The Other Half: The Unreported World of Women in Football

Sian Massey Photo: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

You’ve heard of the WAGs. Now meet the WIFs. Last week the BBC aired Sexism in Football, a documentary that put the spotlight firmly on the Women in Football (the WIFs). The organisation was founded five years ago, and yet their existence came as news to many. The WIF shave never actively sought publicity, and have received little attention from the national media since they were established. Up until now. Upfront and often uncomfortable, Sexism in Football showcases a series of interviews with prominent female members of the footballing community.

There are more than you might think. Women account for a quarter of match day attendances around the country, as well as over a third of fans watching from home.  West Ham Vice-Chairman Karen Brady, Norwich’s legendary owner Delia Smith and Gabby Logan, who presents the documentary, are familiar faces to most, and the programme does an excellent job in profiling some of the other women who make the game tick. And yet, obviously, sexism is alive and kicking in football. The scandal that surrounded the series off-air gaffes made by Andy Gray and Richard Keys in January last year exploded the issue (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV0oWNVG7Mw). It sparked a debate that raged for months. Unfortunately, as BBC Five Live presenter Mark ‘Chappers’ Champman openly admits on the programme, it could have happened to anyone. Even the likes of Brady were taken back by the strength of the backlash. For many involved in the game, playground tactics are simply business as usual.

Vikki Orvice, a well-respected sports journalist, points out that football for men is“their space” – the last bastion of male environments. It is tone that strikes a chord with most of the other women in the documentary, and certainly all of the men. No one is suggesting that football has dramatically changed its ways on this issue in recent times. Most of the documentary’s success stories have out fought and out thought their male colleagues over the years to achieve any sort of standing - indeed, any young women happily testifying that football has changed for the better on the programme are conspicuously inconspicuous.

Yet all is not lost. Lawrie Sanchez, champion-elect of women’s rights and the genius who dared to imagine David Healy as a talismanic Premier League striker, crows that he has “a bet goingwith a friend that there will be a female Premier League manager within 10 years because whatever is said at the top level, we're in an entertainment business”. Admittedly, Sanchez is no Nostradamus. But there is some cause for optimism. Sian Massey, the female linesman caught in the Gray-Keys gate scandal last year, ironically continues to make steady progress in establishing herself as an official well capable of understanding the offside rule – more than can be said for any number of officials in the Premier League (well, one anyway. Here’s to you Dave Bryan, Chelsea’s twelfth man last Saturday against Wigan). And whilst rumours surrounding England’s Women’s senior national coach Hope Powell, linking her to Grimsby Town in 2009, didn’t exactly set the world alight (or, in fact, have any real bearing on reality – Powell subsequently dismissed the stories as “lies”), the coach asserts there are “several” women with the qualifications necessary to manage a top-flight team. A new Hope? Possibly not. But there are, at the very least, a few more cracks appearing in one of the more shatterproof glass ceilings still in place.

Sexism in Footballaired on BBC 1, 4 April 2012. It is currently available on BBC iPlayer.