Column | The word V in the football cover

If a sportswriter places a photo with an article about football, she can choose between an active or passive image. In the active photo, football is being played, in the passive photo, for example, people cheer after a goal or shuffle after a defeat. Articles about men’s football have an active photo 3.5 times more often than women’s football. Women are more often depicted kissing after a goal.

Researchers have made these kinds of observations that of Woman Inc. examined the coverage of football in the Dutch media. With the observation of passive photos in women, they went to the editors and asked: why are you doing this? The answer was usually: these are the photos available in the image bank. The researchers therefore turned to the image bank. There, they discovered that in two-thirds of cases, the passive female photo was accompanied by an active photo, often by the same photographer.

It’s great that sportswriters are paying attention to women’s football, but we have to be careful how we do it because before you know it you’re confirming stereotypes like it’s 1930. We’ve already the language for this, doing the same with photos is overkill. When it comes to women’s football, it is constantly emphasized that it is about women, while in men’s football it is only very exceptionally mentioned that it is about men. This big exception is when the word goalkeeper is mentioned, otherwise genderless football is this, genderless football that. Men’s football therefore remains the norm and women’s football the rarity. From the research report, I learned that it’otherness‘ is called: putting a group of people aside like the other.

The researchers also looked at what was said in the articles about men’s football instead of referring to being a man. A player’s name was mentioned more often among men. If you do that with women, you get: “Van de Sanden will not go to the World Cup”. Without using the v-word, you know it’s the Lionesses simply because a player’s name was mentioned.

During the research presentation on Thursday evening, I heard that NOS Sport had chosen to no longer make this distinction between women, so I immediately paid attention to that. friday at Sports News indeed, they did not once say in an article about the selection of the Lionesses that they were women. They talked about the Orange selection, the European Championship and the World Cup final. This could be a coincidence, as the V-word has been used unnecessarily on the site.

With the research recommendations in hand, spotting sexism in football coverage has become very easy. The Volkskrant posted an article on the Lions in the category “Dutch national team”. It has become the category of Lionesses Women’s Football World Cup. This implies that the women are not the Dutch national team. First row right by Volkskrant.

With the upcoming World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the Premier League is starting to see sexism in football coverage. On Sunday evening, after the friendly match between the Netherlands and Belgium, you can already watch the word and picture choices in a friendly way.

Caroline Trujillo is a writer.