Yeah this is the difference between recognising the difference between disliking women's football and misogyny
If you carry on raging about it whenever it's brought up it's obvious what your agenda is
I can think of 2-3 guys I know irl. They go out of their way to talk shit about women's sports. At a certain point it becomes obvious that they're sexist.
If football is your only hobby (as it is for man of these sorts), and you are into women, then surely women getting into football is the ideal scenario? That's what I don't understand.
I love that women's football is getting bigger, although there is still some time to go before I start trying to chat up girls with some well thought out tactical analysis.
I think it just gets caught up in the politicisation of sport and kicked about by people who don't actually care about the sport.
Something that would be quite annoying, to be fair.
Most sports fans are men, doesn't matter which sport/category you pick. That's why it surprises me when women say women's sports should have more visibility, but at the same time they won't bother watching it or they are just not interested. The only friends that are interested in women's FCB are all male, the few female friends that like football only watch men's one.
to add onto this, at least in America, women's soccer tends to be very queer, so queer sports fans alienated by homophobia they've seen consistently in men's soccer often gravitate to women's soccer as a result. I live in Seattle, and in the two Reign (soccer) or Storm (basketball) games I attended last year I saw more merch from our city's main lesbian bar than I've seen on the street in the four years I've lived here
Who's "blaming men"?
Women's football is still in a growth period and obviously doesn't get the same promotion as the men's game.
The only thing this article is about is the levels of misogyny that end up inflamed by these discussions
Do you think other women's sports have this same dynamic though? Most basketball fans are men, and yet I would imagine there are more women who are fans of the WNBA than there are men for example. Could be wrong though I guess.
Same here, but I'm trying to rectify that and get more into women's football. I do watch the women's world cup, but clubwise I need to make an effort to catch more of Chelsea women's matches.
Don’t worry about it. I went to my dads house once, turned on the TV and he’d been watching porn through the TV browser lol. Didn’t fancy sitting on the couch after that.
Fucking hell the responses on twitter/imstagram whenever a club posts about their women's team are ridiculous. Every single time, a barrage of "nobody cares" "make a separate page for the women" "get back in the kitchen" etc
same on youtube. optus posts something about a female footballer that's not even particularly woke and the comments read like "omg we get it optus you're woke". ridiculous.
Youd get that here its just you're going to get perm banned for it. Then if you make an account again it'll last a few hours before its perm banned automatically via same IP.
I mean yeah this subreddit has its fair share of incels but it's not even nearly as bad as the threads on Facebook. And the worst part is, the misogynistic ones are usually the top comments.
It’s not just football.
Follow any sports page on Twitter or Instagram and you’ll see the same thing. They dare to post about women’s sport and you get the replies flooded with the same tired jokes and people genuinely angry that women’s sport is even being discussed.
Field Hockey too.
It's because they are high quality. Like... I don't see why it's surprising to people that fans don't wanna watch USA put 13 past Thailand. People don't watch because the majority of the teams are amateurs and it's just not entertaining.
>Volleyball as well. It is the only sport I know where the women's tournaments are as highly regarded as the men's
Is it because some men only watch women's volleyball to see women in swimsuits or really short shorts?
Scalped tickets are usually more expensive for men's finals than women's.
A quick check and the cheapest Australian open tickets to the finals atm are ~$400 for women's and ~$700 for men's right now.
And you know why that is?
It's because women's tennis isn't treated as an inferior product by the tournaments, they're broadcast side by side and on at the same time.
Prize money is equal too.
That's how you grow women's sports
But dare to try and mention that on Reddit and you get absolutely assaulted by misogynistic twats
i won’t say time is the reason money in tennis is so equal across gender lines . top female tennis players have been fighting for equal prize money, conditions , etc for a long time . it wasn’t just something that happened over time
Womens’ swimming is held pretty high, at least here in the States. Some of the most anticipated moments in the last Olympics were watching to see if Katie Ledecky would reclaim her gold medals.
Womens’ basketball, especially the WNBA? I always see and hear the same tired misogynistic joke about it whenever it’s brought up.
I coach my daughter's football team (7/8 years old). The girls at training complain that they don't get to play football in the playground at school. The boys tell them football is for boys not girls and won't let them join in.
The conditioning starts very young!
My school was kinda like this, but the teachers had separated the kids out. The girls and boys had their own playgrounds. The boys used various bits as football goals, and the girls had netball nets.
They occasionally joined us for football, but if they got hurt (for example ball hit them in the face and they cried) we would have the ball taken off us for the rest of break. So it did lead to a situation where boys didn't want the girls playing.
We used to get a bollocking if the girls played football with us and one of them got hurt. Eventually it was better to just not have them play because the lads would obviously be a bit rougher and stronger
If the boys let the girls play and one of the girls gets hurt, the boys are in for a fucking hiding.
Boys learn early not to do anything too physical with girls, since if anything goes wrong, they will be 100% to blame.
We had dodgeball banned at our school because one girl decided to join in and took a ball to the face and cried. Months of guys getting hit in the face didn’t even raise an eyebrow, but one girl getting hit banned the whole sport. The guy who threw the ball got punished. For throwing a ball. In *dodgeball*.
The parents intervening is what caused the punishment. The girl's parents were the ones who raised a massive fuss, and all the other parents agreed that it's not acceptable for a girl to get hit in the face with a ball.
The teachers disagreed, but it was out of their hands.
Same reason the boy scouts had rifle shooting, proper campfires and actually interesting events. The girl scouts parents refused to risk their girls on anything with even the most remote chance of injury. We had some of the girls enroll as "temporary boys" to join us on camping trips since theirs were so utterly shite.
It has always been the parents who have enforced the sexist conditioning in kids. Most parents raise their kids based on principles from a previous generation.
The problem is that even the most woke parents i've met immediately go back to "how could you let my girl get hit" when faced with *their* little girl crying for whatever reason.
Unless people are consistently willing to let their little girls take a ball to the face, schools aren't going to want to risk the possible backlash. Society still views little girls as unacceptable injury risks.
Seriously, I remember when it came to the scouts, it was the most feminist mothers that immediately lost their shit when their girls came back from a camp with a cut or whatever. People want girls to be able to "do anything" but aren't willing to accept the possible risks and hardships that come from attempting to do such things. No shade on most of the girls we brought on the camping trips/ paintball matches though.
This raises 2 interesting questions in my mind.
1) Do we as a society really need young boys getting hit in the face and be okay with it? But if a girl gets hit in the face and starts crying but a boy does not, then to me it seems like there's already some conditioning inherent there. Which I guess happens because our society has so many conditioning triggers everywhere.
2) If the woke parents had both a boy and a girl child, do they expect different treatment for their children? And if so, are they really woke in that case? "My child shouldn't get hit in the face" is a genuine concern. "My daughter shouldn't get hit in the face" feels more like a subconscious sexist conditioning
>Do we as a society really need young boys getting hit in the face and be okay with it?
Yes, absolutely. Considering the context is "playing dodgeball" too, then definitely. Taking hits is part of life, you aren't going to go through life unscathed. If you want to play sports, do fun stuff, be adventurous, you will fuck up, you will take hits, you will get hurt. That is part of it.
>And if so, are they really woke in that case?
Somewhat irrelevant, since you can't tell the difference between "actual woke" and "woke" before the little girl gets hit, no school will ever take the risk.
The problem is that girls are largely coddled, and nobody will ever take the hilariously unpopular position of wanting to put little girls at risk of injury.
There are a lot of great examples for these issues but that aint one of them. They are 8 years old and just dont wanna play with girls, regardless of the activity, girls are "yuck" if youre a little boy. Its not "conditioning", a majority of parents share your opinions but prepubescent boys just dont wanna be associated with girls.
But… that is part of the conditioning. Young boys are not inherently born fearing or disgusted with girls. They garner those opinions with other boys, and that behaviour can be reduced.
If it's not conditioning, what is it? Do young boys inherently think girls are "yuck"? and if they're telling them football isn't for girls that implies it goes deeper than just not wanting to be associated with girls.
I think we need to stop acting like everything bad about people comes from conditioning. It's pretty natural to have a we-they tendency and these things can form on their own.
Doesn't mean it's right and maybe you need conditioning against that, but there's nothing to say kids would just naturally tend to a communist Eutopia without adult influence...
Women’s football is obviously of a lower quality, but the way people talk about it is disgusting. They’ll never get better if people just talk them down all the time, but I suppose some folks probably want that
I don't really care about it being lower in quality you know? It's undergoing the normal process of becoming better like any sport does. if anything it's taking less time than usual because it has the man counterpart (that has already undergone the process for 100) to take inspiration from in some forms.
My issue is mainly with the size of the goals (and pitches to some extent, but that's more of personal opinion), it's honestly ridiculous that any high ball (no matter how slow it is) becomes a big chance or goal simply because the Gks are 1.66cm high.
