Football's women: the forgotten heroes
The stronger women get, the more men love football: sexism and the culture of sport
How women are portrayed in football literature
The role of women in all codes of elite level football has been underrepresented in the literature. The extremes of the maternal nurturing Gaia who helps the boys succeed has usually been juxtaposed with bimbo trophy wife or destructive influence stereotypes. This phenomenon is ironic because in Greek mythology there are many examples of powerful female deities who more than hold their own amongst their male counterparts. Hestia, Athena and Artemis didn’t often appease the male gods with their dutiful subordination, nor did they challenge them without having their own reasons presented as legitimate. Chetwynd argues:
Classical Greek myth tells of three Virgin Goddesses: Hestia who guarded the scared privacy of the home and slammed the door in Priapus’ face; Athene, who, though married to Hephaistos, was unfaithful and ranked with Virgin Queens in their own right; and Artemis, pure unpolluted Nature, as Goddess of the Chase, remains the natural presiding Deity over those recurring dreams of being ‘chased’ or ‘chaste’.
Women’s role in AFL football culture has been marginalized to the point of repressing the essential archetypal power of feminine myth, to the detriment of the development of players, coaches and male fans. The AFL is trying to encourage women to participate more symbolically in the game by instituting a special ‘women’s round’ that coincides with Mother’s Day. One can be cynical and argue that this is just another marketing ploy from the AFL to get higher attendance figures and there is a sense of it being contrived, patronizing even, because it collates the event with pink ribbons, breast cancer awareness and the role of the mother as a guiding, nurturing and conservative force for budding young ‘male’ AFL stars. Conversely, the AFL should be admired for making an effort to recognize some aspects of women’s roles in Australian Rules football.
Sheedy and Brown’s Football’s Women: The Forgotten Heroes is at least a legitimate attempt to acknowledge that women help to define and sustain AFL football culture. The book encourages female participation in football at school level and doesn’t really know where to go from there. It offers some alternative to the mother, fan, trophy partner stereotype, but it generally sees the game through the eyes of the women involved in the game via the deeds of their partners, fathers and sons. A few isolated exceptions include the chapter on female football journalists like Caroline Wilson and Corrie Perkin and the chapters on Joan Kirner, Victoria’s first and only female State Premier. The position on the tribunal of Elaine Canty is also looked at, but the contributions do not have the depth of rigorous academic analysis. This too is a problem because women academics that study football are also ignored.
Perkin’s and Wilson’s stories are especially relevant because these were the first two female football journalists to break the tradition of ‘male only’ access to players in the early 1980s. There is evidence to suggest that Perkin and Wilson have helped forge a pathway for change in the way the game and its participants are scrutinized, challenging the male created myths and archetypes established for 120 years. Wilson recounts her childhood involvement with the Richmond football club, where her father Ian was president. She argues:
When Dad was at Richmond, my sister and I were able to see the other side of football – how football clubs are run and what goes on off the field. There were amazing stories – infidelities and heartbreak, the terrible things people say and do to each other on and off the field. It’s a very immoral world at times and occasionally very hurtful, but it’s just like life. It has enormous high points too.
Wilson has been able to use this experience to write courageous critical articles about flawed heroes like Ablett, Carey and Cousins. This may not have been possible without the discerning female perspective that subverts the myth that what goes on off the field should stay out of public knowledge.
Perkin takes a generally cynical view of the insular male dominated AFL culture. However, she makes a telling observation that seems to be taking shape a decade later. She writes:
Right now the bulk of the current players are between the ages of 22 and 28, so they are children of the seventies. In the seventies their mothers were starting to go back to work after they had their kids. Their sisters were starting to think, ‘I can become a lawyer, and I can do it for the rest of my life with no discrimination.’ So this is the first generation coming through football of enlightened boys, and when those enlightened young players become enlightened men and leaders of clubs, that’s when we will see change.
Perhaps Sheedy’s experiences as a youth played a major role in the publication of this text. He was encouraged to play football by a nun named Sister Rupert and his first coach was a girl, Veronica Nolan, who at 14 years of age coached Sheedy at St Joseph’s primary school. If more young males learn their football under the tutelage of female coaches and succeed, attitudes towards women seem more likely to change more organically and realistically because of their hands-on involvement. This is an area junior football clubs could continue to explore in the future. Knowledge of the game’s intricacies may not be as gender specific as first thought.
