The only woman in the room how much – and how little – has changed over the years for women in football
With the Women’s World Cup this month, The Times sports writer Alyson Rudd examines how much – and how little – has changed for women in football…
The first time I travelled abroad to cover a football match, my fellow journalists, all men, hid my coat in the toilets and teased me constantly, believing that by doing so they were magnanimously including me in their banter.
On another trip, a different group of colleagues, upon seeing me already at the restaurant they had picked, turned on their heels and left. I was told, later, having a woman in their midst cramped their style. I was a reminder of the wives and girlfriends back home, and how they would have not approved of their conversations.
In some ways, it feels as if my own career reporting on men’s football has followed a similar pattern to women’s football. The Women’s World Cup will dominate the sporting schedule until the Final in Lyon on 7 July – but it has been a long and arduous journey for the game to gain recognition and widespread support.
All that “banter” stuff was 25 years ago. It is not like that any more. Back then, my male colleagues would chat to me if we happened to be on our own together, sharing the same train carriage, about their families, mothers with dementia, sons with debts, but as soon as we were joined by others, they would clam up. It was not done to be seen to be friendly with the only woman in the room. Nowadays, a bloke will even ask my opinion about
‘I was once mistaken for a man during a match and was extremely delighted’
a football team in front of his mates. My workplace is a nice place to be.
But one thing has not changed. There are many more women presenting sports programmes but still hardly any write about sport, and football in particular, for newspapers. Of all national paper football reporters, only 1.8% are female.
Given how welcoming the industry is now, this is a huge shame. A vicious circle is at work. A woman might love football and be keen to become a reporter, but sees the sea of stubble while on work experience and balks at the sheer masculinity of it all.
I was offered a sort of inoculation against male domination because my first foray into journalism was covering financial services. There were plenty of female reporters but few female financial executives. I was once invited into a financial services company’s oak-panelled boardroom to interview all its senior staff. I was greeted with astonished stares and told, “You are the first woman to ever enter this room.” I was young enough to find that funny rather than patronising and it was like a practice run for all the press rooms I would enter at football clubs.
I was used to being stared at. Lots of people struggle with change, with something different. I was something different. It helped enormously that I played football. At one of the first matches I covered, a male reporter turned to me and said loudly, “No offence, but how, as a woman, can you know anything about the game?”
I could have stormed out, I could have told him he was being a sexist idiot. Instead,
I drew upon the advantage I suspected I held over him.
“Ah, well,” I replied, smiling, “I play for a men’s team and for a women’s team and, actually, was at training last night and I have a game tomorrow. Do you play?”
Of course he didn’t play. He was too fat, too old, too pompous, but, to be fair, he never questioned my right to report again. I doubt I helped the feminist cause very much with how I used my playing career as a passport to football journalism. Subsequently, male reporters would bemoan the presence of women but add that I was the exception to the rule. In other words, I was practically a bloke, given how often I played the game. And alongside men too. I was once mistaken for a man during a match and was extremely delighted by the mix-up.
The truth is, I write about football because I love it. My two sons aside, all my precious moments revolve around sport. I took a football coaching badge and am a qualified referee. This has helped with being accepted as a woman in a man’s world but, given that many of my male colleagues have not taken such courses, perhaps it makes me more suitable for the job than they are.
The Football Writers’ Association appointed its first female chair this spring. It is an industry that is trying to be more diverse and perhaps one day, young aspiring writers will walk into a press room at a football club and see men and women in equal numbers. Until then, I can at least offer reassurance that a woman’s right to be there is not rudely aired any more and, who knows, perhaps some of the remaining dinosaurs will watch the Women’s World Cup and enjoy it. w&h Alyson Rudd’s novel, The First Time Lauren Pailing Died (£12.99, HQ), is out on 11 July