Football | The woman’s supervisor threw out a tasteless simile that severely discriminated against both women and the disabled: “Somehow you’d imagine that you wouldn’t hear this kind of thing anymore”

Example is crude and tasteless. Researched the manifestation of inequality in Finnish football Tuuli Jauhola finds what she heard shocking, and the words have also left a strong impression on the woman who plays in the main league and worked at her sports club.

“The woman’s supervisor, who works for the junior side of the same club, made a joke about how he thinks women’s and disabled football can be put in the same category,” says Jauhola.

Decades ago, the attitude towards women playing football was, to put it nicely, belittling, but in the case Jauhola tells about, it’s not about any puffy air of past years, but a living example from recent years.

“Somehow, you’d imagine that nowadays you wouldn’t hear anything like this anymore,” he says.

Jauhola does not know whether the person who equated women’s and disabled soccer has worked with girls’ soccer players or only on the boys’ side.

“But he also works with juniors, and the attitudes are like this. After all, it will make a big difference if we start coaching juniors with this kind of attitude. A certain attitude inevitably trickles down as well.”

Situational awareness the lack is also transmitted by the club, which has women’s and men’s teams. This example is too fresh.

“The women’s gang won the doubles that year. The club had planned a big end-of-season event to celebrate, but the men’s gang did worse than the goal and the event was finally cancelled,” says Jauhola.

She adds that the club’s actions sent a signal that the success of women was not really given importance. Discrimination against women is often explained by the fact that the treatment cannot be equal, because women do not bring money to the team.

“But it cannot be justified only by money, because this event was also planned in advance. It was only canceled because there was no reason to celebrate because of the men’s gang,” says Jauhola.

Jauhola, 26, graduated from Copenhagen Business School, an international university specializing in business economics.

For his research, he interviewed eleven top-level domestic soccer players who had “a lot to share”.

“A certain kind of frustration emerged that many players feel in their clubs that it is difficult to make a voice heard as a female player. The message is not necessarily taken seriously or it does not lead to anything in the endgame,” adds Jauhola.

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“The players understand that the rewards cannot be the same.”

Football Association development manager Heidi Pihlaja considers researching the topic important. At the same time, it is noticed that in a developed country like Finland, there is a long way to go so that attitudes, norms and culture encourage the pursuit of dreams equally.

“In general, I see it as important that the moral goals related to equality are tied to the organizations’ strategies and their achievement is monitored through systematic metrics,” says Pihlaja.

The financing of women’s team sports comes up as a topic of conversation at regular intervals, and the players interviewed by Jauhola also feel that the focus is on money and productivity. However, players have a realistic idea of ​​what can be paid for small earnings.

“If we look only at the financial side, the players understand that the rewards cannot be the same [kuin miehillä], because as many players said, money doesn’t grow on trees and doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s completely understandable,” says Jauhola.

Many male major league athletes also pay for their hobby themselves, and the issue is not related to equality or gender, but to the market economy. The players interviewed by Jauhola feel the matter more so that the moral side could be taken into account more.

“To come forward to some extent and enable better conditions for women, because it is morally right to help those who are in a worse position,” she adds.

Ladies started football in Finland quite late, only in the early 1970s. In England, which is organizing the current European Championships, the sport was banned for women in the early 1920s for 50 years, which affected the development of the sport worldwide.

When Helmarit played in her first European Championship in England in 2005, women’s football was invested in practically only two countries: Sweden and Germany.

Now the situation is different. Major clubs around Europe have seen that investing in women’s football is good for the global sports brand.

“When women are given the opportunity to do and offered better conditions, it has great potential to lead to financial productivity,” says Jauhola.

He mentions, for example, the women’s team of FC Barcelona, ​​which has already won the women’s Champions League and set a great audience record at the end of March: El Clásico, or the meeting between the women of Barcelona and Real Madrid, drew 91,553 spectators to the Camp Nou stadium.

The club accelerated the creation of the record by selling tickets to its members only for the price of the processing fee and by harnessing the stars of the men’s team in the marketing of the match.

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“Women have been fighting this issue alone.”

Flour mill considers it important that the club’s management also genuinely stands behind women.

“Women have been fighting this issue alone. It has a big impact that those who are more in a position of power jump on board and help however they can.”

How the sport is talked about externally is also important. Jauhola urges club managers to think about what kind of message they are sending about women’s football.

“If women’s football is spoken of in a derogatory way, it paints a certain image in people’s minds.”

Helmarit was featured in a historically comprehensive way during the European Championships, but the assessment of the team’s performance was often marked by exaggerated talk and silk glove treatment, even when the game performances would not have given reason for such.

Wouldn’t the prestige of women’s sports be increased if failures were treated as failures and performances were evaluated like professional sports and not children’s games?

“If there were more comments like ‘why is anyone even watching this and Finland lost so much’, I think it would be much worse [vaihtoehto]”, Jauhola answers.

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“If you get people involved in doing small things, for example the men’s side to promote women’s games, it speeds up the change.”

In the national a player of PK-35 from Helsinki, who play in the league Katja Hakala told HS in an interview in October 2020 that women’s sports should not be supported because men also get money, but because it is a competitive advantage and an important issue of equality.

Jauhola feels that working with social norms is a time-consuming chore. Good and long-term work and making changes take some time.

Well-known journalist, writer and sociologist David Goldblatt told the Play the Game seminar in June that the future of football is in women and that more will happen in women’s football in the next ten years than in the 150 years before.

“I think it’s possible, but it also depends on what kind of work we do. If we allow existing norms to resist change, it will take more time,” says Jauhola.

“But if we get people involved in doing small things, for example the men’s side to promote the women’s games, it speeds up the change and in ten years we can go a lot further.”

It is clear that women in football have significantly more potential for growth than men who have already grown their popularity to the top.

Read more: Should women’s sports be supported just because men can too? No, says soccer player Katja Hakala and explains why supporting women is particularly profitable for sponsors

to Qatar awarded World Cups, sports washing, i.e. the way dictatorships use sports to hide human rights problems, corruption and match manipulation are only some of the mild phenomena that can be found in men’s but not yet women’s football.

However, Jauhola would not emphasize the issue in the marketing of women’s games.

“The more women’s futs grows and has the potential to generate income and increase business, it may very well be that it goes in the same direction. It would be quite a miracle if women’s futs could grow a lot and survive without them”, he reasons.

“I would rather bring out the goodness and interest of the game. The negative aspects of football and bringing them to the fore is not the main point.”

Nowadays, the biggest clubs in Finnish football also do a lot for the women of the club. For example, HJK and KuPS are currently good examples for others, but there is still a lot to learn, development manager Pihlaja feels.

“It has been great to see how many European clubs known from the men’s side have taken the women’s team as a close part of their operations, marketing and value creation. It has also brought them new consumers and target groups. In this area, we have a lot of untapped potential in Finland.”