Tackling sexism in football
BSc (Hons) Psychology graduate Lucy Ford shares how dealing first-hand with sexism in football led her to create a new movement to empower women in sport
We want sport to be a positive community where women feel like they're being heard, and they feel like they're being supported by other women as well.
Lucy Bond, BSc (Hons) Psychology
-
?
BSc (Hons) Psychology
-
?
Co-founder and Director of Her Game Too
-
?Senior Business Support Officer at Bristol City Council
-
?Champion for women in sport
I have loved sport, loved football since before I can remember. My mum tells the story of how she found me as a newborn baby sat with my dad quietly watching the 1996 Euros, just taking it all in. Mum knew then I was going to be a football fan!
Encouraged to love sport – but not by all
I'm really fortunate that I grew up in a family where my love of sports was encouraged.
I went to my first game when I was ten – my dad took me. And I just remember everything about it from the score, who scored and just the feeling. I went to a lot of games with my granddad who was a massive Bristol Rovers fan. He attended his first match in the 1950s so his knowledge was just incredible. I really wish I had encouraged him to write a book because he could remember so much information, I was so impressed.
On my 16th birthday, my grandparents bought me my first ever season ticket, and I cried. Because it just meant everything to be able to go all the time. The season before I came to University of Plymouth, I went to all but three away games and we only won two all season!
When we were in lockdown, we couldn't go to games, which was really difficult. When you go to games normally, your outlet would be to go to speak to your friends in the pub after the game. You could offload if your team lost or share excitement because they’d won. Instead, we were tweeting more about it. And through this change I started to notice an increase in sexist comments online towards female football fans and pundits offering their opinion on the game.
My family were so supportive of me and my love of sport. But on reflection, in school it was sometimes the opposite. Boys would tell me I shouldn’t have an opinion on football because I was a girl and teachers would often leave me out of sports-based discussions.
Attending games as an older person I started to notice that you could count on your hands how many women were present on the concourse, there weren’t any sanitary products available and quite often you would get inappropriately touched by a man while in the bar queue. At first you kind of felt like you had to almost accept it because you're a woman in football; you're the minority.
Who is talking about sexism in football?
One of my good friends, Caz, had tweeted about the result of another team. They weren't a rival team, but they had lost 7-2 that day which is a result you take notice of. Her tweet simply said "What's the point of them being in that division? They're losing every week." A lot of people were tweeting the same. The comment attracted a huge amount of abuse and vile comments. The abusive comments weren't just aimed at her opinion but also targeted the way she looked – it was awful. She said that to me if we weren’t in a lockdown at that time, she would not feel comfortable going to games because of the abuse she received.
A question that same friend asked me when we saw each other around three months after the awful online incident had happened: "Do you feel like there is anything out there talking about sexism in football?"
I had just lost my Grandad – my best friend and the reason I was a huge football fan. My friend had taken me to the pub to take my mind off things. When she asked this question, we reflected on the other campaigns we already knew about like Kick It Out for racism and Rainbow Laces for homophobia, but nothing sexism related. And from there we decided to do a video talking about our experiences. We reached out to the girls in our social media community, who had also talked about it themselves. In the end, there were 12 of us in the video sharing the negative comments we had received on social media.
We decided to call the campaign Her Game Too and we chose to launch the video on social media on FA Cup Final Day in May 2021. We put it out, and honestly, I think my life has changed since then – nothing will ever be the same because the moment that video hit, it just went wild. The video got a million views in 24 hours, which still blows my mind to this day, and a lot of people commented and shared their similar experiences. We got support from clubs from that very first day.
We set up a reporting system because we wanted to give people experiencing sexism in football a voice. Even now, almost three years on, we still get reports every single week. We want to be there and support these people; everyone should be able to go to any sport without fear of discrimination and feel that they're in a safe space where they can cheer on their team.
Making football a game for all
The fight for equality in sport isn't over yet, sadly. For example, we had an incident where someone from our own club had created 'Say No to Her Game Too' stickers and put them up at the ground while we were there in the bar, and it made us question whether we could be safe at our own football club. These incidents just encourage us to spread the message that football is a game for all, sport is for all and that's how it should be. It is just a shame that, in 2024, we're still having to fight this fight.
We want to drive positive change, such as encouraging women and girls to get into football in whatever capacity they would like, whether coaching or management or journalism. We want to build a positive community within Her Game Too where women feel like they are being heard and being supported by other women. We should all feel like we're included. I think it is a big thing in terms of what we are all about.
Broader change is needed
One of the big things for us moving forwards would ideally be partnering with everybody in the Premier League and Football League. The number of partner clubs we currently have in the Premier League and Football League is around 72 or 73 and over 250 grassroots partner clubs, which is still growing.
We need to continue smashing those glass ceilings. At the moment, there's only a small handful of women in senior positions within the whole Football League and that needs to change.
We also want to do more around educating people around sexism in football and what it looks like. I've been lucky to do a couple of talks at universities and schools, spreading the Her Game Too message. We would love to do this in more schools across all ages, educating younger boys and girls so we can change people's attitudes and perceptions at a younger age.
It's also important we give more back into grassroots football because the funding is really limited. Grassroots football is really important to the growth of the women and girls' game; however, the funding is quite limited so we are really keen to give back where we can. I don't think the impact of the current England women’s team will be reflected on for a few years – to have been at Wembley when the lionesses won will be something that probably will stay with me for a very, very long time. I cried as much as I would have cried if the England men's team won the Euros.
Help us to grow the movement
We now have player advocates. They are male allies that champion what we're doing. We've got a few at the moment throughout the Football League, and having their backing is really important because they're the ones who have the voice in the changing rooms and with the media. It’s great having their support so they can call out negative behaviour.
Her Game Too has taken its message into other sports such as cricket (initially through Gloucestershire County Cricket Club and Western Storm), rugby union (initially through Bristol Bears) and ice hockey (through Team GB). I think this highlights the impact of Her Game Too, as it is making a difference in other sports, not just football.
We all volunteer our time to Her Game Too alongside our full-time jobs, so we are limited in terms of how much we can do. Hopefully, in the future, we can get to a stage where we can secure funding and be able to do more because we are so passionate about what we do.
We will continue to strive with our campaign so we can continue to make a positive difference in sport for now and for future generations of female football fans.
Understand people and change minds with a degree in psychology
Interested in how people think, act and interact? Discover how thoughts, feelings and motivations shape our behaviour. A hands-on approach to learning across social, developmental, clinical, cognitive psychology and neuroscience will provide you the skills relevant across a range of careers, from education and health to business and the media. Shape the psychology graduate you want to be, and carve out your future in anything from professional psychology to marketing and management.
