There just was no where else for a woman to compete.

I have a few precious newspaper clippings of her triumphs, one or two lines in a local paper with her strikeouts tallied, or her time or score in events noted even then as amazing. I have two clippings for "charity events" where she competed against men in softball and swimming, and she was their equal or she bested them at the sport. But my mother had no opportunity to compete beyond recreation league or rare charity events, regardless of her talent or ability, solely because she was a woman.

I also could not help but think of my two daughters as I watched this game. My daughters compete every day in business, just like their grandmother competed in athletics. Their opportunities to compete are much greater than they were for their grandmother. They are also greater than they were for me.

But progress is not success.

It is vital that my daughters’ generation of women acknowledge that the inequity continues -- that there are still fewer opportunities for women to compete than there are for men.. . Women, like the soccer team, must keep working to remove the gender barriers to honest, fair competition in every arena.

The American women used excellence, sacrifice, teamwork and grit to shatter one glass ceiling holding women down. But do not forget that the Chinese women, who used the same excellence, sacrifice, teamwork and grit, were not recognized or embraced in their own homeland, for the reasons American women like my mother had to face: in their culture soccer is considered a man’s sport.

Sport is often called a metaphor for life. Women’s athletic competition does mirror the struggles and triumphs that women in business face every day. Competition and achievement are at the heart of both. But, what has been sought and earned only gives women a better, but not an equal, opportunity to compete in both venues.

Women should celebrate the great marker of change that happened on the soccer field because of the American and Chinese women competitors. Those women understood what they were about, and it was not just playing soccer.

But all women still have an obligation to strive, to seek, and not to settle, until every playing field is level for every woman.

Copyright © 1998, 1999 by D.E. Summerville. All rights reserved.

The advice and suggestions in the Women in Business column are solely those of the author. DC Web Women assumes no responsibility for its content.

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