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Sport's woman problem: the FA's tweet is just the tip of the iceberg
Back to being mothers, partners and daughters, read an FA tweet about the returning England womens team this week. Its time the sporting world stopped patronising women and started recognising them as equals
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The official FA Twitter account, which has almost 1.2 million followers, welcomed the England womens football team home this week with the message:
Our #Lionesses go back to being mothers, partners and daughters today, but they have taken on another title heroes
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The trouble is, though, that the more you unpack it, the more you realise what an odd thing it was to tweet. Do we consider womens roles as mothers, partners and daughters so incompatible with stellar international careers that those relationships are simply put on hold while they are working? Would we ever see a similar tweet welcoming home a triumphant male England team, with the focus immediately reverting to their domestic situations? Doesnt this somewhat blur the fact that many of the players are in fact returning to extremely high-profile and skilled jobs for top teams in the UK?
ages
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Its been 10 years since Fifa president Sep Blatter said: Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. They could, for example, have tighter shorts, and our national team is still contending with puerile and insulting sexism. As the team prepared for the World Cup semi-finals last week, one national newspaper ran an article titled: Watching the lionesses is such a roar deal. It proclaimed: The World Cup has shown that womens football really isnt that good whoever could have predicted that? A womans place is not on a foreign field playing second-rate football thats Gareth Bales job. A womans place is in the wrong.
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So determined are some to protect the male domain of sport from any female invasion that the battle even extends into video games. When EA Sport recently announced it was adding a few optional female teams to its Fifa 16 game, the internet erupted in male outrage and despair. Choice comments included Absolutely ridiculous; Guessing if you play with a female team you wont be able to park the bus; Isnt female football a joke anyway?; and my personal favourite: Its a mans sport
women have ruined the earth and now they are ruining Fifa!
Now thats an overreaction.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/womens-blog/2015/jul/08/sports-woman-problem-the-fas-tweet-is-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg
enlightenment
(8,830 posts)as I watched the award ceremony after the final - as a legion of young women wearing skin-tight black sheaths and stiletto heels minced across the (artificial) turf carrying the players' trophies.
What was the purpose of that? Did FIFA decide that they had to add some T&A since the "ladies" have steadfastly refused to wear tighter shorts?
I'm not surprised by this tweet by the FA - but continued to be disappointed.
niyad
(113,860 posts)seriously, when I read that tweet, and the bit about the trophy-bearers, it made me a bit ill. in the 21st century, we are STILL fighting these battles????