Football and Gender

R is in year 2 now. Since year 1 she's been able to join school clubs. There are lots of clubs available. One of the clubs she chose for this year is Football Club.

Clubs at her school meet once per week. There are 3 Football Clubs. She does Wednesday lunchtime. Turns out that she is the only girl in that session. The fact that she's the only girl does not bother her at all. However, this week, she told us she wants to quit the club next term. The problem is that none of the boys in the club ever pass her the ball. She's taken to just sitting on the sidelines not participating.

Now I’m sure it’s not a case of 9 boys conspiring to keep the ball away from the one girl. I've met the kids in her year. Very few of them strike me as evil. I think it's just 7 year olds playing I've got the ball. I'll keep the ball. Add to that, the fact that all of them have payed football before, while R is new to it, and clearly won't be as skilled with the ball. What bothers me here is that whoever is running the club is not doing a good job of it. Ignoring the fact that they’ve completely flubbed teaching teamwork, they don’t seem to notice that their actions are causing the one girl in the class to lose interest. I don’t think the point of the club is to weed out the worst players. It should be to teach kids how to play the sport – especially kids like my daughter who clearly have an interest and have gone out of their way to join the club in order to learn.

L has spoken to the school before about this, asking for the person running the session to get the kids to pass the ball and play more fairly with each other. R says this never happened.

What am I expecting? First off, I’m paying for this club, I’m expecting them to provide a service for my child. It's not like I can come by at lunchtime at coax her into playing.

Secondly, it's about not institutionalising sexism in sports at such as young age. The school recently changed the football clubs from being a boys club and a girls club, to being mixed. They even took special care at signup time to point out that the football club is not a boys-only club, but anyone can join. So clearly they want to break down the gender barriers. However, what I’m seeing is that despite this, they’re letting it turn into a boys-only club by driving away any girl who wants to join.