Sexism in sportswear: the fight over women’s skorts

You hardly need to be a body language expert to see something’s up. A male referee, his back to the camera, has his hands outstretched in a gesture that says: “Look, that’s the way it is.” One female captain is looking askance at him. The other looks down in disgust.

The reason? The women — like the referee — are wearing shorts and are being ordered to change.

For much of this month, controversy has raged over whether players of camogie, the 121-year-old Irish stick-and-ball game, should be freed from the obligation to wear skorts, aka a skirt with built-in shorts, that many find uncomfortable.

Camogie — pronounced “ca-mo-gi” — is the female version of hurling, a high-velocity, brutal test of agility and strength and one of Ireland’s proud indigenous sports. After two other high-profile pitch stand-offs — including one match that was postponed when players refused to swap into skorts — its ruling body finally authorised the wearing of shorts in a hastily convened congress last week, to the relief of a country rolling its eyes in embarrassment.

“Women’s voices are much stronger in Ireland now,” said Una Mullally, an Irish Times columnist. “But we are constantly tripping up on the residue of a legacy that doesn’t fit this century . . . When these things come up about gender roles, there’s a sense of shame — people can’t believe it’s still like this.”

Indeed, the camogie vote came on May 22, the 10th anniversary of a referendum that opened the door to marriage equality in a nation where the social diktats of the Catholic Church held sway for decades. Then again, Irish voters last year rejected a referendum to rephrase an article in the constitution declaring that a women’s place is in the home, raising the question of how deep progressive attitudes really run.

“Certainly many of us were asking ourselves that during this ridiculous skort debacle,” said Ivana Bacik, leader of the Labour party and a prominent campaigner for the 2015 referendum to legalise gay marriage and, three years later, to scrap a constitutional ban on abortion.

The skort debate was not a simple story of misogynistic rules enforced by men either: some older women in the Camogie Association, the sport’s ruling body, opposed the switch to shorts, officials said.

“Often, traditions are slow to change,” said Joe O’Donnell, county chair of Clare Camogie.

Ireland’s camogie players are following the rebellions of other sportswomen — like German gymnasts whose long-legged unitards went viral at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and Serena Williams, who shocked tennis fans in 2018 with her catsuit. Wimbledon — which has rules on how wide a contrast-coloured trim can be — only allowed female players to wear dark shorts (helpful for those with period anxiety) in 2023 following protests.

US track-and-field athletes have criticised their own ultra high-cut bottoms. Lauren Fleshman, a former 5,000-metre US champion, branded them “a costume born of patriarchal forces” no longer welcome in women’s sports.

Ireland’s skort victory may inspire other athletes around the world battling uncomfortable or over-sexualised kits. But the fight is unlikely to have enhanced the “positive awareness of Ireland overseas” — one of the cornerstones of a new national sports diplomacy strategy.

Still, Dublin captain Aisling Maher, the player who was captured in the photo remonstrating with the referee, has spotted a silver lining.

“You have to see the positives in this,” she told broadcaster RTÉ. “The beginning of the all-Ireland championship has never got as much attention or publicity. Hopefully some of that attention will stay with camogie in a more positive light.”

jude.webber@ft.com

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