Eat. Sweat. Play

by Anna Kessel

  If the sports media have historically been given a kicking for not supporting women’s sport – in 2013 just 2 per cent of national newspaper sports pages carried women’s sport – women’s magazines get a harder time still. Frequently characterized as obsessed with beauty, fashion and sex, they have hitherto been reluctant to change their attitude towards sport. That is, until Glamour editor Jo Elvin took a huge leap and began flying the flag for change. At the start of 2015 Glamour launched a major campaign, ‘Say No To Sexism In Sport’.

  I went to meet Jo at Glamour’s offices off Regent Street, just as London Fashion Week was in full flow. Her bright corner office was covered in designer clothes and bags, as immaculately turned-out women sashayed between desks carrying coffee. But Jo couldn’t have been more down to earth. As someone who hated sport at school, she told me how she was one of those ‘grumpy people’ who had dreaded the arrival of the London Olympic Games, and booked a holiday to flee the capital. ‘But I ended up watching it on TV every night,’ she laughs. ‘Watching Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah, and there’s me crying in front of the TV. I’m not even British! I’m Australian! Why do I care about Team GB? And I remember feeling, knowing, that the minute it was all over women’s sport would get relegated back to low profile. No profile. And I don’t know why but that just really annoyed me.’ Eighteen months later, and a story came out about England footballer Fara Williams having been homeless at the height of her career. ‘That just made me so angry,’ says Jo now. ‘We had internal collective conversations about it, and we decided to do something about it. We’re the biggest-selling women’s magazine, and we hadn’t really concentrated on sport that much until the Olympics. We’ve always had a Sportswoman of the Year but we felt we could build on that. Because there was me complaining about how it wasn’t covered, but I knew I was one of the people who hadn’t covered it.’

  Jo cites a ‘huge feminist shift’ in the last five years in terms of how women’s magazines cover issues such as body image and exercise, and a sports campaign seemed a logical extension of that. Still, I admire Jo hugely for taking what would at the time have been perceived as a big risk. After all, if women really don’t like sport, then how would they react to seeing it taking up space in pages where they would expect to see beauty and fashion? What took the team aback was the positive response from their readers. ‘We’ve done campaigns before, but we’ve never had a response like this. It has shown me that most of our readers are into some kind of sport or fitness. We had letters saying, “Thank you so much for covering this, I’ve been made to feel unfeminine because I like football.”’ Stories like Jo’s and Helena’s prove that taking what are perceived to be business risks around women’s sport in fact often pays off, and triumphantly at that. They are pioneers for change, but I hope others will take heart from their experiences and form a stampede towards women’s sport.

  As part of its commitment Glamour now covers women’s sport in every issue, and has launched its own women’s sport awards to rival the BBC Sports Personality ones that have so often been panned for failing to recognize the breadth and depth of women’s sporting talent.

  But if coverage is on the up, and corporate investors are finally rethinking their approach, what about the fans? The bums on seats that form such a critical part of the equation? Glamour is doing its bit to promote women’s sport to women, but should men also be interested? Whenever the debate comes up, the popular view seems to be that women should be the ones to change the status quo. Because why be a sofa feminist? Go out and support a women’s team, for God’s sake! But why wouldn’t we want men to watch women’s sport too? Why wouldn’t we encourage all existing sports fans to watch women’s sport, and not just clamour for women to do so?

  Sadly, for the men who do follow women’s sport it’s not always the easiest ride. Society has so little belief in women’s sport that people can’t fathom why a man would be interested. But they are! Football journalist Tony Leighton has been covering the women’s game for years, and now a new generation is joining him. Kieran Theivam started off writing about Watford for his local newspaper, but a chance interview with England’s star striker Kelly Smith piqued his interest in the women’s game. ‘For me watching women’s football is an escape from what men’s football has turned into,’ he says. ‘I’m a bit of an old git, but Watford used to be about focusing on academy players. This season [2014/15] going into the Premier League we’ve spent loads of money and signed thirteen players. People are becoming disgruntled with men’s sport and are turning to women and minority sports. As a journalist I find that the women are more open, intelligent, articulate and interesting than many of the male footballers I’ve ever interviewed.’

  Kieran launched England’s first-ever women’s football podcast in 2013. ‘I’ve never done it for the money. I do it because I enjoy it. I won’t deny it’s hard work – I finish work at 6 p.m. and most evenings I’m working on podcasts and articles; it takes up a lot of my time but I wouldn’t have it any other way.’ If anything, Kieran is out of pocket when he covers the sport; he paid his own expenses to attend the World Cup in Canada, and didn’t earn a penny for the articles he wrote out there. ‘Some people think I’m mad,’ he shrugs.

  I love Kieran’s passion for the game, and I respect his knowledge. And so I can’t help but feel angry when he shyly tells me that, as a young man in his early thirties, he is embarrassed by occasional jokes and insinuations about why he is interviewing a certain female player, or why he might be covering a match where teenage girls are on the pitch. ‘It’s only people joking around,’ he says quietly, ‘but it’s not a nice position to be in. I know some male supporters who are worried about going to watch the sport because of it.’

