Beyond the game: Women s football as a proxy for gender equality

Transcription

1 Beyond the game: Women s football as a proxy for gender equality Morris, Ruth and Morris, Ben. Women s football: Played, Watched, Talked about! FREE Conference University of Copenhagen, June 2013

2 This paper is a work in progress. Please do not quote without explicit written permission of the author. Background The inaugural UEFA European Competition for Representative Women s Teams took place between 1982 and 1984 when 16 teams competed for the right to contest a 2 legged play-off final. Since then, the number of teams has increased with each competition. In , the tournament gained European Championship status and in the last 24 years, the competition has seen the biggest increase in the number of national teams competing. In the space of 30 years, an incredible 30 more teams have entered the European Championship. This expansion parallels the European Union. Since the inaugural women s EURO competition, the EU has undergone its second, third and fourth enlargements. Since the mid-1990s, the number of countries has increased dramatically. The fourth enlargement of the EU happened with Austria, Finland and Sweden acceding on 1 st January 1995; Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus joined on 1 st May 2004; and on 1 st January 2007 Romania and Hungary became member states. By the time of the next UEFA Women s Euro in July 2013, Croatia is expected to have joined after completing accession talks, pending approval from all other EU countries. 1 There is clearly no direct correlation between the growth of women s European football and the enlargement of the EU, but this paper argues that football is an indicative tool through which to spectate the changing face of European integration and to consider issues about gender equality on a European level. To have become a member state of the EU, all countries have to respect the values referred to in Article 2 of the EU treaties which are respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. 2 What is of importance for this paper is equality and gender equality more specifically. Values of the European Union Some parallels can be drawn between the EU and UEFA in its guiding principles. Equality between women and men is one of the EU s founding values, dating back to 1957 when the principle of equal pay for equal work became part of the Treaty of Rome. 3 Since 1999, the Council of the EU has adopted a series of indicators to assess gender equality across member states. 4 UEFA has also established certain programmes and policies in order 1 Data from 2 European Union Law 3 The Treaty of Rome 4

3 to support the promotion and development of the women s game. Figures show that football is the number one team sport for women in Europe and that the number of registered female players has risen from some 239,000 in 1985 to approximately 1.8 billion registered players in However the uptake varies significantly between member associations. To address the disparities, there have been numerous initiatives to try to increase the participation across all European countries. UEFA has initiated programmes to promoting the development of the women s game across all of its 53 member associations. UEFA Women s Football The UEFA Women s Football Development Programme (WFDP) was set up to support the extensive progress of the women s game and its strategy is based on three aspects which include governance, image and grassroots 6. In terms of governance, the programme is aiming to help the previously less active association to catch up with the countries that have more established women s structures in place. In December 2010, the UEFA Executive Committee approved significant funding to women s football development through the UEFA HatTrick programme. Through this initiative, each member association is awarded funds annually. An initial pilot scheme saw the distribution of 50,000 to four national associations (Portugal, Italy, Slovakia and the Republic of Ireland). This money was given in 2010/2011 and gave positive results including the Republic of Ireland establishing a national women s league in October Following this success, between July 2012 and July 2016, HatTrick III Women s Football Development Programme has and will continue to award each member association with 100,000 on a yearly basis. In total, this amounts to an investment of 21.2 million. 8 In terms of image UEFA promotes women s football as a game in its own right and as a technical game of pure football. The WFDP aims to raise the profile of women s football by making the game more visible across Europe. It has also helped six specific associations Scotland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Russia and Austria to draft a women s football marketing plan. 9 UEFA has suggested that the focus should be on the top national leagues and should concentrate on building a brand identity through social media for example. The basic goals of the plan are to increase attendances at women s league matches, make the domestic league more attractive and boost revenue streams in the mid to long term future European Club Association [accessed July 2013] 6 Women s Football Development Programme NLOAD.pdf 7 Ireland s National Women s Team Inaugurated

