Football and the Women's World Cup

Organisation, Media and Fandom

Carrie Dunn

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137567321
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137567338
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Women's football is the fastest growing participation sport in both the UK and across the world, and the 2015 Women's World Cup was the biggest tournament the sport had ever seen. This book explores the experience of fans of women's football who followed their teams in Canada, examining their practices and fan behaviour. How did host cities manage the influx of visitors? And how did fans manage to support their teams, considering the vast amounts of travel expected across such a big country? Dunn also examines the way that the England team is structured and run, relating this to the country's domestic competition, as well as assessing the media coverage of women's football globally. This research is all framed within the author's own experiences of the Women's World Cup, as both an academic and as a sports journalist.

1

Introduction: The Women’s World Cup

Abstract: This chapter sets the context for the 2015 Women’s World Cup and highlights the historical lack of research into women’s sport and women’s football in particular, especially after the 1980s boom in scholarship into the men’s game. It also provides some context for my interest in this tournament, and my professional background in sports journalism and sports academia.

Dunn, Carrie. Football and the Women’s World Cup: Organisation, Media and Fandom. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137567338.0003.

The neglect of women’s sport in society and in academic research

Researchers, feminists and feminist researchers have often failed to focus on women’s sport. Hollis Elkins observed that women have been historically barred from competing, had their sexuality and appearance insulted or permitted only to play a modified version of the “real” (read: men’s) game (1978: 22).

All these factors apply to women’s football. In England, the ban on women playing football on FA-affiliated pitches came into play in 1921, and stood for half a century. Even after it was lifted, the FA were still hesitant to take on the governance of the women’s game. While the Women’s FA ran the game, a separate but affiliated body, a representative England team participated in some international tournaments, but with the rules modified – for example, two halves of 40 minutes were played in the Mundialito, contested during the 1980s.¹ There has also been a constant questioning of female footballers’ femininity and sexuality, creating a tension for governing bodies who want to present the game for mainstream consumption but fear anything perceived to be outside the “norm”.

Even more sidelined have been the fans of women’s sport and their experiences. Sports fandom has carved out an academic niche over the past three decades, but this has focused mostly on male fans of men’s sport. This is particularly the case in the United Kingdom when “sports fandom” and “football fandom” have been practically interchangeable.

These themes will be interrogated during this book as I explore the facets of the 2015 Women’s World Cup.

Why the Women’s World Cup 2015?

Women’s football is the fastest growing participation sport in the United Kingdom and across the world. This book focuses on the England team and England fans at the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada, where I conducted original research on fans of international women’s football and public reaction to the tournament.

I was in a highly privileged position when I travelled to Canada and as I continue to research women’s football, because by profession I am a sports journalist. Women’s international football tournaments on another continent have historically been extremely unlikely to be covered in great depth by the British media; there were a handful of British journalists following the England team in Canada in the group round and early knock-out stages, although perhaps unsurprisingly as soon as they progressed to the semi-final some more journalists flew out.

This was the second Women’s World Cup I had travelled to, following 2011’s tournament in Germany. There had been a certain buzz around the England squad, under the relatively new management of Mark Sampson following the departure of Hope Powell, who had shaped the national team’s set-up over the previous decade. Towards the end of the group stages, I was a guest on a Radio 5 Live programme with a panel of journalists who specialised in women’s football; all agreed that the team’s target would be the quarter-finals and anything beyond that would be a bonus. England exceeded those expectations, finishing third and in the process beating Germany for the first time ever. The British coverage of the tournament expanded as the squad progressed, as did the audience back at home.

There is plenty to analyse when it comes to the future of women’s football in England – but my main focus of research while I was in Canada was the experience of the fans who were following the tournament. I spoke mostly to those who had travelled to watch England, but also to those supporting other countries. I wanted to know how and why they had become interested in women’s football, which continues to take a back seat when it comes to finance and to media coverage; I wanted to know why they had chosen to travel to Canada rather than watch the matches at home; and I wanted to know how they felt about their experience of the tournament.