Nelson’s The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football: Sexism and The Culture of Sport argues that men seek refuge in football as a way of asserting their manhood away from work and home where the expression of female power has become more accepted. This is a well-researched book with an extensive bibliography and notes from female academics that is worthy of further study. Nelson constructs many compelling arguments that urge readers to question the way sport plays a role in socializing children into gender roles and disconnecting boys from their mothers and daughters from their fathers. She argues:
From the manly sports culture, boys (and girls) learn that men’s games are valued more than women’s games; that men are valued more than women. Both boys and girls enjoy playing sports for the innumerable physical, emotional and psychic pleasures of the game. But boys seem to fall in love with spectator sports as an integral part of falling in love with the masculine privilege that their fathers symbolize.
Female participation statistics belie Nelson’s comments, but there are still predominantly masculine images that inform and shape the game. Television advertising during games vindicates Nelson’s argument.
Women eat KFC, drink beer, drive cars, use mobile phones and go to Bunnings, but the problem is that most of the actors featured in these advertisements and promos are male. Therefore the rhetorical images are designed to capture the attention of the male audience as simulacrum users of the products. They do not show a woman pouring Caltex Motor Oil into her car, nor do they show a woman using GMC power tools or drinking Carlton Draught beer. The only ads that feature women prominently in this group are the mobile phone ads. It is not necessarily the products that exclude women, but the fact that they are presented as objects of male desire and potential male ownership. If we are to take this example on face value, women are seen by commercial television channels as merely passive spectators who watch the game through the filter of the male gaze. Channels that cover footy need to be a little more astute so that their chosen ads reflect the true demographic of their viewing audience. In the process they may sell more products and generate more revenue for themselves and possibly the game.
The AFL has tried to symbolically incorporate the role of women in the game by designating a specific round each season as ‘Women’s Round’. Since 2005 the fixture has coincided with a campaign to raise awareness for breast cancer. Thousands of women descend on the ground dressed in pink ponchos to form the shape of a female in order raise awareness for the disease. In 2005 and 2006 the event occurred at the MCG, while in 2007 approximately 13,000 women made the formation in Sydney’s Telstra Stadium before the match between Sydney and St Kilda. The AFL, through the publication of the AFL Football Record also ensured that this round promoted the AFL’S ‘Respect and Responsibility Policy’, which was launched in November 2005. Dr Melanie Heenan, the AFL’s Senior Project Officer, has played a major role in implementing this policy. In a feature article in the AFL Record, Heenan says:
The Respect and Responsibility policy does involve change. It means promoting the benefits of having healthy, respectful relationships with women. To make sure the footy environment is one that women and girls feel comfortable and safe in, whether they’re umpiring, coaching or playing the game; whether they’re presidents, volunteering at NAB AFL Auskick or screaming their lungs out as spectators.
Heenan also admits that there is a long way to go for many women involved in the game. One issue that could fast track change is the coverage of the role of women in football on a weekly basis in publications like the AFL Record. Perhaps a positive starting point would be for women to write critical feature articles documenting and speculating about the game’s nuances. A series of weekly articles by female authors, journalists and fans would challenge the still tokenistic once-a-year recognition of women’s role in the game. Does AFL have the courage to foster this idea through a publication that would be read by over two hundred thousand football fans each week across Australia? Surely it is time for women to step up and offer analysis and creativity that has not been seen in the game’s writing so far.
The age-old argument is faced by writers like Burton-Nelson and at a local level Caroline Wilson, the chief football writer in the Melbourne newspaper The Age: How would you know if you have never played the game at this level? This question is used against male and female sportswriters as a point of territorial demarcation. However, until very recently women have struggled to gain cultural acceptance into the male dressing room with the same respect as the males, who may not have played the game, but by virtue of their biological make up, are allowed into the inner sanctum. This therefore becomes an issue of blatant gender bias because clubs, players and officials are happy for women to buy memberships or write ‘positive’ stories about the boys on one level, yet when it comes to criticism, they wouldn’t know about much, not only because they have not played the game but because they are women. Burton-Nelson provides some harrowing examples regarding the way women journalists have been treated as sexual objects or outsiders in NFL and NBA locker rooms in the United States. She makes a number of valid observations that deconstruct this male bastion as anything but associated with power and phallic domination. She argues:
The female reporter has the power to make men look bad. She sees them without their armor – football players without their padding. Because some men insist on lingering in the nude, she also sees men’s nakedness. She sees the softness, the fleshiness, the scabs and the pimpled buttocks that these men and their corporate sponsors do not choose to share with the general public. She sees vulnerability. She smells the pungent odours of male exertion. She hears the quivering voices of defeat. She sees tears. She also sees penises. How small they are, or skinny or fat or crooked or mottled or semi-erect. How exposed they are, how defenseless. Not intimidating symbols of power. Just dangling flesh.
