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.

Now we've marched

Yesterday the family took part on the Women's March on London. As I mentioned before, it was R's first protest as a walking individual. So we did try in the lead up to the march to plan appropriately. Part of this is making sure R understood why we were doing this. After all it would be somewhat immoral to bring her to a protest against her will. This involved another discussion very similar to the Sexism at school one, but this time trying to scale up the argument.

After that was the preparation. I did some reading up on how to take a child on a march (Lost the link for that one, sorry) and tried to incorporate as much of that as I could. In the end, this is what we did and what we learned from the process

I won't sit down, I won't shut up

• Make things together — The wife and daughter worked together to make a banner we could carry. It was important to involve the girl since it would help her feel like this was her march. L and R discussed many options for a slogan for one side of the banner: I won't sit down, I won't shut up which is a line from a Frank Turner song that R really likes. The other side of the banner came, somewhat modified, out of my last blog post I can't believe this is still an issue. R helped a bit with the painting, but the bulk of it was L since she has better handwriting that either of us.
• Bring helium balloons — I hate using helium for reasons I won't go into, but it really did help having a floating pointer down to the girl at all times. It meant not losing her in the crowds dozens of times. When it was too crowded to move and we'd not met up with L yet, the girl kept ducking under people to get very slow 250 meters to L. I followed holding the tops of the balloons and apologising to people over and over. Anyway, We filled up six oblong balloons and wrote slogans on each: Girl Power, Women's rights are human rights, This is not normal and Never give up, never surrender. I tried to think of a good Firefly quote to include, but couldn't manage it before we ran out balloons.
• Phone numbers — beyond balloons, we need to make sure R could get back to us if she got lost. So we made sure she had backpack on, with a couple of toys to make her happy, and a large piece of paper with my phone number on one side and L's on the other. I tried to get R to memorise my number, but no. The best she got is that All phone numbers start with zero. Except in America where they start with one.
• Prepare plenty of food — this wasn't as important as I thought it would be, but I suppose it was better to have more food than less. Most of the food was eatable while walking, though I brought a tupperware full of pasta and a spoon, just in case. And napkins, of course. I had more than half the food remaining when we got home. I even remembered to make food for myself, which I something I normally forget
• Water — plus a flask of hot coffee for me. I only brought 250ml for R, and she didn't drink much. I only gave her some when she asked, because I didn't want to risk R drinking too much since there were no loos anywhere in sight. So that worked out too.
• Scooter — Bringing the scooter was a good idea, to a point. She'd have not been able to manage the walk on foot, so to that point it was essential. But it was really hard to get through the densest of the crowds. We have a ScooterSling which is indispensable to a parent, and made it possible to carry the scooter without hitting people in the face or other parts.
• Keep warm — That was pretty easy. When we were still, everything was jam packed, so that was warm. When we were moving, that kept us warm too. Base layers were enough. Though I did have an extra scarf in her backpack (with the toys) just in case.
• Be a little paranoid — The kettling and other problems at the student marches has gotten me paranoid. I brought no wallet, just a credit card, a bit of cash and an old phone with all unessential accounts and access turned off. Nothing to worry about, it turns out. It was safer than an afternoon at the pub. This time.
• Plan in analogue — The big miss of the day was when everyone changed the meet up point and didn't tell me. I got a message from L with a URL pointing to a spot on a map, not quite realising how bad LTE does internet when you are with thousands of people in a single cell. A dot on an empty grid. Great. Lessons learnt: always phone or send an SMS with a specific crossroad. And next time, paper maps it is, or maybe some downloadable maps like Here. And figure out in advance which roads are completely closed due to sodding Crossrail.
• External phone charger — Essential. If you have a modern phone, never leave the house without a charger. If you have an old phone, like I did, the battery is completely shot anyway, so never unplug it from the charger.
• Be ready to explain crude language — as well as unpleasant discussion on unexpected topics. It's important that the protesters don't water down their anger or message, so it's up to you to prepare your child for what they see. Part of it is not freaking out when someone starts a chant calling the American president a fucker. And part of it is just explaining that they're being crude. And another part is telling them how you'll explain it later when it's not so loud – which buys you a bit of time to figure out how to put the explanation into words, or them to stop caring.
• Have cuddles ready — people don't look for kids, so they'll get hit in the face with things. But they're resilient, so a heartfelt cuddle is usually enough to get them up and going again. Likewise, be ready to stop for while when the kid's had enough. Near a lamppost or other barrier is ideal, so you don't both get trodden on.

All in all, the people at the march were amazing. On the bus trip down, the balloons made for an excellent conversation starter with several Are you going to the march? introductions. R got friendly enough with the people sitting behind us that she turned the conversation on fighting for liberty and freedom into explaining in great detail why she likes Ahsoka Tano (from Clone Wars) so much. All through the march people were just in good spirits and had nice things to say. It's been so long since I've been in such a crowd in London that wasn't a commute I forgot what it was like to just be easy going and nice to people. For that alone I'm glad we went.

R gave up just before the march got to Trafalgar Square. She'd just had enough and wanted to go home. Or to a park. But mostly home. Barring the trip to the loos for L on the way, getting home was uneventful. We watched a few Rebels episodes and then R went to bed pretty quickly, all properly tuckered out from the day.

