Awards still needed to battle bias against women

• Date: 19 December 2020
• Published date: 19 December 2020
• Author: Ian O'Riordan
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

That premise alone certainly puts 2020 in a category of its own, some deferring their awards simply because there wasn't enough sport to celebrate, given the entire world was in lockdown for a fair chunk of it, others in the hope there will never again be another year to celebrate quite like this one.

Truth is, for many sporting events, it was indeed a year of slim pickings. Had the Tokyo Olympics gone ahead as originally scheduled, any Irish athlete or team who got anywhere near something as shiny and tangible as a medal was effectively guaranteed an award of some sort, man or woman, or at least one would hope so.

This year's thinner spread of individual or overall sporting awards has also taken some of the fun out of trying to distinguish what counts or matters most within each chosen field, or indeed when pitting one sporting success against the other. Points or goals? Medals or times? Height or distance? Throw gender into the balance and you get the sort of debate Ayn Rand could have written another very long book about.

Not all sports have felt the need to separate their awards between men and women: last year, Ciara Mageean succeeded Thomas Barr as Athletics Ireland athlete of the year, not because she was a woman, but because she was the best athlete of 2019.

Athletics is one of the few sports to judge things this way, entirely unbiased, going back to when Sonia O'Sullivan's achievements were recognised with numerous awards not because she was a woman, but because her career was such an unrivalled success in itself.

Other sports have started doing it without apparent bias. Since Fifa revived their world player of the year, in 2015, both the men's and women's awards have been on the same bill. Bayern Munich forward Robert Lewandowski was named men's player of 2020 on Thursday.

On the same night, Manchester City full back Lucy Bronze won the women's best player award, becoming the first English player to take that prize.

None of which takes from the enduring need and justification for an awards as naturally gender biased as The Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman of the Year, which started in 2004, and this year both defied and embraced the pandemic year to complete the 12 monthly award winners (recognising women for the achievements outside of sport during the lockdown) culminating in yesterday's naming of Katie Taylor as the outright winner for a fifth time, after successfully defending her five world lightweight belts twice in 2020.

In ways...