Bend it like (Victoria) Beckham

In the year 2014, sexism in the Western world is still very much alive and kicking. Be it in the context of professional or family life, our societies still have a long way to go before achieving gender equality. During the last few decades though, it is undeniable that there has been progress. Nowadays people would generally be more reluctant to crack a sexist joke or to engage in discriminating behaviour in the workplace. But the ugly truth is that it is impossible to eradicate centuries of oppression and sexual discrimination from the common subconscious in a few years’ time. Deep-rooted prejudices always find the way to re-surface.

    A place that provides for plenty of fertile ground to the re-surfacing of such deep-rooted prejudices is the world of sport. Almost two years ago I decided to make a year-long wish come true and joined a female soccer team. My experience in this one-year and a half has been telling of the level of sexism that still exists in our society.

    My team participates in two different leagues:  a regional league, competing against other female teams and a mixed league inside our workplace, a European organization. In the regional league, as is normally expected in a Northern European country, it is considered socially acceptable and unsurprising for women to be playing football. Most of our opponents have been practicing the sport since a very young age. The only discrimination one could fathom would be a social discrimination, with kids of higher social status opting for hockey, leaving football for the less well-off and more street-smart. But that’s a different story.

    Things change considerately when it comes to the mixed league. “Mixed” though would be an overhyped term: the league is absolutely male-dominated. Women started joining some of the teams some years ago and it was five years ago that the first exclusively female team was formed: the one I have joined. Given the fact that the majority of our opponents are educated male adults, one would expect a behaviour that respects women and considers them equal as fellow sportswomen. One would expect fair play to apply, taking into account the differences in biology, stamina and years of experience in the sport. This is indeed the case for many of our opponents, including our coaches. Nevertheless there is an equal if not larger number of opponents that do not respect these principles at all. 

    There are various prejudiced approaches towards a female football team and I have experienced them all. One of the most common instances is paternalization. There are plenty of men out there willing to show us “how it’s done”. One would get the impression that there are as many football coaches as there are opponents. The prejudice resurfacing here pushes them subconsciously to view women as children that need guidance. But trying to transmit to us their wisdom after years of experience on the pitch, they tend to forget something important: nobody asked for this piece of advice.

    You also get plenty of “fake kindness”. This kind of “chivalry” is manifest when your opponent makes room so that you can score a goal ridiculously easily. Or, after he has scored his zillionth goal against your team, violating any notion of fair play, turns to you and sincerely apologizes. I wouldn’t go as far as calling this behaviour an attempt of denigration of my intelligence and capabilities; nevertheless it is definitely telling of a kind of person brought up based on an oxymoron: you always have to be respectful and gallant towards women, but of course that doesn’t mean they are your equals.

    Another approach is downright irony. Instances of opponents smirking throughout the match or stultifying our complaints by laughing at them are not so rare as one would think. Here it is not only about sexist prejudice; it is about persons lacking any decency. These people would probably behave the same way towards male opponents that would happen to be weaker than them.

    The list could go on and on but my bewilderment would remain the same: how outrageous and deeply disappointing is it that highly educated friends and colleagues succumb to offending simplifications and prejudice? I have no background in psychology in order to assess to what extent one’s upbringing influences one’s future prejudices, but what I know for sure is that educated adults ought to do their best to apply their critical thinking on everything they have learnt to take for granted. Unfortunately, when the feet get kicking, it’s usually all about the balls; not the brain.

    And why are all the above-mentioned behaviours a paradox? I will give you a striking example: in Europe, the public is hardly aware of any female football players. In most European countries, girls would very rarely to never be encouraged to join a football team, while on the other hand they are strongly encouraged to join volleyball or basketball teams. On the other hand, in the United States, football -or soccer- is socially labelled as a “female” sport; a sport mostly practiced by kids and women, in contrast to the male-dominated American football. The US national female soccer team has won two World Cups and four Olympic Gold medals in the last twenty years. How is it then that educated European men, who travel often and socialize frequently with people from around the globe, cannot see the paradox?

    There is no doubt that the position of women in the Western world has improved exponentially in the last few decades. There is almost no profession, no matter how male-dominated, wherein women have not found their way. Many studies have explored the sense of anxiety before the unknown and the perplexity that this change in social roles has caused to men. In Europe, football is definitely one of the last “fortresses” of manhood, inside which men love to devise war-like strategies and congregate in tactical formation in order to face the “enemy.” Women are still seen as the intruders, people that, even if they can be allowed to join the “fraternity”, still cannot be taken very seriously.

    But maybe the future is not so gloomy. The recent examples of Michael Sam and Jason Collins, the first two openly gay NFL and NBA players respectively, give us reason to believe that in the future, sports will cease being an arena for competing testosterone-levels. The road is still long and winding as far as gender equality and sexual orientation issues are concerned, even in the Western world. But let’s not forget that it was as early as 396 BC that Cynisca from Sparta, became the first woman in history to win at the Olympic Games. Let’s start from raising the next generation of boys and girls with respect towards each other.