I was also interested in those people who were fans of women’s football but had not travelled to Canada – was it simply a financially based decision, or were other factors in play that prevented them from that demonstration of commitment to the game and the team?

So I began my research with a short online survey, open to all fans. I asked respondents to indicate which geographical area of the world they lived in, relating it to the FIFA confederation zone that governed it, and the national team they supported, before going on to ask them about their attendance at 2015’s World Cup as well as previous international tournaments. Those respondents who were travelling to the 2015 Women’s World Cup and were willing to be interviewed either in person or via video chat were contacted and suitable appointments were made.

This book draws on the data I gathered during the Women’s World Cup, offering some ideas and theories around how fans are drawn to women’s football. I also highlight some problems in women’s football identified by fans, and the ways they suggest they can be combatted. England and their fans are my focus; but there is some data offering significant and interesting comparisons with other countries around the world.

I begin, though, by setting the 2015 Women’s World Cup in context; by looking briefly at the history of women’s international football; by analysing the recent changes to the structure of elite women’s football in England. I move on to look at the existent research on football fans before focusing on the new and original data I have gained about the fans of women’s international football.

Note

  1   Indeed, this reduced number of minutes was also introduced for the initial Olympic competitions (Williams 2003: 126). Williams (2007: 25) also reports that even after the first Women’s World Cup (or Women’s World Championship as it was referred to at the time) there was a certain amount of concern from some executives and governing bodies that women should not be playing matches of 90 minutes nor should they be playing with a Size 5 ball.

2

The History of Women’s Football

Abstract: This chapter summarises the academic research that precedes this piece of work, focusing primarily on providing a brief history of international competitions in organised women’s football. It draws on the work of the likes of Jean Williams to set the Women’s World Cup 2015 in its historical context, exploring how the tournament has grown since its relatively recent inception.

Dunn, Carrie. Football and the Women’s World Cup: Organisation, Media and Fandom. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137567338.0004.

Reviewing the literature: women’s football in England

In the second half of the 20th century, there was a veritable boom in football scholarship in England. However, this work focused on men’s football and practices of male football fandom, usually violent or other criminal, deviant behaviours. The correlation between working-class men/masculinity and the violence to be found at football grounds was interrogated by several studies from the early 1970s onwards, creating a vast and dominant body of football-focused literature in which female fandom, involvement and experience continued to be pushed aside.

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ (CCCS) Clarke (1978) and Critcher (1979, 1991) both argued that the core values of working-class culture had traditionally been equated with masculinity, aggression, physical emphasis and regional identity, all of which were found within men’s football. Critcher argued that the increased importance placed on spectacle and entertainment led to “traditional” (i.e., male and working-class) supporters’ disaffection from the game, which in turn led to ritualised and realised aggression. Marsh et al. (1978; also Marsh, 1978) argued that football grounds staging men’s football are the sites of rituals that demonstrate the fans’ masculinity (1978: 133); they said that “hooliganism” was misunderstood and misinterpreted, actual violence was rare, and it was “running” (gangs of fans running towards opposition team’s fans with the intent of making them retreat) that was most often seen at grounds. For them, this was not a genuine attempt to fight; rather, in the supposed absence of females to impress, it was a stage to demonstrate physical presence and overpowering masculinity (the “ritualised violence” referred to by Critcher).

Similarly, popular anthropologist Desmond Morris (1981) set out to assess “the soccer tribe”, which he described as “strange and often savage” (1981: 8), making it clear that his research, intended to be “anthropological” and looking at the football fan as a species of animal, was set within this same “law and order” context. He described the game itself as a “ritual hunt” (1981: 15), and as a “battle” (1981: 17), discussing the “aggressive feelings” that emerge and are expressed at men’s football (1981: 19), and once again describing the football supporter solely as male. Evidence in support of these authors’ arguments is based purely on observation and assumption, without data to back up the conclusions; the heavily gendered arguments show the authors’ belief in a possible “biological” explanation for all “disorderly” behaviour – men cannot curb their “naturally” aggressive instincts.