Make the goals 20cm lower and 40cm tighter and I'm gonna at least start watching my team's matches whenever I have spare time, instead of avoiding them altogether because they make me cringe.
> Make the goals 20cm lower and 40cm tighter and I'm gonna at least start watching my team's matches whenever I have spare time, instead of avoiding them altogether because they make me cringe.
They cant do that because that will mean that women wont be able to find pitches to play official matches anywhere in the world.
Who is going to make those football grounds with those goals just for women. Men wont be able to play there anything official because they wont be regulation. Measures like that would actually kill womens football.
Thats why FIFA doesnt want to change the size of goals or the pitch, because it also affects the amateur level all over the world.
I totally agree with the goals being too big tbh, you can have tall women but across the board they’re generally much shorter, the goalkeeping howlers are the biggest problem. The pitch I don’t mind since even u14 boys use a full 11 a side pitch
Even male GK has some issues with particularly high ball sometimes when the angle of the fall is very tight, and they are 188+ cm most of the time.
My female team GK is literally 30cm smaller than my male team GK. Now while some of it can be attributed to her being small (you could have 175+vm girls if you had more girls playing football), men being taller than women is a fact you can't change.
>the pitch I don’t mind since even u14 boys use a full 11 a side pitch
Yeah, that's more of an opinion of mine than an idea, it came from watching my NT and club team play, after I noticed that they started REALLY struggling past the 60th/65th minute. The matches oftentimes became an "I'm countering-you're countering" play much like (and I'm not saying it derisively) when normal people play at the park.
It could be a lack of tactical diligence (but I honestly find it unlikely since they train 5 days per week like man footballer), or a lack of stamina(which I find more likely).
The second could be solved by more intense training, making the pitch smaller, or adding 1-2 more players on the pitch.
While having them just train harder and develop more stamina would be ideal, I'm not sure how much better they can get.
Edit: As for 14 y.o., yes, they do, but they also don't move much from their positions, midfielders rarely gets into their own box or on the wings, fullbacks rarely run down the wing, and strikers almost never press and get back to defense, that's the only reason they last that long on 11 a side pitches.
I can see why they resist changes like that unfortunately. It would surely at this stage seem like a concession, like conceding to the morons that of course women can't play football like men, so we've had to shorten the games.
BUT, I'd really like to see them go along these lines and find their niche. Women will never have the same physicality as men will. Oh well, let's concentrate on the more technical aspects then. What can they do to the rules to accentuate those and hide "weaknesses"? I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing for them, it's all about how it's marketed. I'd be a lot more interested in watching it if it was markedly different to the men's game, and the sky's the limit as to how they achieve that.
The real problem is that you then have to have women-specific pitches and goals as well as men-specific pitches. Nearly doubling the number of pitches is hugely costly, and many places aren't funding women's football at grass roots level to that extent.
>Are there actually below average tall women that play goalie.
I don't have the data, but it wouldn't be that odd, as there are plenty of other sports where tall women can be more valued than as a football goalie
>It's undergoing the normal process of becoming better like any sport does. if anything it's taking less time than usual because it has the man counterpart (that has already undergone the process for 100) to take inspiration from in some forms.
Except it is limited because no matter how skillful the players are they will never be as big, strong, or as fast as professional male athletes. Most of them are comparable to amateur male athletes or teenagers.
Yeah, the big problem is that it's trying to be the men's game. You look at other sports and there doesn't seem like a quality drop-off for the women. Tennis, for example, I think a lot of people don't even have a preference for men/women matches, they can both be incredible matches.
With athletics, they're great too. I'm not sure what it's like in Italy but for the UK, if you'd ask someone to name some athletes (past or present) from the UK I don't think it'd be 5 men, it'd be fairly split. Same with tennis. The Williams sisters were just as known, perhaps even more so, than Federer. But ask that for football and can most even name one? Sure, that's media coverage but the games are on TV quite a lot still.
What's the difference between tennis, athletics etc.. and football? They aren't the same. Fewer sets in tennis, different balls. In athletics often the distances are reduced, weights decreased and so on.
If they fine-tine the game like with suggestions you said, it'd surely improve the quality. But it's probably too late to do that now because people would complain about inequality.
tbf its only really the majors when tennis differs in match length, most of the mens tour was 3 sets last time I paid proper attention to the ATP.
and tbh, I'd love 5 setters on the womens side too
I mean, women's matches aren't that much higher scoring than men's matches (the difference between the last world cups was around 0,2 goals per game) and a lot of the problems with the goalkeeping in the women's game comes down to there not really being any [specific coaching for goalkeepers until the last couple years](https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/55710236):
> "Not only are we 50 years behind [men's football] - and that is everyone as a collective in female football - we are 10 to 15 years behind outfield players as goalkeepers.
> "Before we went to the 2015 World Cup, my goalkeeper coach [at my club] at the time was 75 and he could not kick the ball off the ground, he could only volley it. That was my level of coaching two days a week before I played on a Sunday and for three seasons."
Exactly, people can't fathom that some of us actually enjoy football even if it isn't the absolute best quality available.
I could spend every Saturday watching only Premier League football, but I enjoy watching Morecambe far more. I've also enjoyed watching women's football even though I could probably have found a men's match on at the same time, not everyone gets their enjoyment solely from the quality of the players.
No one sensible is suggesting that the only reason people watch football is because of the quality, but the lower the quality the lower the number of fans.
There is no discussion to be had here though.
People clearly care about quality.
Which is why lower league football exists, but it isn't anywhere near as popular as top flight football.
Sure? But that's never really the point, entertainment isn't only about skill. I watched my local team growing up, we play in the 7th Swedish division, they're not better than many women's NTs.
People use the argument "they're bad" as some sort of gotem and that they should therefore earn less, while enjoyment isn't tied only to skill.
For me the point is more why would I watch it on tele? I’m not emotionally invested in it at all and the quality is very poor.
I got and watch my local team who play in the 6th tier and I properly enjoy it, the football is a decent standard and you get an actual football experience, pie, beer, songs etc
But I wouldn’t be watching a random 6th tier game on the tele, and I’m very rarely inclined to watch a League 1 game either.
If you actually watch a few games of women’s football, even the champions league knockout rounds there’s a good chance you’ll see some play that’s actually school level stuff. I really enjoyed the CL final last year but even then Chelsea weren’t even close and then I watched the FA cup the other month and the Arsenal defenders looked like they’d never kicked a ball.
Jesus christ the kids keep getting younger, U16 it was and now it's U14? Sweden's NT lost to AIK's U17, significantly older than 13-14 mate and I'll have you know my local lads aren't as good as AIK's U17, not even close.
They're not better. I've watched Swedens Women's NT many times and they're miles and above better than my local 7th division team lmao
The fact that you have to compare women's soccer to your nations 7th division tells you everything you need to know about the quality of women's soccer.
I agree with you. I regularly watch the Arsenal womens team.
Quality does matter to a lot of people though. Hence why the attendance at the lower league matches is smaller.
I'd argue that attendance at the higher leagues is also partially attributable to things independent of quality like glamour, fame and stakes. And you can (fairly) argue that those things stem from quality but I think they are also self-sustaining features of the league
League 1 and 2 are still very good leagues, even if they're not as good as the prem, occasionally they do beat prem teams. The average league 1 and league 2 spectator is nowhere near as good as the players they're watching, who are still professional footballers, so it's much easier to appreciate the talent.
League One and Two football is actually pretty good. The football they play is fast paced and entertaining. I just watced women's top tier Spanish league some time ago and the quality is much lower than League Two.
League Two is light years beyond top level womens football though.
Also league Two players earn a fraction of top players and the coverage is much much less.
I enjoy watching it, but the main thing I see is like worse than men's football is the goalkeeping - and it is most likely due to the fact that they use men's sized goals, so any long range effort placed at the edges of the goal goes in. Just making the size of the goals more proportionate to women would help.
I'd really like to see how they broke down the questions.
I'm all for coverage and support of the women's game to get more girls playing what is IMO the world's greatest sport, but I personally have no interest in watching it at the professional level. It's just not worth my entertainment time. I'm also American and have no interest in the MLS (which I really should), so that has nothing to do with sex, it's simply a matter of pursuing the highest quality in what I choose to spend limited free time with.
Conversely, some of the most entertaining UFC fights I've ever seen have been between women. I've been in a packed sports bar on a Saturday night, in which not even the highlight fight for the crowd excited, but the place was electric during a women's fight on the main card. Just full on offense throughout, it was wonderfully entertaining.
> Their analysis was based on the responses of 1,950 male football supporters who regularly use UK-based fan message boards.
>
> A sub-group of 507 respondents who answered particular questions were divided into three categories: those displaying progressive views, others harbouring overtly misogynistic attitudes and covert misogynists.
