{"id":500,"date":"2015-05-28T20:49:30","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T20:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/?p=500"},"modified":"2015-11-27T15:47:45","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T15:47:45","slug":"womens-world-cup-primes-for-kick-off-a-mind-corruption-allegations-at-fifa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/?p=500","title":{"rendered":"Women’s World Cup primes for kick-off a mind corruption allegations at FIFA"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Helen Owton<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the breaking news of allegations of corruption at FIFA<\/a>, everybody seems to be talking about what impact it will have on the upcoming World Cups in Russia and Qatar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the next World Cup isn\u2019t in Russia or Qatar, it\u2019s in Canada. The FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup<\/a> kicks off on June 6 and the complete lack of discussion of how the crisis at the top of football will affect the competition further trivialises the women\u2019s game. Corruption needs to be eliminated from FIFA, and we must remember in doing so that the organisation is not just responsible for the men\u2019s game, but for women\u2019s football too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that while FIFA been accused of receiving bribes totalling US$150m<\/a>, the body has been simultaneously starving the women\u2019s game of funding and investment.<\/p>\n

Achieving against the odds<\/h2>\n

The seventh women\u2019s World Cup takes place in the same year FIFA celebrates its 111th birthday, although I doubt there will be much celebrating going on in light of the recent arrests. It\u2019s actually quite surprising to realise that the first men\u2019s World Cup was staged in 1930, which means that in 85 years there have been just seven women\u2019s competitions.<\/p>\n

This is perhaps no surprise, given that in 1921, Britain\u2019s Football Association banned women\u2019s football altogether<\/a> \u201cin light of complaints made\u201d about the problems they could experience as a result of playing.<\/p>\n

In this century, FIFA has shown its blas\u00e9 attitude towards women footballers by making them play on artificial turf for all their World Cup games, despite the face that no one would dream of making male players do the same. As US footballer Megan Rapinoe has argued<\/a>:<\/p>\n

FIFA made a $338m profit<\/a> on the 2014 Men\u2019s World Cup. To say that it\u2019s not logistically possible to install real grass at all the stadiums is not acceptable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is no doubt that this will have an impact on the the games played<\/a>, which could play into pre-established prejudices against the quality of women\u2019s football. How are women supposed to prove that they can play just as well as the men (if not better) if it\u2019s literally not a level playing field?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWinnipeg stadium: not-so-hallowed turf.<\/span>
\nKrazytea<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite all this, members of the English women\u2019s team certainly seems to be campaigning successfully to receive the attention they deserve<\/a>. It\u2019s also encouraging that the Canadian Soccer Association and Canada\u2019s sports minister have already responded to the allegations made against FIFA and are making attempts to prevent this news negatively affecting the Women\u2019s World Cup<\/a>. Indeed, Canada is a world leader in the promotion and protection of women\u2019s rights and gender equality<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s football is still an arena that highlights women\u2019s quest for equality. As the UN says, \u201chuman rights are women\u2019s rights and women\u2019s rights are human rights<\/a>\u201d. That applies as much on the football field as is does anywhere else.<\/p>\n

Once again, women are forced to achieve against adversity to prove to the world that they can achieve success no matter what barriers \u2013 be they artificial turf, a breaking news story about corruption, lack of investment or negative public perception \u2013 are imposed on them.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Helen Owton<\/a> is Lecturer in Sport & Fitness at The Open University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\nRead the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Helen Owton With the breaking news of allegations of corruption at FIFA, everybody seems to be talking about what impact it will have on the upcoming World Cups in Russia and Qatar. But the next World Cup isn\u2019t in Russia or Qatar, it\u2019s in Canada. The FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup kicks off on June […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,32,31,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e314","category-equality","category-gender","category-helen-owton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}