Last week, a 27-year-old woman took charge, for a single game, of a football team playing in the Blue Square South League. You’d think that this wasn’t a big deal. After all, she already ran a boys team, she had coaching badges, and what’s more she’d raised £500 to help the team keep going.
According to some of the people attending the game, however, she was a simply there to be abused. The “fans” of opposing team Eastleigh kept up a steady chant of “Get back in the kitchen” and their manager, Ian Baird, refused to shake her hand at the final whistle.
As for the press, they were just as bad. From last Thursday, in thelondonpaper, columnist Brad Ashton wrote:
She was upset that nobody took her seriously…what did she expect? Powell was no more than a managerial mascot, part of a gimmick for her club that generated plenty of publicity but did little for the club’s reputation…
…Whether she likes it or not, women and men’s football simply don’t mix…
…far greater names have been subjected to far worse.
What did she expect? Maybe she expected the simple courtesy of being taken seriously, given that she probably knew more about the technical aspects of the game than the majority of those watching. Maybe she expected that in 2009, it was no longer socially acceptable to abuse an opposing manager purely on the basis of their gender.
I’m confused as to why she shouldn’t mind being verbally abused, just because other people have “been subjected to far worse”. Would that mean that I could happily go round to his house and verbally abuse him, safe in the knowledge that since other people have been abused in more horrific ways, it must be OK? These arguments don’t even begin to make sense.
With people like Mr Ashton around, it’s no wonder that such sexism is still rife in football. Presumably, he’s not aware of equal-rights legislation that would mean he would face disciplinary action should he air these views in relation to a woman that worked with him. Oh, wait, that’s right – it’s sport, and therefore basic human decency can be avoided in the name of pub-talk journalism where the knee-jerk reaction and the pathetic put-down still rule.
Personally, I can think of absolutely no reason why a woman couldn’t do the job of a football team manager. But I have certainly seen a few reasons why none of them would want to.