{"id":507,"date":"2015-06-01T14:51:12","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T14:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/?p=507"},"modified":"2015-11-27T15:50:41","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T15:50:41","slug":"england-womens-football-to-make-memories-at-fifa15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/?p=507","title":{"rendered":"England women\u2019s football to make memories at FIFA15"},"content":{"rendered":"

More controversy surrounding FIFA\u00a0include the responses about women being featured in the next EA Sports video game FIFA16<\/a>. Whilst this is great news for women\u2019s football, it\u2019s amazing that this is another \u2018first time\u2019 event for women and it’s not as progressive <\/a>as everyone might think. The EA Sports game was first released in 1993 and it is only now, over 20years later that women are going to be featured in the next edition. It\u2019s about time women were included with 4.1 million<\/a> women playing within organised structures worldwide.<\/p>\n

A Sexist Backlash<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, there has been a huge sexist backlash towards this inclusion of the 12 new teams which is evident on twitter. Many of the sexist remarks were defended by\u00a0them being \u2018just jokes\u2019 but that is not acceptable. There are fine lines between \u2018banter\u2019, bullying, harassment and abuse and in light of the history and the ongoing oppression that some women continue to experience all over the world \u2013 it\u2019s not funny! These are yet more ways to trivialise the seriousness of derogatory jokes towards women and to trivialise women\u2019s football. Amelia Butterly argued that not only are these remarks unfunny, they are inaccurate\u00a0and addressed these comments<\/a>. The twitter feeds included comments about female players having a bad game \u2018because she\u2019s on her period\u2019, being unable to play for 9 months \u2018because she\u2019s pregnant\u2019, blaming feminism for \u2018ruining everything\u2019 and one man asked \u2018Why would you want to include them unless they\u2019re going to exchange shirts on the pitch!\u2019<\/p>\n

It is good news that these\u00a0‘jokes’ are finally\u00a0being reprimanded because these negative, sexualising, derogatory and out of date comments get splashed over twitter whenever women\u2019s football is on TV and attitudes need to change. Evidently, whilst the inclusion of women in EA Sports is a positive move forward for women\u2019s football, it is not enough to just include women in a new console game; attitudes need to be changed so that women are respected and valued not only in sport but in society. These attitudes are unlikely to just be evident in football; they are likely to leak into public working life which is why it is so important not to let these disrespectful comments pass without reprimand.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to see how things will change as long as sexist reputations <\/a>remain in football and whilst FIFA is under investigation <\/a>for corruption whilst simultaneously withholding funds from investing in the women\u2019s game. Whilst Heather Rabbatts’ resignation<\/a>\u00a0is the latest attempt to try and bring\u00a0reform\u00a0to Fifa, let\u2019s also use this opportunity to put sexism alongside other priorities (e.g. kicking out racism, homophobia, and corruption) in football.<\/p>\n

Whilst all this is going on though, the England Women\u2019s Team don\u2019t seem to have let these news stories affect their focus. After their 10-day training camp at St George\u2019s Park, assistant coach, Marieanne Spacey, urged her team to \u2018make some memories\u2019<\/a>. They\u2019ve certainly made a start on that; they have had a warm-up game against Canada which gave them the opportunity to practice on the artificial turf. Despite England conceding one goal, Karen Bardsley had her work cut out and denied quite a few goals and Fara Williams with a phenomenal long shot which unfortunately hit the bar; an exciting game with great coverage. With England qualifying for the 2015 Women\u2019s World Cup with 100% record that is worth supporting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More controversy surrounding FIFA\u00a0include the responses about women being featured in the next EA Sports video game FIFA16. Whilst this is great news for women\u2019s football, it\u2019s amazing that this is another \u2018first time\u2019 event for women and it’s not as progressive as everyone might think. The EA Sports game was first released in 1993 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,32,31,29],"tags":[40,35,39,41],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e314","category-equality","category-gender","category-helen-owton","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-womens-world-cup-2015","tag-sexism","tag-womens-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":520,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions\/520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}