Soccer and Gender
While I’m thinking about soccer, a headline from the Vancouver Courier irritated me this week. They had a lengthy and decent piece about Canada’s national women’s soccer team and their participation in the World Cup. The pull quote on the article read:
Women’s national soccer players like Christine Sinclair used to struggle for recognition-now they’re outperforming the senior men’s team and have their eyes on the Women’s World Cup.
This is a bit like saying your local softball team is outperforming the Mariners because your squad made the playoffs. The international women’s game is still in its infancy. Consider these facts:
- FIFA ranks 204 nations that have international men’s teams. They rank maybe 80 women’s teams.
- There have only been 3 women’s World Cups, the first one having occurred in 1991. The first men’s tournament occurred in 1930.
- Few women’s programs existed before 1985.
So, it’s like apples and oranges. The quotation is not only inaccurate and a little provocative, but it also does a disservice to our men’s team, who have toiled in obscurity for years.
Most of the rest of the world (and I mean the whole world here) has been producing soccer players for longer than Canada has been a country. While the English and the Germans were experimenting with a 4-2-4 setup, we were trapping beavers and building sod houses.
Don’t get the wrong idea here…I’ve actually watched the women’s teams’ games (so many plurals!). I’ve been a little disappointed with their effort, but hopefully they’re saying it for the next round (assuming they get past Japan tomorrow). For the reasons I’ve outlined above, the soccer isn’t as good as the men’s World Cup, but it’s still entertaining.
In truth, I actually love watching my nation compete in any sport. While living in Ireland, I got quite excited watching Canada compete (and, remarkably, win a game) in the World Cup of Cricket.
