Having
managed and played for a local women’s football team for three years, I’ve
heard all the sexist remarks going … “the best part of the female game is the
shirt swapping at the end” and “women don’t know the offside rule.”
Picking
up team trophies for our end of season presentation night, I was met with: “but
women can’t play football … surely you don’t play on those skinny, little legs
of yours?” I proceeded to inform him that not only do 1.38 million women
and girls up and down the country play football, but we even have the vote now!
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| North Wales women play football |
But can
his and many other people’s attitudes be excused? The exposure women’s football
gets in the UK has been poor. It was only due to a campaign last year that led
the Women’s World Cup quarter final to be upgraded from the Red Button to an
airing on BBC2 instead of a planned repeat of Porridge and an episode of Flog
It! The Olympic legacy and crowds of 70,000 people turning up to Wembley to watch
Team GB, as well as the new Super League, are driving things forward.
More
welcome news recently has seen the England women’s football team secure a
£4,000 a year pay rise. The rise sees their contracts hiked from £16,000 to
£20,000 … still little more than the daily salary of a top Premier League male player,
but a victory in the eyes of women footballers. The deal with the Football
Association also includes an increase in the number of hours the players can
work in second jobs to 24 per week (from 18).
English
forward Eniola Aluko, graduated from university with a First Class Honours
degree and juggles her law and footballing careers side by side. The offside
rule is a concept she is more than capable of grasping … and try telling
striker and plasterer Rachel Williams that a ‘woman’s place is in the kitchen’
…
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| The Mirror |
These changes are
certainly a step in the right direction, where women’s football should not
necessarily be compared to the mens game, as a battle between the sexes, but as
a viable career path in its own right and where talented female footballers
will benefit financially, rather than just the WAGs who hang off the arms of
the likes of Rooney and Gerrard.
As printed in www.thefootballmagazine.com
