Women's Football and The Sun: WOTB reveals sexism

The way publications report on women’s football differs depending on the outlet and its audience.

Whilst some talk about the women’s game in exactly the same way as the men’s, some have a different approach.

A study into The Sun’s coverage of the men’s 2018 World Cup and the 2019 Women’s World Cup - conducted by Women on the Bench - concluded that the publication has a sexist tone to some headlines and articles.

Read on to see some examples of this sexism.

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England Women

At no point was the Sun directly sexist in regards to the quality of play in women’s football. However, the way in which the players were described is a different matter.

One article published by the Sun about the women’s competition was headlined “En-girl-and”. Editors may have seen this as a clever pun but not a single headline about the men’s game referred to them as ‘boys’.

There were several other articles that stood out. One was solely based on the fact that Ellen White cried in her post-match interview - complete with five screenshots - and one detailed how England Women look to be the first female footballer millionaires - with the featured image being of striker, Toni Duggan, in a bikini instead of in her England shirt.

Another article was simply about the fact England Women were watching Love Island the day before a game instead of “scouting their World Cup rivals”.

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Wives and Girlfriends

The term ‘WAG’ to refer to the wives and girlfriends of footballers is not a new phenomenon. Despite feminism progressing, the Sun continues to use WAG in a patronising way.

Of the 2475 articles published about the men’s tournament, 145 belittled women or invaded their privacy. This involved belittlingling them or treating them possessions. To paraphrase an example of this: ‘Who is Dele’s WAG?’

An abundance of articles were focused on the attractiveness of wives and girlfriends (WAGs), and models in the audience. One headline referred to “trophy wives” whilst another was simply about an ex-porn star predicting who would win the World Cup. Others were just photo galleries of women in football shirts and underwear.

One headline read: “The Belgian WAGs are giving us another reason to watch England game”. Another read: “England WAGs look distracted” and had a featured photo of the wives and girlfriends on their phones instead of watching the match. One article compared the English WAGs to the Swedish ones.

Another stand-out headline read: “England’s World Cup WAGs brave the flies to watch their heroes win in Volgograd”.

It’s common in football for the camera to pick out attractive women in the crowd but before the tournament FIFA banned it. The Sun called the organisation a “killjoy” in a headline.

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England men

When it comes to articles published about men’s football that didn’t involve women, very few were belittling but a lot were irrelevant. There were articles about the weather forecast; a couple about Reese Witherspoon tweeting her support of the England team; and one about Trent Alexander-Arnold shaving Jesse Lingard’s beard.

There were also lots of reports of fan violence in these remaining 1,850 articles, something that didn’t need to be reported on for the women’s competition.

However, it wasn’t just Ellen White that was targeted for crying. One team was described as “crying like girls”, whilst another headline read: “Gazza [Paul Gascoigne] admits he still cries over 1990”, a game in which he famously cried when he got booked, meaning he couldn’t play in the final if England reached it.

Gazza walks off the pitch after seeing red. Photo: Roberto Pfeil

Another article read: “Young and Henderson for from quarter-final heroes to pram-pushing duties”. This both insinuates that they are too important to look after their children and that their wives should be on pram-pushing duties.

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What impact does this have?

Although it has not been proven, if women’s football is not respected by the press, it won’t be respected by the readers.

Outlets need to look past what the readers want to read and show them what they need to see for the game to grow and improve. Until then, this sort of tone in the articles could hinder the players, staff and fans due to fewer spectators, advertisers, sponsors, and an overall lower income stream.

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Have your say

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(Feature image: Getty)