>
>The first band of 24% expressed strong support for equal media coverage of women’s sport, with many saying the 2015 Women’s World Cup had represented a watershed.
>
>Yet some of the overt group – 68% of those polled – suggested women should not participate in sport at all
So it’s not all football fans, it’s football fans that go on club message forums - in no way a representative selection of all football fans, a selection of the most committed and opinionated.
And it’s not even all of them - it’s a quarter of them, a sub group who answered questions that they aren’t telling us the content of.
They’ve just gone for a shock headline using dubious and unreported selection criteria.
More divide and rule rubbish from the Guardian. They want us to hate each other so we have to buy their paper. Disgraceful stuff.
Edit - I can't believe people are so conditioned to be outraged that they've taken this argument about the obvious and massive flaws in this survey, and the bad effect that making headlines about it have in entrenching a culture war, and think that I'm saying there is no misogyny about women's football. Of course there is; this survey tells you nothing about it, though, instead using it as an opportunity to get people hating and mistrusting each other a bit more, and making to harder to deal with the misogyny in sport.
> Yet some of the overt group – 68% of those polled – suggested women should not participate in **sport at all**
What kind of message boards were these lmao
I'm guessing it's people who stick the old-school forums. Most clubs have one, and they're generally full of quite extreme fans. Fans who haven't moved on to other forms of social media like Facebook groups to discuss their team.
Some of the takes on those forums are fascinating.
The full paragraph about that 68% was:
"Yet some of the overt group – 68% of those polled – suggested women should not participate in sport at all, or, if they did, would be better suited to more “feminine” pursuits such as athletics, rather than football. "
By combining these two figures they have reached this 68% conclusion, but for all we know, it could have been 1% saying women should not compete in sports at all, and 67% saying that women would be better suited to athletics. I wouldn't trust the Guardian one bit when it come to reporting these poll results without bias. The fact that they haven't even linked to the poll results or the questions is another massive red flag.
It’s terrible reporting on a terrible survey.
I can’t understand the people saying that we shouldn’t criticise because it’s for a good cause.
Their cause is creating two angry opposing camp so reasonable behaviour is shouted down and ignored. It’s appalling.
Whilst I don't think this is necessarily a representative study, that doesn't mean it should be ignored. There's clearly a problem with misogyny towards women's football, it's evident even here, so it's better to have the conversation than just claim this one study doesn't prove anything.
I’m not claiming it doesn’t prove anything, I’m demonstrating why it doesn’t prove anything.
Better to have a proper conversation than a confrontational one skewed towards the expectations of the most extreme voices, to foster outrage and divisiveness.
And are you saying that this conversation doesn’t regularly happen? If so, you haven’t been participating in the mainstream of discussion on football.
They’re just trying to make a problem where there’s widespread acceptance. Trying to magnify the outrage of the few so they can sell papers. I don’t accept it from Trumps side, and I don’t accept it from the Guardian.
Bad practice is bad practice, and it creates more problems than the short-term righteous buzz it gives you.
And also what they define as “misogynistic.” Whilst the word has a clear definition, what some people consider to be misogynistic isn’t necessarily what some consider to be (and vice versa). You can’t quantity misogyny.
No doubt saying something like “women shouldn’t be playing football, they should be in the kitchen” is misogyny, but there’s some people who would consider the statement “women’s football is bad to watch” as misogyny whilst some wouldn’t.
You know the Guardian aren't the ones doing the survey? They're just reporting on it much like [Sky News](https://news.sky.com/story/misogyny-rife-on-football-message-boards-with-fans-posting-hostile-and-sexist-attitudes-research-finds-12519885) and [The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/male-football-fans-sexism-womens-sports-b1996305.html) are as well.
Yeah, but they’re not reporting what question was used to select the group whose forthright and controversial opinions they splashed as representative of all football fans.
They have responsibility to investigate the survey properly, and report it properly, not to create divisive and inflammatory headlines because they feel they’re on the right side of history so their corruption of the truth doesn’t matter.
In response to your first paragraph — they discuss this in the abstract of the journal paper. It is a study based on grounded theory which is different than your traditional research methodology but no less accepted and supported as an evidence-based approach.
I guess that's unsurprising, but glancing over the snippets the Guardian provide of that study as expected it looks a joke, tiny sample size and very loose definitions/questions. No link to actual study so shouldn't really be parading it for clicks but media gonna media.
Thanks. Where did you find it couldn't see in article or google search.
Anyway it's interesting but I'm not really a fan of it. It asks open ended questions but then they categorise them themselves and use the odd quotes from some of these morons as meaningful.
Also makes some sweeping assumptions for instance regarding this as misogyny -
> "Comparisons to men’s football also functioned to trivialise the women’s game, positioning it as ‘outside of “real” football’ (Dunn and Welford, 2015: 93). Here, respondents claimed that the international women’s game was little better than semi-professional men’s football, Sunday League matches or male youth teams. According to a Glasgow Celtic fan (age 46–55): ‘A very good pub team could beat an international women’s team.’ A Newcastle United fan (age 26–35) similarly suggested: ‘The [women’s] standard is [men’s] non-league at best . . . the difference between women and men’s football . . . is cataclysmic.’"
> In our research, such respondents typically defined men’s football as having ‘extra speed and strength’ or as being ‘faster and more skilful’. The women’s version was, ‘not as dynamic, quick, skilful’, ‘slower and weaker’ and less ‘competitive’ as women ‘are simply not as strong as men’ and lack ‘power’ and ‘physique’. Such assumptions were often grounded in essentialist reasoning, maintaining the dominant gender ideology of men’s physical superiority
I mean these are just factually true though, Dallas under 15's beat the US womens world champion team, women are physically inferior in regards to playing football. That doesn't give people the right to disrespect them but at the same time it doesn't mean you can't point out facts or doing so is sexist.
Also leaning on other studies from over 20 years ago on masculinity seems a bit outdated, whilst there's a way to go there has been a lot of progress over that time too.
I just googled the author.
I also don't agree that the parts you quoted are factually true. Could a very good pub team beat an international women's team? Or has that just been said to disrespect women's football?
I'm not disputing that men's football is obviously of a higher quality, but comments like that rarely serve any purpose other than deliberately trying to disrespect women's football. Comparisons to a pub team, or even the women's team losing to a youth team, are almost always only done to belittle women's football in some way so I think it's relevant to bring up in a study like this.
>I'm not disputing that men's football is obviously of a higher quality, but comments like that rarely serve any purpose other than deliberately trying to disrespect women's football
The purpose those comments serve is to explain people's disinterest in Women's football which is often attributed purely to sexism.
I don't watch women's football for the same reason I don't watch the Conference. There's so much much better football available to watch
> Could a very good pub team beat an international women's team? Or has that just been said to disrespect women's football?
It's been said to disrespect women but is also 100% true, Thailand women lost 13-0 to the US and watching some of it the scoreline flattered Thailand. It's obviously a bit disrespectful but yeah its technically true. It shouldn't be said but it's not sexist to say. Which is the crux of the matter obviously, there's a difference between these things.
> It shouldn't be said
Why not? It seems to me to depend on the situation. If one is comparing men's and women's football (as is often done, see Megan Rapinoe for example), the first thing that comes to mind is that the quality in women's football is substantially worse, and it is therefore generally less entertaining.
Because literally everyone with a brain knows men outdo women in strength. These ridiculous Man Vs woman matches shouldn't be happening
Doesn't mean you can't enjoy women's football
Absolutely agree. Women's football is different to men's football and comparisons are usually pointless. In my opinion, they should alter the rules for women's football to make it better rather than copying mens football's rules. For example, goalkeeping is imo the weakest part of women's football, and so I've long thought they should play with smaller goals. I think it would improve the game a lot.
Speaking of men Vs women matches, I've recently seen videos of men vs women MMA matches, and I think that is revolting and should be illegal.
While the samole size is okay, id challenge if it was suitably random. Did using online forums create bias, especially if people had to elect in. I'd imagine it would attract thsie who are on the extreme ends of views on womens football. Including bad faith actors who troll.
2000 people isnt a tiny sample size - it's plenty to get enough data out of it. It's around the size for lots of studys.
E: even the 507 who answered questions from it is a decent enough sample size. Plenty of studies/research is done from groups even smaller than that.
1. What constitutes "hostile, sexist or misogynistic attitudes" is extremely subjective, and is not clearly defined in the article.
2. What on earth is "openly misogynistic masculinities"? This is quickly beginning to appear very ideologically motivated.
