Eimear Ryan: Time to listen to female players instead of trying to gaslight them

How much easier would things be if sporting organisations simply listened to their female players

Wed, 09 Mar, 2022 - 15:18

It was gratifying last weekend that, on the eve of International Women’s Day, a jam-packed GAA schedule was bookended by two highly anticipated women’s games. First up was the Meath vs Dublin ladies football league clash, a rematch of last year’s All-Ireland final. After a slow start, the game lived up to its promise, with the last kick of the game sealing it for the Dubs. It’s exciting that this classic rivalry is being reincarnated in the women’s code before our very eyes.

Closing out the weekend of eight (8!) televised GAA matches was the 2021 All-Ireland camogie final between Sarsfields and Oulart the Ballagh. In what must have been a surreal turn of events for the players, it was their second time meeting in an All-Ireland final in three months – Oulart having dismantled Sarsfields in the 2020 decider, which only took place at the tail-end of 2021. Due to the vagaries of Covid and the fixture schedule, Oulart have the bad luck of enjoying perhaps the shortest victorious reign in All-Ireland memory; their constant goal threat, however, kept Sarsfields on edge throughout.

The final took place in Croke Park, and it was exciting to see the match get the staging and coverage it deserved. In what’s been an unusually stormy spring, conditions were thankfully ideal. It stood in stark contrast to a similar fixture a month earlier – the intermediate All-Ireland ladies football club final between St Sylvester’s and Castlebar Mitchels, which took place in Ballinasloe in dour conditions.

Tweeting afterwards, Sylvester’s and Dublin star Nicole Owens wrote: "My club played in the All Ireland Inter Club Final this year on the worst condition pitch I’ve ever played on, in a venue that didn't have enough capacity, resulting in half the crowd having to stand in the lashing rain for the entire match. The men’s final was in Croke Park."

Adding her support to the GPA’s call for the three associations to unite, she added: "If our own association undersells us to this extent, how can we expect wider society to see us as equal but, even more importantly, young girls to see and value themselves equally … We’re all playing the same sport but without equal access to resources we can never be on an equal playing field."

Her club and county teammate, Niamh McEvoy, added of the intermediate final: "It’s so disappointing when footballers want to produce a good spectacle and play a nice brand (particularly women, who feel that we are representing our game as a whole when we step out to play) and you get landed on an unplayable pitch. Never mind the fact that it was dangerous!"

This is value of social media: hearing, in their own words, what players really think about the issues and decisions that affect their careers. It’s fascinating, for example, to hear about the burden of representation felt by McEvoy: the sense that you’re an ambassador not just for your team, but for your sport as a whole. Then there’s Owens’s eye on the future: her awareness about how standards set now will impact on young girls – the players of the future – for better or for worse.

Female players are fighting on multiple fronts: on the pitch, but on a societal level, too, and sometimes against the very organisations charged with their welfare. When the US national women’s soccer team recently came to an equal pay settlement, amounting in $22 million in back pay, it felt like a huge triumph for women’s sport. That is, until you remember that the organisation that the women’s team has been grappling with for several years was … US Soccer.

That’s right: in the sports movie that will be made about this debacle, the moustache-twirling villain of the piece will be US Soccer itself, the organisation that benefits hugely from the success of the women’s team. Now take into account the fact that the women’s team has garnered far more glory on the international stage than the men’s, and that if you ask someone on the street to name a US soccer star, they are as likely to say Megan Rapinoe as Christian Pulisic. It should not have been this hard, or taken this long, to get equality.

The recent settlement was the culmination of a legal battle that began in 2016, when five USWNT players filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, arguing that US Soccer was systematically discriminating against women by playing them far less than their male counterparts. In 2019, all 28 players on the squad sued US Soccer for gender discrimination in federal court.

At one point in proceedings, US Soccer argued that women’s soccer does not require ‘equal skill, effort and responsibility’ as men’s soccer, and therefore the players had no legitimate claim to equal pay. They were treated as entitled opportunists, and made to feel as if their second-class status was natural and justified. Though US Soccer eventually admitted it was in the wrong, it’s interesting that the organisation’s first response was so dismissive. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

The IRFU has learned this lesson the hard way in recent months. When presented with a letter signed by 62 female internationals past and present, stating their concerns about treatment of the women’s game, the IRFU could not have been more defensive, expressing their disappointment and refuting its contents. The letter had been sent to the Department of Sport; like the US soccer players, the Irish rugby players felt that they had no choice but to appeal to a higher power to get a fair hearing.

But how much easier would things be if sporting organisations simply listened to their female players instead of trying to gaslight them? What if players’ concerns were taken seriously, instead of being dismissed? What if sporting organisations cooperated with their players, instead of resisting them until forced into an embarrassing u-turn? I hope the future leaders of the amalgamated GAA are taking note: you ignore players’ wishes at your peril.