Dumped like used goods
by Nathan Barnes Two years ago the Australian women's soccer team, the Matildas, posed for a nude calendar in order to attract sponsorship money in the lead-up to the Sydney 2000 Games. The Australian Women's Soccer Association (later Women's Soccer Australia) had received $1.15 million from the Australian Sports Commission in 1999, and another $700,000 for their participation in the Olympics. An investigation is now underway after Federal Police were called in following the disappearance of computer files and other equipment at the Association's offices in Canberra. Soccer's umbrella body, Soccer Australia, has asked police to also "look at allegations of suspected missing funds": $1.5 million is believed to have gone missing. The slide into liquidation ended in the ACT Supreme Court which last week wound up Women's Soccer Australia, which still owes its lawyers $70,000. All scheduled matches for the Matildas have been cancelled and they may have to drop out of next year's Women's World Cup in China. One of the players said that "questions need to be asked about what happened to the funding in the two years leading up to the 2000 Olympics." At the time of the nude calendar, involving 12 of the team, the Association's then chief executive, Warren Fisher, was full of entrepreneurial enthusiasm, describing one of the photos as "startling, sexual, provocative, predatory". The calendar sold for $24.95, with $1 from each calendar sale going to the players who posed. It transpires now that the Matildas have been exploited in pretty much every way possible. Playing in a sport that does not rake in the billions from corporations, they compete basically as amateurs. With lousy funding from the government having forced them to use their bodies to acquire desperately-needed money, their Association has now been ripped off and wrapped up, and the players dumped like used goods. What does that say about the status of women in this society and the violating and ruthless nature of the system we live under?