Perhaps the most compelling point made here is that a denial of access to male vulnerability is related to a lack of quality writing about football from women at fictional and non-fictional levels.
Author Phil Dimitriadis is a lover of Australian Football, language and reading. This is an extract from his new book, Fandemic, copies of which can be purchased here.
Comments
Terry Logozzo 23 November 2013
The strongest growth area in participation in Aust. Football, amongst all demographics, in the southern states is girls' secondary school football. (Suprisingly, female growth is also very strong, off a small base, in the northern states) Currently, there are about 90,000 registered females(inc. Auskick), and the AFL predicts there will be 200,000 registered females by 2022. The AFL also hopes to have an adult female semi professional national competition by 2020, televised on Foxtel-this possibly might be a summer evening competition. Such a competition would be a massive boost to female participation rates. The VAFA, the biggest senior competition in Australia with about 12,000 senior male players, is also considering introducing senior womens football-also a massive boost.
Many people would like more women's games before AFL matches to raise the profile of women's football, and demonstrate the skills of women players to those of a sceptical disposition. It was reported Mike Fitzpatrick was very impressed with the standard by the women's teams before the Melb./ WB game at the MCG. In recent years in Victoria, two junior girls have won the best and fairest awards playing in boys' comps. Some women kick proficiently with both feet, to the suprise of many.
Huge numbers of females(about 400,000) play soccer, and this number is also likely to increase. The AFL may see female AFL player participation as an opportunity not to be missed, and as a strategic imperative. It is noted that in 1980 very few women went to gyms, or did long distance jogging. Now, many women go to gyms(about 40 %) and , anecdotally, comprise about 40% also of casual joggers. At the recent Melbourne 14 km fun run, women aged 30-40 outnumbered men in this age group, possibly for the first time. At the Aust. version of the international Toughmudder 4 hour extreme obstacle course and long distance run, , Aust. women have the second highest participation rate in the world(after USA).
What does all this mean? Aust . Football has an unprecedented opportunity to genuinely welcome large numbers of women players DIRECTLY into grassroots football clubs, with the betterment of the game's grassroots culture, promotion, administration, public image and financial viability. Senior and junior clubs who have started, or alligned themselves with, female teams have anecdotally reported these benefits. We all know the benefits for grassroots clubs of having women on the committee-a much more harmonious and successful club off field.
The oafish image(rightly or wrongly) that many have of professional AFL players might be ameliorated if more women are directly involved in the game and their standards and perspective are appreciated. The demise of the increasingly discredited notions of "payback" and "what happens on the field, stays on the field" would be hastened. Good sportsmanship would be elevated(although the game has been considerably "cleaned up" since 1990). In 1970, 5% of children were in single parent households-nearly always headed by a female. Now ,about 22% of children are in similar single mother households-these mothers will make the decisions usually on what sports their children will play. Women should be given every opportunity to play football in a welcoming environment-for their own fun, health, enjoyment and financial reward..and for the future growth of Aust. Football. Whilst I suspect the majority of women will never want to play contact football(perhaps many would at least consider non contact AFL 9s), it is now crucial the AFL devotes GREATLY increased exposure and financial resources for female football.
Terry Logozzo 28 October 2014
I have just discovered my figures above for registered female players in football were well out of date!
The 2014 figures are 194, 000 registered female players, numbers more than doubling in 3 years! Intriguingly, Queensland (where rugby league is the dominant sport) has 51,000 registered female players, making it the number 1 state in Australia for female players. Could this very high number be due to the long existence of many females playing touch (non contact only) rugby in Queensland -therefore Australian Football may not be so "foreign"? It should be noted that a large percentage of this 194,000 players are secondary schoolgirls playing in non-contact secondary school competitions.
It is also expected the number of adult female teams may increase in Victoria 2015 from 42 to about 57
Login to leave a comment.