Women are omitted from any examination; their fandom is invisible, for if their presence were acknowledged, these “natural” hypotheses would be proved utterly unfounded.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the “Leicester School” of football research criticised earlier concepts of football disorder, particularly the idea put forward by the CCCS and Ian Taylor that it was a feeling of social exclusion from (men’s) football that made male working-class fans behave in a violent fashion. Their concern was to investigate the so-called subculture of football hooliganism, taking the figurational standpoint that the process of civilisation is ongoing, and currently a de-civilising spurt was affecting the lower working classes, resulting in uncivilised, that is, violent, behaviour (cf. Dunning et al., 1982; Elias and Dunning, 1986; Williams, 1984; Williams et al., 1984), and carried out this research through participant observation and then undercover observation. This period of work continued to largely omit discussion of gender issues involving female fans. The assumption here was that the most significant aspect of football support and thus the focus for study was the opportunity for hooliganism – a phenomenon in which women do not take part, and could therefore be excluded from consideration. They did, however, discuss women’s role in socialisation, arguing that because men have historically been the physical protectors of their family group, they have learnt to be more aggressive (Williams, Dunning and Murphy, 1984: 193); and from childhood, working-class boys and girls are segregated, with girls encouraged to take up domestic responsibilities, leaving the boys in tight-knit gangs which draw attention from the police and from “rival gangs” in the area (1984: 202).

Yet the popular media and academic perception of fans started to alter as they began to take a visible role in the debates over the changes in the game, and collective action came increasingly to the fore; although the football fan was still characterised as male, the traditional view that he was also invariably working class and violent started to subside after the stadium disasters of the 1980s (Heysel, Bradford and Hillsborough). Despite these developments, it took another decade until research into the female fans of men’s football began to take shape (see Pope, 2010 and Dunn, 2014).

Just as female fans have been ignored, there has also been a tradition of women’s football in England being equally invisibilised, most obviously in studies and media which purport to present a full history of the game. Of course, what they mean is that they are presenting a history of the men’s game. Women’s involvement in football has been sidelined away from the “malestream” (Dunn, 2014: 2); it is treated as lesser, as abnormal, and as unworthy of attention.

A few scholars have attempted to rectify this absence and shown quite clearly that, as Bell says, from the 19th century women’s football mirrored the rise of the men’s game (indeed, Williams suggests that the first international women’s football match took place as early as 1881 – see Williams, 2013: 17). Interestingly, though, Bell also argues that women’s football in England has always been more about the experience of playing than spectatorship, and that historically the game did not seek a mass audience; only once the more commercially minded FA took control of the game did this become an issue (2012: 351).

However, this does not mean that women’s football has not attracted large crowds. From the very start of organised men’s football, women’s football operated parallel but often entirely separately; Lopez (1997) recounts a letter sent by the FA to member clubs in 1902, warning them not to play against “ladies’ teams”. Dick, Kerr’s Ladies are perhaps the most famous women’s team of the early 20th century, playing scores of matches around the time of the First World War, ostensibly to raise money for charity. They have been characterised as a “factory team” in the mythology of women’s football, but as various researchers have pointed out, not all of their players actually worked there (see Williams, 2013: 15). Lopez concludes that Dick, Kerr’s Ladies were careful not to present themselves as taking the game too seriously; despite playing some mixed matches, they also played some in novelty costumes, emphasising that their primary reason for participation was simply having fun (1997: 4). Yet as these women were often playing two or more games in a week – alongside their full-time jobs in the factory – it is difficult to really believe that they did not take football seriously. Indeed, the success of the Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was one of the key factors leading to the formation of the English Ladies’ FA in December 1921 (Lopez, 1997: 7). Coinciding with the FA’s ban on women’s football on affiliated pitches, after ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: The Womens World Cup
• 2  The History of Womens Football
• 3  Womens World Cup 2015 Researching the Experience of Fans
• 4  The Experience of England Fans in Canada and in Domestic Competition
• 5  Gender, Identity and Football
• 6  Womens World Cup 2015 The Medias Reaction
• 7  Conclusions: Going Forward
• Bibliography
• Index