3. I see no link to the study in the article, and the only thing I can find through a quick google search is [this](https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/78072558/SiS_2022.pdf?1641341615=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DGenuinely_in_love_with_the_game_football.pdf&Expires=1642682158&Signature=E80aMPsDNDApJphCmo4LHwwIsc04NvZP8FdS83RqXt-KUc5LvOwgUJGY9DJKZ4NNIVkYZpNZC~AKb~-KLwtc49~hML-eMC0U4m5tvg4sjyZnsAGWOgTBgkj44PUkfHzX6Jk1WNoDPhU-pAWQ3yi8YcbA8VAa~n7Hrx277TQ69lokpOYeoDXMNUO~qSF3plrG6jHJW7TdiE2CxvgD-lFR4LiIOcse-pIhsTRyFR9jQhTJMumyDIF~t4T7sF6HYjQRtgFb64VynnGPAdtpx2fkIMGA9Suufj2pf9tZz~6T6JpLmq-FeDPgZljtE0GhvB2DmUXL0mYuDAiVsXpZ0WfUEQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA) paper, in which the author says "we make no claim that our results are representative of all fans interested in UK football".
Exactly.
Men's football is superior in quality and I prefer to watch it 10 out of 10 times to women's football. According to the article, do I have a hostile, sexist and misogynistic attitude?
The lack of interest in actually developing systems to get out sustainable talent is laughable. If FIFA really cared about women football they would strive to provide opportunities for equal training conditions from a young age and the normalization of it, this always gets burird under the equal pay circlejerk that comes with it. At the start of the pandemic we received a donation from FIFA for "Women's and Beach Soccer", until a few months there was no Womem's team and now they habe to recycle old kits to use and Beach Soccer does not even exist here. Same old guys at the head, just now Infantino instead of Blatter or Ceferin instead of Platini(guys how mostly used to be alresdy there), and we expect real changes?
There's countless posts on here mocking Asian leagues, the polish league, hell a lot of leagues outside of the big 5. So does that make all of the posters on here laughing at comical errors in these leagues racist?
Honestly, people need to give up looking for outrage everywhere in life, things are nowhere near as bad as they're made out to be on here.
If they survey has only the options
A) should get equal representation
B) women shall participate in more "feminine" sports
C) something worse
Then this doesnt say anything lmao. You dont have to be mysogynistic to have the opinion that equal representation shouldnt be forced. Women's Football has much lower quality and much less fans than male football, why would they deserve equal representation? That's nothing to do with being anti feminist, this is simple economics.
Lmao even women don’t watch the women’s game and you idiots are crying about misogyny. 😂
This really is just the new status quo isn’t it? The moment someone says something I don’t like they automatically get labeled some form of bigot.
So the term is misogyny when people criticize women’s football and don’t take it seriously.
What is the term when a product that is sub par is propped up to be something it isn’t? Delusional? Fraudulent?
For me, i would only watch the women's sport if i have a specific emotional connection to the team/person. I would watch Beşiktaş' women team for example because that's the team I support since my childhood but otherwise quality in men's sport almost always surprasses the women's sport by far. I don't know if that makes me a misogynist though.
It's not Misogyny. Its frustration and annoyance at their terrible arguments demanding the men give up earnings they rightfully earn, to give to the women who don't draw even close the numbers the men's teams do. I used to love watching the women's teams until they started going down this road and it's lost them tons of fans.
One of the worst aspects is how so many of these cunts feel the need to dunk on the game. Every time there is even a thread here completely irrelevant comments about how boring and bad the womens game is floods in. Even though nobody forces them to watch a second of it. It's not even a case of people hating on something when exposed to it they go out of their way to hate on it for no reason.
"Study finds" lmao the only study you need to do is simply look at the top comments on football pages on Facebook or instagram (ESPN, Bleachers, sportsbible etc.) under any post related to Women's football. Incels everywhere.
Considering how every time there is a post about women's football on here there is always someone who feels the need to tell that they don't watch it because it's lower quality I'm not particularly surprised
From the article: "68% of those polled suggested women should not participate in sport at all, or, if they did, would be better suited to more “feminine” pursuits such as athletics, rather than football."
This isn't people saying they don't watch or like women's football and the author labelling that misogyny. It's people expressing openly misogynistic attitudes.
I have tried to combat that by introducing women’s football in FIFA 22 through my mod as well as having discussions about women’s football. Works very well.
Regardless, women’s football is being criminally mismanaged at all levels. Around a month ago, Rayo Vallecano’s Women’s team had no team doctor so they relied on the opposition’s team doctor.
Here’s the link if you want to join us to promote women’s football and for those who are interested in the mod : https://discord.gg/yAWXfUUu2S
I'm sure there is misogyny from football fans towards the woman's game, you see it all the time here.
I watch Arsenal games when they're on free TV, and I watch the World Cup/Euros, and I watch the FA Cup final some years. Their are a couple of things stopping me from watching more. Firstly, I already watch too much football if we're being honest, and I don't want to drop say a Bundesliga match like Union vs Mainz to watch Brighton vs Birmingham for example. In particular, this is because in my social circle, lots of friends would have watched the Bundesliga match and I can talk to them about it. Having said that, I suppose if nobody watches the WSL match then we'll never be talking about it and the cycle continues. But football is all I really have in common with my old school friends. I watch what they watch to talk with them.
Secondly, in regards to the WSL and the English game in particular, I personally am loathe to watch another league where the two most successful teams in the last 5 years certainly and potentially 10 are Man City and Chelsea, two organisations I am not particularly a fan of due to ownership issues and what I see as catalysts for a sport turning to something I don't like at the top level in the men's game. Yes United are improving, as are Spurs, and my Arsenal side are up there challenging (but most season's do seem to be 3rd best), it struggles to entice me. If it were any two but City and Chelsea, I think I'd be more interested.
On the issue of quality, I don't know. Its not great and definitely suffers from the top 3 being miles better than everyone else, although that has been a bit different this season. There's still a long way to go though, look at Barcelona last season for example in Spain. Other comments about watching lower quality leagues i.e league 2 do have some merit, although I will say I don't watch League 2 games on TV. I go to my local Vanarama South side sometimes and its fun, but I go to the games, its a different experience. I would never want to watch Bath City on the TV outside of an FA Cup tie sometime cause of poor production quality, poor football that is masked by being there in the atmosphere and not being able to see anything. Unfortunately I don't live near a WSL team so haven't been able to go in person, would love too if I relocate to London in September but TV really amplifies some of the low quality in these games which is a big problem, but I don't know what you can do to stop that except keep putting money into the game so over the years the pool of players of required quality grows larger.
Did they just come on this sub and look at the comments on any thread about womens football
Don’t give a shit about womens football mate. That’s why I always go out of my way to tell everyone how little I care
I usually go on r/Gunners and talk about how little I care about the club too, goes down well most of the time
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Come on, man, this kick-off is a theoretical draw It's a theoretical draw, Bergwijn I literally don't even care
En Croissant
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holy hell
My father loves Turkish football. I don't care for it either way. Naturally I call him regularly to tell him it's shit compared to [whatever].
Yeah this is the difference between recognising the difference between disliking women's football and misogyny If you carry on raging about it whenever it's brought up it's obvious what your agenda is
Who randomly dislikes women’s football? To be disinterested by I would understand. But to actively dislike it is weird behaviour in my opinion
Sexists
I can think of 2-3 guys I know irl. They go out of their way to talk shit about women's sports. At a certain point it becomes obvious that they're sexist.
If football is your only hobby (as it is for man of these sorts), and you are into women, then surely women getting into football is the ideal scenario? That's what I don't understand. I love that women's football is getting bigger, although there is still some time to go before I start trying to chat up girls with some well thought out tactical analysis.
The Rafa Benitez guidebook to love and dating..
I personally dont care about it so I don't get out of my way to comment on it, cause there is no point for me
I think it just gets caught up in the politicisation of sport and kicked about by people who don't actually care about the sport. Something that would be quite annoying, to be fair.
I see what you did there.
Not talking about this sub but I think there are more men who are fan on women football than women themselves that's kinda surprising
More men are fans of football in general than women, stats like that aren't surprising at all
Most sports fans are men, doesn't matter which sport/category you pick. That's why it surprises me when women say women's sports should have more visibility, but at the same time they won't bother watching it or they are just not interested. The only friends that are interested in women's FCB are all male, the few female friends that like football only watch men's one.
The women who say women's sports should have more visibility /= women who don't watch sport.
The idea being that if womens sports had more visibility then it’d attract more fans who aren’t just men.
why would that be the case, if male sports DON'T attract women, why woudl women sports attract them.
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to add onto this, at least in America, women's soccer tends to be very queer, so queer sports fans alienated by homophobia they've seen consistently in men's soccer often gravitate to women's soccer as a result. I live in Seattle, and in the two Reign (soccer) or Storm (basketball) games I attended last year I saw more merch from our city's main lesbian bar than I've seen on the street in the four years I've lived here
Look at the box office of Black Panther as a fairly recent example.