  Why are some women doing to men what has been done to us for so long? I had years of those sorts of comments as a sports journalist. Readers would write in to our newspaper and claim that I based my man of the match award verdicts on the players with the sexiest legs. Or there would be the blog comments about how I was only doing my job because I wanted to marry a footballer.

  In this brave new world of supporting women’s sport I think we need to do away with these kinds of attitude, and embrace male engagement. Kieran also wishes more women would support the women’s game. ‘I know a lot of female supporters who follow Watford men’s team, but would never watch the women. There’s this perception out there that it’s just men who have a dim view of the game, but it’s women too.’ And it’s not just the fans who have a problem with it. He attends home games at Arsenal Ladies’ Borehamwood ground most weeks, and says the press box is largely occupied by men. He has a point. I’ve spoken to several female sports journalists who are reluctant to cover women’s sport for fear of being pigeonholed.

  Chris Scott, a former women’s sport blogger now working in the industry, tells me, ‘You need men supporting women’s sport to show it’s not a minority sport, it’s not a special interest group.’ Uniquely, Chris grew up surrounded by women who were more sporty than the men he knew. ‘Naively, I didn’t actually realize there was an issue [with gender inequality in sport] at the time, probably because there was a far greater number of competent sportswomen in our friendship group than sportsmen. It was normal for me. And that’s why I find it easy to say that women’s sport should have an equal platform to men, equal funding, equal coverage, equal engagement. When people disagree I find it very frustrating because I’ve never thought differently. It makes me want to bang my head on the table.’ Chris’s experience proves that our environment goes a long way towards forming our attitudes about women’s sport. And that, sometimes, different environments will throw up unexpected outcomes.

  It was with interest, then, that I spoke to Hadassah, a mother of four from the Orthodox Jewish community in Stamford Hill, North London – a close-knit, traditional community with specific cultural requirements around gender roles. I was intrigued to hear from a friend that in Charedi schools girls are encouraged to do regular PE lessons,
albeit in modest, long-sleeved attire. By contrast, as Hadassah explained it to me, Charedi boys are most at risk from inactivity because their purpose is defined as studying the Torah as much as possible. ‘The Charedi lifestyle is generally sedentary,’ says Hadassah, ‘and sport hasn’t necessarily been encouraged because of an association with glamorizing the body and image worshipping.’ But as diabetes and obesity rates rose in the community a decided shift began to take place. ‘Sport and exercise is now beginning to be understood as something to do for health reasons – a commandment in the Torah. I remember speaking to a woman running a community group ten years ago who told me, “Sport is not for us, my mother always told me that we get our exercise by scrubbing the kitchen counter.” But these days her group does offer exercise. It’s as much recognized for mental health benefits as anything else.’

  Still, sport remains a largely alien concept in the community. Despite its proximity to the site of the Olympic Park, Hadassah says that most of the North London Charedi do not access mainstream newspapers, radio or television – and most had little, if any, involvement in the London 2012 Olympics. And while girls at school may be allowed a single weekly PE lesson, once they become women their focus is usually on managing the home, often while working part-time. ‘The average family in our community has six children. That takes its toll on a woman’s body,’ says Hadassah. Attitudes for women are changing, though, with the opening of a Charedi fitness centre offering gender-segregated sessions, and an application for a community-use pool – two vital facilities for Charedi women to access single-gender swimming, netball and aerobics. Hadassah tells me of a friend who was recently walking along the River Lee when a woman living on a houseboat stuck her head out of the window to enquire whether the rabbi had ordered that women walk for exercise, because she had seen so many more women walking up and down in the last year. Hadassah laughs. ‘You see? Things are really changing, even in our community.’ She tells me she is lucky to have a husband who – hailing from Amsterdam – approves of cycling for women. Every Friday morning, when the children are at school, the couple wheel their bikes to a quiet spot on the river and cycle together.

  I find it inspiring that even in some of the most traditional communities and cultures, women and girls are finding a path to sport and exercise. More than that, it is a treasured activity. How many couples in mainstream western culture go cycling together, or engage in sport or exercise together? I am envious of Hadassah’s Friday mornings with her husband. In mainstream western culture women may encounter barriers, but we also have a lot of opportunities to access sport and exercise. It is important that we don’t take these for granted.

