By Teresa Petra
When I arrived at LSE two years ago, I was immediately drawn to the Women’s Football Team in the (then) virtual society fair. There was no doubt in my mind that I would join. After all, I had been playing football for six years, and felt that being on the pitch would bring a little piece of home with me to London.
Before one of the first training sessions, as everyone was putting their boots on, an older girl was telling a story. She had told her flatmate that she was going to football practice, and he had asked her if she was any good. For any woman in a male-dominated sport, this is a standard question to be asked. Even so, she felt “like you have to justify your existence all the time”.
Her experience deeply resonated with me – it reflected the way I had been feeling for years. And unfortunately, my time at university has only exacerbated this feeling.
Fast forward two years, and I have taken on the position of the President of the Team. This new task, however, had obstacles from the beginning. The LSESU warned me that we might not be able to afford our training pitches and coaching costs. This shocked me, as this hadn’t been an issue in previous years. Assuming that this was due to the general rising prices in London, I began to enquire whether the Men’s Football Team was facing similar issues with insufficient funds. This was when I found out that there was a wholly different issue at play. We received £900 for the entire academic year, while the men’s team received £4000. When calculated according to the number of members in the respective clubs, the Men’s Football Team received double the amount per player than us.
I met with an SU officer, who reassured me that this was a “complete coincidence”.
I was advised to apply for the SU Fund. A fair enough suggestion. But, equally, it is unfair that women work harder to receive the same funding as men. It is already well-established that women take on higher workloads in the workplace. An organisation such as the SU, which requires committee members to undergo lengthy inclusion trainings, should not be reproducing inegalitarian practices as it did in this regard.
That same week, the unequal nature of women football players was demonstrated again in our away game at Kingston.
Their men’s team had decided to stay back to watch us play and it quickly got rowdy. This was frustrating on its own, but it’s football, so we tried to blend it out. But this got increasingly difficult as their rowdiness turned into ridiculing comments, such as referring to one of our players as “the girthy one” and they began suggestively asking for our players’ names and phone numbers. One of our players described that she felt like “a piece of meat” during the match. It also showed the acute lack of respect that the men’s team had for women playing the very same sport they do.
We asked the referee to tell them to quiet down and he played it down, saying they were being cheeky. Similar comments were made by a Kingston substitute who said, “boys will be boys”. Their behaviour was being excused on the ground that they are ‘boys’ (all university-aged ‘boys’, of course). Does that mean they aren’t responsible for their actions?
The SU made me feel heard in this case and is in the process of helping us file a complaint.
These experiences – and I can assure you there are countless others similar – are extremely frustrating. This is nothing short of unacceptable, particularly in the context where the Football Association (FA) and British University and College Sport (BUCS) claim to be dedicated to the growth of women’s football.
Despite these struggles, there is hope for a light at the end of the tunnel. I went to see England W v USA W at Wembley earlier this year. When I was young, women’s football was practically nonexistent. It is difficult to express what it was like to see thousands of young girls finally having role models to look up to – every single one of them smiling from ear to ear. But, by no means does this mean that the fight for equality is over.
When will women finally feel like they belong in the sport?