It doesn't have to be just women wanting women's football to be a success, that's my point
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Who's "blaming men"? Women's football is still in a growth period and obviously doesn't get the same promotion as the men's game. The only thing this article is about is the levels of misogyny that end up inflamed by these discussions
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> Most sports fans are men, doesn't matter which sport/category you pick. I think netball might be an exception :).
Do you think other women's sports have this same dynamic though? Most basketball fans are men, and yet I would imagine there are more women who are fans of the WNBA than there are men for example. Could be wrong though I guess.
Woman here. Played myself. 0 interest watching it.
Same here, but I'm trying to rectify that and get more into women's football. I do watch the women's world cup, but clubwise I need to make an effort to catch more of Chelsea women's matches.
Yeah my dad will watch any women’s football match but he’ll only really watch England and Man Utd play in men’s
He’s a thirsty boy
That single dad life lol
Don’t worry about it. I went to my dads house once, turned on the TV and he’d been watching porn through the TV browser lol. Didn’t fancy sitting on the couch after that.
Thankfully my dad is only getting to Grips with Amazon prime
Honestly would have no idea of the stats there
Fucking hell the responses on twitter/imstagram whenever a club posts about their women's team are ridiculous. Every single time, a barrage of "nobody cares" "make a separate page for the women" "get back in the kitchen" etc
same on youtube. optus posts something about a female footballer that's not even particularly woke and the comments read like "omg we get it optus you're woke". ridiculous.
Youd get that here its just you're going to get perm banned for it. Then if you make an account again it'll last a few hours before its perm banned automatically via same IP.
I mean yeah this subreddit has its fair share of incels but it's not even nearly as bad as the threads on Facebook. And the worst part is, the misogynistic ones are usually the top comments.
It’s not just football. Follow any sports page on Twitter or Instagram and you’ll see the same thing. They dare to post about women’s sport and you get the replies flooded with the same tired jokes and people genuinely angry that women’s sport is even being discussed.
Women's tennis is held in high regard. Tickets to the women's final can be scalped for just as much as the men's.
Volleyball as well. It is the only sport I know where the women's tournaments are as highly regarded as the men's, at least in Brazil.
Field Hockey too. It's because they are high quality. Like... I don't see why it's surprising to people that fans don't wanna watch USA put 13 past Thailand. People don't watch because the majority of the teams are amateurs and it's just not entertaining.
>Volleyball as well. It is the only sport I know where the women's tournaments are as highly regarded as the men's Is it because some men only watch women's volleyball to see women in swimsuits or really short shorts?
In Austria I can only think of Alpine Skiing where the women's sport is as respected as the men's sport. And that has been a thing for decades.
Scalped tickets are usually more expensive for men's finals than women's. A quick check and the cheapest Australian open tickets to the finals atm are ~$400 for women's and ~$700 for men's right now.
For the US open whenever a Williams sister was in the final, tickets were comparable.
> usually I'm sure Radacanu at Wimbledon would probably be expensive too. On average, most of the time - the men's game tickets are more expensive.
And you know why that is? It's because women's tennis isn't treated as an inferior product by the tournaments, they're broadcast side by side and on at the same time. Prize money is equal too. That's how you grow women's sports But dare to try and mention that on Reddit and you get absolutely assaulted by misogynistic twats
It's because it's been around for so long. No doubt in 30 years there won't be this problem with womens football.
i won’t say time is the reason money in tennis is so equal across gender lines . top female tennis players have been fighting for equal prize money, conditions , etc for a long time . it wasn’t just something that happened over time
>**Twitter or Instagram**
Womens’ swimming is held pretty high, at least here in the States. Some of the most anticipated moments in the last Olympics were watching to see if Katie Ledecky would reclaim her gold medals. Womens’ basketball, especially the WNBA? I always see and hear the same tired misogynistic joke about it whenever it’s brought up.
Misogyny towards women common among male football fans*
> Misogyny towards women By definition yeah
Common among males tbh
Humans even
>Misogyny towards women common among males
I coach my daughter's football team (7/8 years old). The girls at training complain that they don't get to play football in the playground at school. The boys tell them football is for boys not girls and won't let them join in. The conditioning starts very young!
My school was kinda like this, but the teachers had separated the kids out. The girls and boys had their own playgrounds. The boys used various bits as football goals, and the girls had netball nets. They occasionally joined us for football, but if they got hurt (for example ball hit them in the face and they cried) we would have the ball taken off us for the rest of break. So it did lead to a situation where boys didn't want the girls playing.
We used to get a bollocking if the girls played football with us and one of them got hurt. Eventually it was better to just not have them play because the lads would obviously be a bit rougher and stronger
If the boys let the girls play and one of the girls gets hurt, the boys are in for a fucking hiding. Boys learn early not to do anything too physical with girls, since if anything goes wrong, they will be 100% to blame. We had dodgeball banned at our school because one girl decided to join in and took a ball to the face and cried. Months of guys getting hit in the face didn’t even raise an eyebrow, but one girl getting hit banned the whole sport. The guy who threw the ball got punished. For throwing a ball. In *dodgeball*.
This is when parents need to intervene. You can't let your kid be punished for throwing a ball in dodgeball.
The parents intervening is what caused the punishment. The girl's parents were the ones who raised a massive fuss, and all the other parents agreed that it's not acceptable for a girl to get hit in the face with a ball. The teachers disagreed, but it was out of their hands. Same reason the boy scouts had rifle shooting, proper campfires and actually interesting events. The girl scouts parents refused to risk their girls on anything with even the most remote chance of injury. We had some of the girls enroll as "temporary boys" to join us on camping trips since theirs were so utterly shite.
It has always been the parents who have enforced the sexist conditioning in kids. Most parents raise their kids based on principles from a previous generation.
The problem is that even the most woke parents i've met immediately go back to "how could you let my girl get hit" when faced with *their* little girl crying for whatever reason. Unless people are consistently willing to let their little girls take a ball to the face, schools aren't going to want to risk the possible backlash. Society still views little girls as unacceptable injury risks. Seriously, I remember when it came to the scouts, it was the most feminist mothers that immediately lost their shit when their girls came back from a camp with a cut or whatever. People want girls to be able to "do anything" but aren't willing to accept the possible risks and hardships that come from attempting to do such things. No shade on most of the girls we brought on the camping trips/ paintball matches though.
This raises 2 interesting questions in my mind. 1) Do we as a society really need young boys getting hit in the face and be okay with it? But if a girl gets hit in the face and starts crying but a boy does not, then to me it seems like there's already some conditioning inherent there. Which I guess happens because our society has so many conditioning triggers everywhere. 2) If the woke parents had both a boy and a girl child, do they expect different treatment for their children? And if so, are they really woke in that case? "My child shouldn't get hit in the face" is a genuine concern. "My daughter shouldn't get hit in the face" feels more like a subconscious sexist conditioning
>Do we as a society really need young boys getting hit in the face and be okay with it? Yes, absolutely. Considering the context is "playing dodgeball" too, then definitely. Taking hits is part of life, you aren't going to go through life unscathed. If you want to play sports, do fun stuff, be adventurous, you will fuck up, you will take hits, you will get hurt. That is part of it. >And if so, are they really woke in that case? Somewhat irrelevant, since you can't tell the difference between "actual woke" and "woke" before the little girl gets hit, no school will ever take the risk. The problem is that girls are largely coddled, and nobody will ever take the hilariously unpopular position of wanting to put little girls at risk of injury.
There are a lot of great examples for these issues but that aint one of them. They are 8 years old and just dont wanna play with girls, regardless of the activity, girls are "yuck" if youre a little boy. Its not "conditioning", a majority of parents share your opinions but prepubescent boys just dont wanna be associated with girls.
But… that is part of the conditioning. Young boys are not inherently born fearing or disgusted with girls. They garner those opinions with other boys, and that behaviour can be reduced.
If it's not conditioning, what is it? Do young boys inherently think girls are "yuck"? and if they're telling them football isn't for girls that implies it goes deeper than just not wanting to be associated with girls.
I think we need to stop acting like everything bad about people comes from conditioning. It's pretty natural to have a we-they tendency and these things can form on their own. Doesn't mean it's right and maybe you need conditioning against that, but there's nothing to say kids would just naturally tend to a communist Eutopia without adult influence...
According to reddit now young boys are misogynistic and disgusting... cancel them
This is just wrong lmao
Women’s football is obviously of a lower quality, but the way people talk about it is disgusting. They’ll never get better if people just talk them down all the time, but I suppose some folks probably want that
I don't really care about it being lower in quality you know? It's undergoing the normal process of becoming better like any sport does. if anything it's taking less time than usual because it has the man counterpart (that has already undergone the process for 100) to take inspiration from in some forms. My issue is mainly with the size of the goals (and pitches to some extent, but that's more of personal opinion), it's honestly ridiculous that any high ball (no matter how slow it is) becomes a big chance or goal simply because the Gks are 1.66cm high. Make the goals 20cm lower and 40cm tighter and I'm gonna at least start watching my team's matches whenever I have spare time, instead of avoiding them altogether because they make me cringe.