  Some of the most uplifting stories that I’ve come across this past year have hailed from the Middle East, where women and girls are making bold strides, often in cultures that are actively hostile to their engagement. Typically, the depressing stories have earned the most column inches: the Iran futsal captain, Niloufar Ardalan, prevented from travelling to the Asian championships because her husband refused to sign papers allowing her to renew her passport (a requirement under Iranian law); the laws that prevent women from watching football or volleyball in Iranian stadiums; and Saudi Arabia’s proposal to host a men-only Olympic Games. But there have been a haul of triumphant stories too. The Iraqi women’s cycling team bringing back a sack of medals from the Arab and Asian Championships; the 2016 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup, held in Jordan, which stipulates quotas for female coaches and medics for the first time at a global tournament; or – further east, in Pakistan – the social media hashtag #GirlsAtDhabas used alongside video and images of women playing street cricket in a movement to openly defy societal norms. Then there was the young woman who completed a marathon in Afghanistan – the first ever to do so – running through the streets despite stares and, at times, abuse and violence, to send a message to others that women can achieve anything, that women are strong. Before the race, in Bamiyan, she had trained in her family’s small backyard running around in circles, as it was deemed too unsafe for her to run in the streets without an escort. Those stories of determination, of positivity, aren’t shared enough in our mainstream media. That’s a shame because there is a lot we can learn from the achievements of women elsewhere, overcoming barriers, pursuing their passion, finding their joy.

  My final interview for this book was with two female Iraqi football coaches. Thousands of miles away in Sulaymaniya province, northern Iraq, Intisar Nawaf and Sarab Hassan sat at a desk in the office of Spirit of Soccer, the charity that employs them, peering into the computer as we spoke over Skype. An interpreter nestled between their chairs. I was struck by the fact that despite being 3,000 miles apart in such very different cultures, here we were talking about football and feminism.

  Sarab and Intisar told me that, like many girls growing up in Iraq, they were prevented from playing sport by their fathers who worried about their reputation. How then, I asked, was it possible that they had now come to pursue a career as football coaches? Their story takes us back to 2014 when ISIS began to attack the city of Jalawla, in eastern Iraq, home to Intisar and her family. As the shells rained down, people fled on foot. ‘We took nothing with us, just our three children and my husband,’ says Intisar. ‘After we left our home I felt very depressed. Everything we had worked for, everything we had built over many years, we just had to leave it all behind. That was very hard. But in the end I decided that the safety of my family is all that matters, the sacrifice is nothing compared to that.’

  Jalawla has since been liberated, but Intisar and her family are not able to return home. The city has become known internationally as a ghost town. ‘We cannot go back home because our city is full of bombs and explosives. No one lives there now. It’s just police. God willing we will be able to go home one day. After liberation I went back for a day just to see my house. Inside I found a box with an electrical heater that I did not recognize. It wasn’t anything that belonged to me. I called the police. It was a bomb, disguised as a heater. It is not safe for us to go there.’

  ‘We live in an environment full of war,’ says Sarab, nodding and listing off three decades of conflict, from the Iraq–Iran war of the 1980s to the Gulf War, the invasion by Allied forces in 2003 – and now ISIS. The legacy of war is generations of traumatized children, thousands of whom have been left physically disabled by forgotten landmines. Many are living in camps for refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDP). The camps in Kurdistan have no running water, electricity or sanitation. The tents are old, and leak when it rains. The atmosphere is tense, families fighting for scarce resources.

  It is the job of Sarab and Intisar to visit the camps and provide a precious few hours of fun with a ball, a fleeting moment of childhood. But the coaches have an added humanitarian role: educating the children about the dangers of explosive remnants of war. ‘After ISIS attacked they left many landmines and explosives,’ explains Sarab. ‘It’s especially dangerous for children because they like to play, they are curious, they like to pick things up. They are the ones most affected by these explosives. We tell them: never pick a toy up off the road, it could be a bomb.’ According to the United Nations almost one million Iraqi children are affected by landmines and other unexploded devices. Intisar knows first hand how dangerous such devices are. She once watched a child pick up a bomb, mistaking it for a toy. It exploded in his face.

  Their jobs as football coaches have changed their lives. Not only are they now able to engage with sport every day, and earn a living from it, but the status of being a paid coach with humanitarian responsibilities has made their work respectable in the eyes of those who might previously have questioned any affiliation with sport for a woman. ‘We are in the middle of an economic crisis in Iraq, and we are working to bring in money,’ says Sarab, explaining the change in attitude from her extended family. ‘Plus it is humanitarian work, not only football. With the salary I earn I am able to support my parents, sisters and brothers – if they need it. Bec
ause I am successful at my work my husband, and society, are proud of me.’

  Intisar tells me that she, too, is now the main breadwinner in the family as a result of the coaching job. When the family left their home in Jalawla, her husband left his shop behind too. It was a long time before he could find work again; he has since secured a job in a smaller shop but it is poorly paid. Spirit of Soccer provide Intisar with a regular salary, but they also helped the family move out of the refugee camp and into a rented house of their own. ‘My husband supports the work I am doing,’ she says, ‘my children are happy and so proud of me. My daughter is always imitating me, pretending to be a coach; she says, “Now you sit down, and I’ll be the coach.” When I go to work in the morning my husband and my children help me to prepare my equipment. Me and my husband are working together to make our children’s dreams come true, to make sure they go to school. We live in a male-centred society, and a tribal one. But none of that has stopped me working as a coach. I thank God every day that I am helping women and children. I always tell the families in the camp my story, that I am also an IDP.’