Marching on

Saturday is my first march with the daughter. We'll be going to the Women's March on London. It's not our first protest together. That was the Pro-Choice Protest in Bedford Square in 2012. She wasn't even walking yet. She was just all wrapped up in her sling and holding a little flag promoting choice.

On Saturday, she'll actually be walking (or scooting) and she'll know what the march is all about. We've explained to her that some people just simply have no respect for women and that the rest of us have to show that we will not stand for that sort of behaviour, no matter who it comes from.

I know it's an oversimplification, but we have to start somewhere, and I think that's as reasonable a distillation of the issues as any.

I am marching with her for the same reason I recently dissected a computer in front of her – to show her how it works. To make sure she's understands that it's not a mystery and it's not something other people do for reasons that are beyond her. She might not understand it completely now, but at least she’ll have seen it in action and when she comes across it again, even if she finds it complicated or unpleasant, at least it won't be intimidating.

I am also marching with her to show her that every voice counts. The more people who stand up to be heard, the more likely those in power will be persuaded to do their jobs and represent us. (Perhaps I can read her a copy of Horton Hears a Who before the March). Plus I'm hoping the raw enthusiasm for making the world a better place will rub off on her.

I have my own reasons to march. The fact that I have a daughter is incidental – I'd be out there regardless. Because women are people, and people are not property. Because institutionalised sexism hurts everyone. Being forced by threat of violence from my peers into a strict male gender role was the worst part of growing up, and made me a very bitter an unhappy boy. Women being forced by threat of violence by their peers into a lower paid professions or positions is worse, and makes for less than ideal working environments.

I am marching because my company cannot find female software developers. I haven't even seen a single CV from a woman in my 8 months there. I don't know if the agencies are filtering them out or the overall brogrammer culture of startups gives them shivers long before hitting Apply, or maybe the entire industry has too few women to spare even one programmer for a small size company.

I am marching because I am raising a child, and I want to be able to play a large role in her life despite having a job. I don't want to hear Can't your wife do that? when I need to meet with her teacher or do the school run or look after her during term breaks. I was lucky enough to be a 50% parent for most of her life before she started school. I don't want that to have been being lucky, I want it to be normal. I want careers breaks to raise children to be normal. I am marching so any parent can spend time raising their child without risking their own future.

In short, I'm marching because this matters, and the people we've elected should know better.

Sexism begins at school

Since about halfway through her first year in school the daughter has been bringing up only wanting to be around girls or only wanting to be friends with girls. I try as much as I can to accept when she likes things I don't, but ...

It usually starts with something like:

I only want to invite girls to my birthday party

Why?

All my friends are girls.

Really, what about A and B? Also the twins C and D, you're always talking about thing you do together. Plus E and F, you've been playing with them since you were born…

I like them. They're my friends. But I don't like boys.

That's just sexist and offensive. I know you don't really understand how those words are hurtful, but you need to know that saying things like that is going to make people more upset than you'd think. It makes me upset.

What bothers you so much about boys that you say you don't like them?

…They play football …

They don't all do that. Your friends who are boys don't. I have no problem if you say I don't like people who do something. It's just when you say you don't like any boys at all because some people you don't like are boys is just wrong. It just means that if we met when I was five, you'd refuse to be my friend just because I'm a boy. And that would make me sad because I would have really liked to be your friend.

At this point she'd seem to understand and agree with me. But she'd still bring it up again a few weeks later, so the point really hasn't sunk in. We've had a few variations of this conversation. Sometimes it starts with a friend who's only friends with girls, but more recently it's just been her outright saying she does not like boys.

The worst time was after she went to a football themed birthday party for a boy in her class. The parents brought someone in to teach the kids football tricks and things. Literally all the girls in the room (and some of the boys) went off to play with the toys, while exclusively boys did the football games. That really cemented the not-friends-with-boy thing for her. Plus it was the first time I'd really seen the division in action. It was actually quite scary. I was really hoping we'd moved on from when I was a kid, but it's dawning on me there's still a fight ahead.

None of that was there in nursery, or in the playparks, or in the games with the kids on the street. Yet somehow it's all crept in now that they're in school full time.

Is it the school that's to blame? Is it the parents deciding you're five, it's now time to take up your assigned gender role? Is it emergent behaviour that only comes out when boys play in groups? I can easily see the subtle sexism in clothes and interactions with adults and the insidious sexism in toys and TV and books building up and spreading like cholera on Broad Street. It's not that sexism really begins at school, it's just that's where it sinks it's claws into the kids, and I just want to see more effort it quashing it before it takes hold.

Her teacher has certainly noticed that at playtime most boys split off to play football, and that it's causing divisions between the children. She's told that that she tries to get more mingling between the groups. I personally would put more a fight into this, but the teacher has so much to juggle already, it's hard to blame her for not taking on the Big Fight.

I suppose most people don't see it as bad as I do. But I so clearly remember as a child seeing the girls are bad attitude of the boys around me turn, over the years, to full blown sexism and rape culture. How do people not see this?

This is where it all begins. This is where the monolithic gender roles start that causes so much damage... I tried to make a list, but it was longer than I was willing to type¹. Ultimately, this is why I started this blog in the first place – because men aren't supposed to play a significant part in raising children. And I am going to do my damnedest to make sure my daughter gets to be the person she wants to be.