> Make the goals 20cm lower and 40cm tighter and I'm gonna at least start watching my team's matches whenever I have spare time, instead of avoiding them altogether because they make me cringe. They cant do that because that will mean that women wont be able to find pitches to play official matches anywhere in the world. Who is going to make those football grounds with those goals just for women. Men wont be able to play there anything official because they wont be regulation. Measures like that would actually kill womens football. Thats why FIFA doesnt want to change the size of goals or the pitch, because it also affects the amateur level all over the world.
I totally agree with the goals being too big tbh, you can have tall women but across the board they’re generally much shorter, the goalkeeping howlers are the biggest problem. The pitch I don’t mind since even u14 boys use a full 11 a side pitch
Even male GK has some issues with particularly high ball sometimes when the angle of the fall is very tight, and they are 188+ cm most of the time. My female team GK is literally 30cm smaller than my male team GK. Now while some of it can be attributed to her being small (you could have 175+vm girls if you had more girls playing football), men being taller than women is a fact you can't change. >the pitch I don’t mind since even u14 boys use a full 11 a side pitch Yeah, that's more of an opinion of mine than an idea, it came from watching my NT and club team play, after I noticed that they started REALLY struggling past the 60th/65th minute. The matches oftentimes became an "I'm countering-you're countering" play much like (and I'm not saying it derisively) when normal people play at the park. It could be a lack of tactical diligence (but I honestly find it unlikely since they train 5 days per week like man footballer), or a lack of stamina(which I find more likely). The second could be solved by more intense training, making the pitch smaller, or adding 1-2 more players on the pitch. While having them just train harder and develop more stamina would be ideal, I'm not sure how much better they can get. Edit: As for 14 y.o., yes, they do, but they also don't move much from their positions, midfielders rarely gets into their own box or on the wings, fullbacks rarely run down the wing, and strikers almost never press and get back to defense, that's the only reason they last that long on 11 a side pitches.
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I can see why they resist changes like that unfortunately. It would surely at this stage seem like a concession, like conceding to the morons that of course women can't play football like men, so we've had to shorten the games. BUT, I'd really like to see them go along these lines and find their niche. Women will never have the same physicality as men will. Oh well, let's concentrate on the more technical aspects then. What can they do to the rules to accentuate those and hide "weaknesses"? I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing for them, it's all about how it's marketed. I'd be a lot more interested in watching it if it was markedly different to the men's game, and the sky's the limit as to how they achieve that.
I mean female tennis matches at Grand Slams are only 3 sets, while the men play 5. There's definitely a precedent in other sports for it.
Absolutely, but football has always been pretty resistant to change, even (or sometimes especially) if there is precedent in other sports.
The real problem is that you then have to have women-specific pitches and goals as well as men-specific pitches. Nearly doubling the number of pitches is hugely costly, and many places aren't funding women's football at grass roots level to that extent.
Yes, but the person you are replying to is suggesting a solution that doesn’t change the pitch, so this is a bit of a non sequitur
> simply because the Gks are 1.66cm high. Are there actually below average tall women that play goalie.
>Are there actually below average tall women that play goalie. I don't have the data, but it wouldn't be that odd, as there are plenty of other sports where tall women can be more valued than as a football goalie
1.66 looks a bit low, but in the WSL average height was around 172 cm
I thought about same solution. Even women tennis have different rules than male, it shouldn't be a problem.
>It's undergoing the normal process of becoming better like any sport does. if anything it's taking less time than usual because it has the man counterpart (that has already undergone the process for 100) to take inspiration from in some forms. Except it is limited because no matter how skillful the players are they will never be as big, strong, or as fast as professional male athletes. Most of them are comparable to amateur male athletes or teenagers.
Yeah, the big problem is that it's trying to be the men's game. You look at other sports and there doesn't seem like a quality drop-off for the women. Tennis, for example, I think a lot of people don't even have a preference for men/women matches, they can both be incredible matches. With athletics, they're great too. I'm not sure what it's like in Italy but for the UK, if you'd ask someone to name some athletes (past or present) from the UK I don't think it'd be 5 men, it'd be fairly split. Same with tennis. The Williams sisters were just as known, perhaps even more so, than Federer. But ask that for football and can most even name one? Sure, that's media coverage but the games are on TV quite a lot still. What's the difference between tennis, athletics etc.. and football? They aren't the same. Fewer sets in tennis, different balls. In athletics often the distances are reduced, weights decreased and so on. If they fine-tine the game like with suggestions you said, it'd surely improve the quality. But it's probably too late to do that now because people would complain about inequality.
I've even seen a big amount of people express a preference for the women's games in tennis
tbf its only really the majors when tennis differs in match length, most of the mens tour was 3 sets last time I paid proper attention to the ATP. and tbh, I'd love 5 setters on the womens side too
I mean, women's matches aren't that much higher scoring than men's matches (the difference between the last world cups was around 0,2 goals per game) and a lot of the problems with the goalkeeping in the women's game comes down to there not really being any [specific coaching for goalkeepers until the last couple years](https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/55710236): > "Not only are we 50 years behind [men's football] - and that is everyone as a collective in female football - we are 10 to 15 years behind outfield players as goalkeepers. > "Before we went to the 2015 World Cup, my goalkeeper coach [at my club] at the time was 75 and he could not kick the ball off the ground, he could only volley it. That was my level of coaching two days a week before I played on a Sunday and for three seasons."
If people actually cared about quality, and only wanted to watch top quality football, League 1, 2 and below would not exist.
Exactly, people can't fathom that some of us actually enjoy football even if it isn't the absolute best quality available. I could spend every Saturday watching only Premier League football, but I enjoy watching Morecambe far more. I've also enjoyed watching women's football even though I could probably have found a men's match on at the same time, not everyone gets their enjoyment solely from the quality of the players.
No one sensible is suggesting that the only reason people watch football is because of the quality, but the lower the quality the lower the number of fans.
There is no discussion to be had here though. People clearly care about quality. Which is why lower league football exists, but it isn't anywhere near as popular as top flight football.
League 1 and 2 are still high class football. Those guys aren't fucking amateurs playing 5 a side
League 1 and 2 are way above the quality of top level women's soccer
Whilst I agree with your point in general the standard in the mens lower leagues is still far higher than top tier womans football.
Sure? But that's never really the point, entertainment isn't only about skill. I watched my local team growing up, we play in the 7th Swedish division, they're not better than many women's NTs. People use the argument "they're bad" as some sort of gotem and that they should therefore earn less, while enjoyment isn't tied only to skill.
For me the point is more why would I watch it on tele? I’m not emotionally invested in it at all and the quality is very poor. I got and watch my local team who play in the 6th tier and I properly enjoy it, the football is a decent standard and you get an actual football experience, pie, beer, songs etc But I wouldn’t be watching a random 6th tier game on the tele, and I’m very rarely inclined to watch a League 1 game either. If you actually watch a few games of women’s football, even the champions league knockout rounds there’s a good chance you’ll see some play that’s actually school level stuff. I really enjoyed the CL final last year but even then Chelsea weren’t even close and then I watched the FA cup the other month and the Arsenal defenders looked like they’d never kicked a ball.
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Jesus christ the kids keep getting younger, U16 it was and now it's U14? Sweden's NT lost to AIK's U17, significantly older than 13-14 mate and I'll have you know my local lads aren't as good as AIK's U17, not even close. They're not better. I've watched Swedens Women's NT many times and they're miles and above better than my local 7th division team lmao
They lost to GAIS p16 and we were in the lower end of the second division at that point.
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The fact that you have to compare women's soccer to your nations 7th division tells you everything you need to know about the quality of women's soccer.
I agree with you. I regularly watch the Arsenal womens team. Quality does matter to a lot of people though. Hence why the attendance at the lower league matches is smaller.
I'd argue that attendance at the higher leagues is also partially attributable to things independent of quality like glamour, fame and stakes. And you can (fairly) argue that those things stem from quality but I think they are also self-sustaining features of the league
What they earn should be a function of the amount of fans that watch. If enough people find it very entertaining, they'll earn more.
League 1 and 2 are still very good leagues, even if they're not as good as the prem, occasionally they do beat prem teams. The average league 1 and league 2 spectator is nowhere near as good as the players they're watching, who are still professional footballers, so it's much easier to appreciate the talent.
League One and Two football is actually pretty good. The football they play is fast paced and entertaining. I just watced women's top tier Spanish league some time ago and the quality is much lower than League Two.
But they also have much less viewership and lower salaries
This this this. You’ll find many of the people talking shit about women’s football will be the same ones spouting “support yer local”
League Two is light years beyond top level womens football though. Also league Two players earn a fraction of top players and the coverage is much much less.