4 In terms of grassroots UEFA agrees that grassroots football is pivotal to the development of the women s game. It suggests that all girls should have the opportunity to play football within their neighbourhood or village, regardless of skill or talent. For the period, all 53 European FAs have submitted projects to either introduce or reinforce women s football in their country. Just over 70% of these proposals relate to the grassroots. 11 Other association initiatives focus on elite women s and elite youth football, marketing and promotion, coaching, and even specific coaching for goalkeepers in one case. The schemes are varied in scope and are tailored to the needs of the specific associations. This brief outline of the work of UEFA and especially the WFDP shows that there are specific policies and programmes committed to promoting the women s game across Europe. Women s association football is played in an increasing number of countries around the world and especially in Europe. For example a House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee (18 th July 2006) identified that football is now the most popular sport for females in England, with more players competing in affiliated competition than any other team sport. The increase in participation has been rapid, with just 80 girls teams in 1993 increasing to over 8,000 teams in the season. 12 Norway has experienced a similar growth. The UEFA website quotes a rise in registered players from 50 in 1976 to 110,000 now. 13 In Germany, despite a DFB ban on women s football from 1955 to 1970, German women had already played almost 150 unofficial and therefore illegal international matches. 14 Indeed the West German team attracted crowds of up to 20,000 people. 15 However, the game still lags far behind the men s competitions. Summary: The paper aims to consider whether the longevity, popularity and support for a given international women s football team is illustrative of gender equality within a given EU member state. Method Search strategy: We entered a set of pre-determined figures relating to 27 EU member states. These fell into three distinct groups. The first of which related to women s football (e.g., number of female football teams), the second were measures of gender equality (e.g., the gender pay gap) 16 and thirdly information relating to specific EU countries 11 UEFA pushing women s game ahead 12 Culture, Media and Sport Fourth Report [accessed July 2013] Ronny Galczynski, Cash Prizes not Coffee Sets, 16 We did not enter data for the UK as there is not a UK national football team as each home nation plays as their respective country. We were also unable to find data for Greece.

5 membership (e.g., length of time as a member). From now on these shall be referred to as variables. Analysis: To determine relationships between sets of variables we produced a correlation matrix. To elaborate further, correlation is a technique for investigating the relationship between two quantitative, continuous variables. Here we used the Pearson s coefficient. This is a measure of the strength of the association between sets of variables. A positive correlation indicates that either variables increase or decrease together, whereas negative correlation indicates that as one variable increases, so the other decreases. The t- test is used to establish if the correlation coefficient is significantly different from zero, and, hence that there is evidence of an association between the two variables is significant (greater than chance). Where data was not available from all 27 members for all variables, these members were excluded from the analysis. For ease of interpretation we have fitted a line of best fit based upon mean values. Results It would be expected that those countries with the most well established women s football teams are also the most gender equal. A precursory glance over the results would support this. For example the FIFA Women s World Rankings arguably provide the most accurate data with which to compare the strength of internationally active teams at any given time. First introduced in 2003, the Rankings are based on every international match a team has played since 1971, and as they are published four times a year (March, June, September and December), they are implicitly weighted to emphasise recent results. The Rankings show that of the best 25 women s national football teams in the world, 13 are members of the EU (England and Scotland are rated separately in the Rankings but are classified as the UK in the EU). These 13 countries all became member states at different times. For example the inner six are well represented in the Rankings with Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands all appearing in the top 15 teams; Spain which became a member state in 1986 is 17 th ; Sweden and Finland which joined the EU in 1995 appear at 5 and 20 respectively; and the Czech Republic which joined in 2004 currently sits at number 25. A number of interesting relationships where identified within the data and this is presented here. A relationship between the actual number of female football players in a country and the actual number of women researchers in government and higher education in 2010 was identified (p<.000). Graph 1 shows a positive correlation between these two factors which demonstrates that the higher the number of female players in a country there would be a corresponding the higher numbers of female researchers. A relationship between the number of women s teams in the country s premier league and the number of women researchers in government and higher education in 2010 was identified (p<.000). Graph 2 once again shows a positive correlation between these two factors which demonstrates that the higher the number of women s teams in the country s premier league corresponds to a higher number of women researchers in government and higher education. Finally, a relationship between Life expectancy at birth and the Number of teams in premier league was identified (p<.001). Graph 3 shows a positive correlation between these two factors which demonstrates that the greater the Number of teams in premier league corresponds with a higher Life expectancy at birth. Conclusions: As predicted we found certain football measures to be positively correlated with sex-aggregated data. Here we specifically identify a strong relationship between the number of players in a country and the number of women researchers in government and higher education. We also identify a relationship between the number of teams in the

6 premier league of a country with the number of women researchers in government and higher education and the life expectancy at birth. This work has sought to identify how the development of women s football within a given EU country can be indicative of gender equality and the implementation of article 2 of the EU treatise. It is to be hoped that the speculative work done here can establish a branch of investigation using more novel sources of statistics to assess gender equality. As the EU grows alongside the number of women playing football across Europe it would be most interesting to see if these relationships endure. References Data from European Union Law The Treaty of Rome [accessed July 2013] European Club Association Women s Football Development Programme _DOWNLOAD.pdf Ireland s National Women s Team Inaugurated [accessed July 2013] UEFA pushing women s game ahead Culture, Media and Sport Fourth Report nce Ronny Galczynski, Cash Prizes not Coffee Sets, We did not enter data for the UK as there is not a UK national football team as each home nation plays as their respective country. We were also unable to find data for Greece.

7 Appendix Graph 1: showing the correlation between the number of players in a member country and the number of women researchers in government and higher education per member country, in 2010 Graph 2 showing the Number of teams in a member countries premier league the number of women researchers in government and higher education per member country, in 2010

8 Graph 3 showing the Life expectancy at birth of a member country and the Number of teams in a member countries premier league