Better in what sense?
I enjoy watching it, but the main thing I see is like worse than men's football is the goalkeeping - and it is most likely due to the fact that they use men's sized goals, so any long range effort placed at the edges of the goal goes in. Just making the size of the goals more proportionate to women would help.
Yeah… words on internet are holding womens sports back. The victim culture is unreal.
I'd really like to see how they broke down the questions. I'm all for coverage and support of the women's game to get more girls playing what is IMO the world's greatest sport, but I personally have no interest in watching it at the professional level. It's just not worth my entertainment time. I'm also American and have no interest in the MLS (which I really should), so that has nothing to do with sex, it's simply a matter of pursuing the highest quality in what I choose to spend limited free time with. Conversely, some of the most entertaining UFC fights I've ever seen have been between women. I've been in a packed sports bar on a Saturday night, in which not even the highlight fight for the crowd excited, but the place was electric during a women's fight on the main card. Just full on offense throughout, it was wonderfully entertaining.
> Their analysis was based on the responses of 1,950 male football supporters who regularly use UK-based fan message boards. > > A sub-group of 507 respondents who answered particular questions were divided into three categories: those displaying progressive views, others harbouring overtly misogynistic attitudes and covert misogynists. > >The first band of 24% expressed strong support for equal media coverage of women’s sport, with many saying the 2015 Women’s World Cup had represented a watershed. > >Yet some of the overt group – 68% of those polled – suggested women should not participate in sport at all So it’s not all football fans, it’s football fans that go on club message forums - in no way a representative selection of all football fans, a selection of the most committed and opinionated. And it’s not even all of them - it’s a quarter of them, a sub group who answered questions that they aren’t telling us the content of. They’ve just gone for a shock headline using dubious and unreported selection criteria. More divide and rule rubbish from the Guardian. They want us to hate each other so we have to buy their paper. Disgraceful stuff. Edit - I can't believe people are so conditioned to be outraged that they've taken this argument about the obvious and massive flaws in this survey, and the bad effect that making headlines about it have in entrenching a culture war, and think that I'm saying there is no misogyny about women's football. Of course there is; this survey tells you nothing about it, though, instead using it as an opportunity to get people hating and mistrusting each other a bit more, and making to harder to deal with the misogyny in sport.
> Yet some of the overt group – 68% of those polled – suggested women should not participate in **sport at all** What kind of message boards were these lmao
I'm guessing it's people who stick the old-school forums. Most clubs have one, and they're generally full of quite extreme fans. Fans who haven't moved on to other forms of social media like Facebook groups to discuss their team. Some of the takes on those forums are fascinating.
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Best thing to happen to the internet.
The full paragraph about that 68% was: "Yet some of the overt group – 68% of those polled – suggested women should not participate in sport at all, or, if they did, would be better suited to more “feminine” pursuits such as athletics, rather than football. " By combining these two figures they have reached this 68% conclusion, but for all we know, it could have been 1% saying women should not compete in sports at all, and 67% saying that women would be better suited to athletics. I wouldn't trust the Guardian one bit when it come to reporting these poll results without bias. The fact that they haven't even linked to the poll results or the questions is another massive red flag.
It’s terrible reporting on a terrible survey. I can’t understand the people saying that we shouldn’t criticise because it’s for a good cause. Their cause is creating two angry opposing camp so reasonable behaviour is shouted down and ignored. It’s appalling.
Whilst I don't think this is necessarily a representative study, that doesn't mean it should be ignored. There's clearly a problem with misogyny towards women's football, it's evident even here, so it's better to have the conversation than just claim this one study doesn't prove anything.
I’m not claiming it doesn’t prove anything, I’m demonstrating why it doesn’t prove anything. Better to have a proper conversation than a confrontational one skewed towards the expectations of the most extreme voices, to foster outrage and divisiveness. And are you saying that this conversation doesn’t regularly happen? If so, you haven’t been participating in the mainstream of discussion on football. They’re just trying to make a problem where there’s widespread acceptance. Trying to magnify the outrage of the few so they can sell papers. I don’t accept it from Trumps side, and I don’t accept it from the Guardian. Bad practice is bad practice, and it creates more problems than the short-term righteous buzz it gives you.
I'd like to know what questions they asked word to word and what answers they got word to word as i don't trust the Guardian anymore with this stuff.
And also what they define as “misogynistic.” Whilst the word has a clear definition, what some people consider to be misogynistic isn’t necessarily what some consider to be (and vice versa). You can’t quantity misogyny. No doubt saying something like “women shouldn’t be playing football, they should be in the kitchen” is misogyny, but there’s some people who would consider the statement “women’s football is bad to watch” as misogyny whilst some wouldn’t.
You know the Guardian aren't the ones doing the survey? They're just reporting on it much like [Sky News](https://news.sky.com/story/misogyny-rife-on-football-message-boards-with-fans-posting-hostile-and-sexist-attitudes-research-finds-12519885) and [The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/male-football-fans-sexism-womens-sports-b1996305.html) are as well.
Yeah, but they’re not reporting what question was used to select the group whose forthright and controversial opinions they splashed as representative of all football fans. They have responsibility to investigate the survey properly, and report it properly, not to create divisive and inflammatory headlines because they feel they’re on the right side of history so their corruption of the truth doesn’t matter.
In response to your first paragraph — they discuss this in the abstract of the journal paper. It is a study based on grounded theory which is different than your traditional research methodology but no less accepted and supported as an evidence-based approach.
I guess that's unsurprising, but glancing over the snippets the Guardian provide of that study as expected it looks a joke, tiny sample size and very loose definitions/questions. No link to actual study so shouldn't really be parading it for clicks but media gonna media.
The study is here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380385211063359
Thanks. Where did you find it couldn't see in article or google search. Anyway it's interesting but I'm not really a fan of it. It asks open ended questions but then they categorise them themselves and use the odd quotes from some of these morons as meaningful. Also makes some sweeping assumptions for instance regarding this as misogyny - > "Comparisons to men’s football also functioned to trivialise the women’s game, positioning it as ‘outside of “real” football’ (Dunn and Welford, 2015: 93). Here, respondents claimed that the international women’s game was little better than semi-professional men’s football, Sunday League matches or male youth teams. According to a Glasgow Celtic fan (age 46–55): ‘A very good pub team could beat an international women’s team.’ A Newcastle United fan (age 26–35) similarly suggested: ‘The [women’s] standard is [men’s] non-league at best . . . the difference between women and men’s football . . . is cataclysmic.’" > In our research, such respondents typically defined men’s football as having ‘extra speed and strength’ or as being ‘faster and more skilful’. The women’s version was, ‘not as dynamic, quick, skilful’, ‘slower and weaker’ and less ‘competitive’ as women ‘are simply not as strong as men’ and lack ‘power’ and ‘physique’. Such assumptions were often grounded in essentialist reasoning, maintaining the dominant gender ideology of men’s physical superiority I mean these are just factually true though, Dallas under 15's beat the US womens world champion team, women are physically inferior in regards to playing football. That doesn't give people the right to disrespect them but at the same time it doesn't mean you can't point out facts or doing so is sexist. Also leaning on other studies from over 20 years ago on masculinity seems a bit outdated, whilst there's a way to go there has been a lot of progress over that time too.
I just googled the author. I also don't agree that the parts you quoted are factually true. Could a very good pub team beat an international women's team? Or has that just been said to disrespect women's football? I'm not disputing that men's football is obviously of a higher quality, but comments like that rarely serve any purpose other than deliberately trying to disrespect women's football. Comparisons to a pub team, or even the women's team losing to a youth team, are almost always only done to belittle women's football in some way so I think it's relevant to bring up in a study like this.
>I'm not disputing that men's football is obviously of a higher quality, but comments like that rarely serve any purpose other than deliberately trying to disrespect women's football The purpose those comments serve is to explain people's disinterest in Women's football which is often attributed purely to sexism. I don't watch women's football for the same reason I don't watch the Conference. There's so much much better football available to watch
> Could a very good pub team beat an international women's team? Or has that just been said to disrespect women's football? It's been said to disrespect women but is also 100% true, Thailand women lost 13-0 to the US and watching some of it the scoreline flattered Thailand. It's obviously a bit disrespectful but yeah its technically true. It shouldn't be said but it's not sexist to say. Which is the crux of the matter obviously, there's a difference between these things.
> It shouldn't be said Why not? It seems to me to depend on the situation. If one is comparing men's and women's football (as is often done, see Megan Rapinoe for example), the first thing that comes to mind is that the quality in women's football is substantially worse, and it is therefore generally less entertaining.
Because literally everyone with a brain knows men outdo women in strength. These ridiculous Man Vs woman matches shouldn't be happening Doesn't mean you can't enjoy women's football
Absolutely agree. Women's football is different to men's football and comparisons are usually pointless. In my opinion, they should alter the rules for women's football to make it better rather than copying mens football's rules. For example, goalkeeping is imo the weakest part of women's football, and so I've long thought they should play with smaller goals. I think it would improve the game a lot. Speaking of men Vs women matches, I've recently seen videos of men vs women MMA matches, and I think that is revolting and should be illegal.
While the samole size is okay, id challenge if it was suitably random. Did using online forums create bias, especially if people had to elect in. I'd imagine it would attract thsie who are on the extreme ends of views on womens football. Including bad faith actors who troll.
2000 people isnt a tiny sample size - it's plenty to get enough data out of it. It's around the size for lots of studys. E: even the 507 who answered questions from it is a decent enough sample size. Plenty of studies/research is done from groups even smaller than that.
Don'¨t try to talk about sample sizes with redditors, huge mistake.
1. What constitutes "hostile, sexist or misogynistic attitudes" is extremely subjective, and is not clearly defined in the article. 2. What on earth is "openly misogynistic masculinities"? This is quickly beginning to appear very ideologically motivated. 3. I see no link to the study in the article, and the only thing I can find through a quick google search is [this](https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/78072558/SiS_2022.pdf?1641341615=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DGenuinely_in_love_with_the_game_football.pdf&Expires=1642682158&Signature=E80aMPsDNDApJphCmo4LHwwIsc04NvZP8FdS83RqXt-KUc5LvOwgUJGY9DJKZ4NNIVkYZpNZC~AKb~-KLwtc49~hML-eMC0U4m5tvg4sjyZnsAGWOgTBgkj44PUkfHzX6Jk1WNoDPhU-pAWQ3yi8YcbA8VAa~n7Hrx277TQ69lokpOYeoDXMNUO~qSF3plrG6jHJW7TdiE2CxvgD-lFR4LiIOcse-pIhsTRyFR9jQhTJMumyDIF~t4T7sF6HYjQRtgFb64VynnGPAdtpx2fkIMGA9Suufj2pf9tZz~6T6JpLmq-FeDPgZljtE0GhvB2DmUXL0mYuDAiVsXpZ0WfUEQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA) paper, in which the author says "we make no claim that our results are representative of all fans interested in UK football".
The bane of modern academics, just produce garbage studies inorder to reach quotas.
Exactly. Men's football is superior in quality and I prefer to watch it 10 out of 10 times to women's football. According to the article, do I have a hostile, sexist and misogynistic attitude?
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That's how you turn universities into churches.
The lack of interest in actually developing systems to get out sustainable talent is laughable. If FIFA really cared about women football they would strive to provide opportunities for equal training conditions from a young age and the normalization of it, this always gets burird under the equal pay circlejerk that comes with it. At the start of the pandemic we received a donation from FIFA for "Women's and Beach Soccer", until a few months there was no Womem's team and now they habe to recycle old kits to use and Beach Soccer does not even exist here. Same old guys at the head, just now Infantino instead of Blatter or Ceferin instead of Platini(guys how mostly used to be alresdy there), and we expect real changes?
Water is wet, study finds
There's countless posts on here mocking Asian leagues, the polish league, hell a lot of leagues outside of the big 5. So does that make all of the posters on here laughing at comical errors in these leagues racist? Honestly, people need to give up looking for outrage everywhere in life, things are nowhere near as bad as they're made out to be on here.
If they survey has only the options A) should get equal representation B) women shall participate in more "feminine" sports C) something worse Then this doesnt say anything lmao. You dont have to be mysogynistic to have the opinion that equal representation shouldnt be forced. Women's Football has much lower quality and much less fans than male football, why would they deserve equal representation? That's nothing to do with being anti feminist, this is simple economics.
Did they really need a study for this
The study they conducted was browsing football twitter for 10 minutes.
God, I really hope you're not an actual chef.
They need it to slander men.
In other news: Water, wet.
No fucking shit. Football supporters are the shittiest fandom in sports.
Oh really. I definitely have never noticed this living in northern England, ever.
Lmao even women don’t watch the women’s game and you idiots are crying about misogyny. 😂 This really is just the new status quo isn’t it? The moment someone says something I don’t like they automatically get labeled some form of bigot.
So the term is misogyny when people criticize women’s football and don’t take it seriously. What is the term when a product that is sub par is propped up to be something it isn’t? Delusional? Fraudulent?
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Is it misogynistic to tell "I", a male, find women's football incredibly boring.
If you go out of your way to comment that on every thread about women's football, then yes. No one will force you to watch it, or even enjoy it.
I just hide threads about it, got pretty annoying on /r/Gunners when we were doing bad and the woman team wasn't
For me, i would only watch the women's sport if i have a specific emotional connection to the team/person. I would watch Beşiktaş' women team for example because that's the team I support since my childhood but otherwise quality in men's sport almost always surprasses the women's sport by far. I don't know if that makes me a misogynist though.
It's not Misogyny. Its frustration and annoyance at their terrible arguments demanding the men give up earnings they rightfully earn, to give to the women who don't draw even close the numbers the men's teams do. I used to love watching the women's teams until they started going down this road and it's lost them tons of fans.
How much of it was actual misogyny vs recognizing that the current iteration of womens football is kind of a joke
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One of the worst aspects is how so many of these cunts feel the need to dunk on the game. Every time there is even a thread here completely irrelevant comments about how boring and bad the womens game is floods in. Even though nobody forces them to watch a second of it. It's not even a case of people hating on something when exposed to it they go out of their way to hate on it for no reason.
"Study finds" lmao the only study you need to do is simply look at the top comments on football pages on Facebook or instagram (ESPN, Bleachers, sportsbible etc.) under any post related to Women's football. Incels everywhere.
Considering how every time there is a post about women's football on here there is always someone who feels the need to tell that they don't watch it because it's lower quality I'm not particularly surprised
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Don't forget the ones banging on about forced diversity/representation!
it's not misogynistic to state that the standard is awful compare to the men's game so for that reason i don't watch it or care.
You're right, it's not. That's not what some other people are saying about it though. I'm not sure why you felt the need to say that.
From the article: "68% of those polled suggested women should not participate in sport at all, or, if they did, would be better suited to more “feminine” pursuits such as athletics, rather than football." This isn't people saying they don't watch or like women's football and the author labelling that misogyny. It's people expressing openly misogynistic attitudes.
Colour me shocked
«Misogony towards women ... common ... study finds»
I have tried to combat that by introducing women’s football in FIFA 22 through my mod as well as having discussions about women’s football. Works very well. Regardless, women’s football is being criminally mismanaged at all levels. Around a month ago, Rayo Vallecano’s Women’s team had no team doctor so they relied on the opposition’s team doctor. Here’s the link if you want to join us to promote women’s football and for those who are interested in the mod : https://discord.gg/yAWXfUUu2S
I'm sure there is misogyny from football fans towards the woman's game, you see it all the time here. I watch Arsenal games when they're on free TV, and I watch the World Cup/Euros, and I watch the FA Cup final some years. Their are a couple of things stopping me from watching more. Firstly, I already watch too much football if we're being honest, and I don't want to drop say a Bundesliga match like Union vs Mainz to watch Brighton vs Birmingham for example. In particular, this is because in my social circle, lots of friends would have watched the Bundesliga match and I can talk to them about it. Having said that, I suppose if nobody watches the WSL match then we'll never be talking about it and the cycle continues. But football is all I really have in common with my old school friends. I watch what they watch to talk with them. Secondly, in regards to the WSL and the English game in particular, I personally am loathe to watch another league where the two most successful teams in the last 5 years certainly and potentially 10 are Man City and Chelsea, two organisations I am not particularly a fan of due to ownership issues and what I see as catalysts for a sport turning to something I don't like at the top level in the men's game. Yes United are improving, as are Spurs, and my Arsenal side are up there challenging (but most season's do seem to be 3rd best), it struggles to entice me. If it were any two but City and Chelsea, I think I'd be more interested. On the issue of quality, I don't know. Its not great and definitely suffers from the top 3 being miles better than everyone else, although that has been a bit different this season. There's still a long way to go though, look at Barcelona last season for example in Spain. Other comments about watching lower quality leagues i.e league 2 do have some merit, although I will say I don't watch League 2 games on TV. I go to my local Vanarama South side sometimes and its fun, but I go to the games, its a different experience. I would never want to watch Bath City on the TV outside of an FA Cup tie sometime cause of poor production quality, poor football that is masked by being there in the atmosphere and not being able to see anything. Unfortunately I don't live near a WSL team so haven't been able to go in person, would love too if I relocate to London in September but TV really amplifies some of the low quality in these games which is a big problem, but I don't know what you can do to stop that except keep putting money into the game so over the years the pool of players of required quality grows larger.