Male soccer supporters show “extremely sexist and misogynistic” attitudes in direction of girls’s sports activities on fan message boards, a examine has discovered.
Researchers from Durham College surveyed 1,950 male soccer followers who responded to a name for contributors on 150 UK on-line boards.
They discovered that messages from the followers “strongly represented” progressive views, however these weren’t as frequent as “hostile and sexist attitudes”.
The examine authors recommend these attitudes present a backlash in opposition to the elevated visibility of girls’s sport, notably for the reason that 2012 London Olympic Video games and the 2015 Fifa Girls’s World Cup.
They known as for extra protection of girls’s sport to “drive extra gender equality and promote social justice”.
The examine was funded by the Arts and Humanities Analysis Council and printed within the tutorial journal Sociology. It was led by researchers from Durham College, alongside researchers on the College of Leicester and College of South Australia.
Lead writer Dr Stacey Pope, from Durham College’s Division of Sport and Train Sciences, stated: “That is the primary examine to look at UK males soccer followers’ attitudes to girls’s sport in an period through which girls’s sport has skilled a considerably elevated media profile.
“Our analysis confirmed that attitudes in direction of girls in sport are, to some extent, altering, with extra progressive attitudes.”
She added: “Nonetheless, the findings are additionally reflective of a patriarchal society through which misogyny is rife.
“There have been quite a few examples of males from throughout all generations exhibiting extremely sexist and misogynistic attitudes.”
Followers answered open-ended questions within the survey and could possibly be divided into three angle teams, which have been progressive masculinities, overt misogynistic masculinities, or covert misogynistic masculinities.
Males with progressive attitudes confirmed sturdy help for equality in media protection of girls’s sport, with many saying the 2015 Fifa Girls’s World Cup was a constructive turning level.
However males who held overtly misogynistic attitudes in direction of girls’s sport believed it was inferior to males’s sport, notably in relation to soccer.
Some followers who fell into the overt misogynistic masculinities class recommended girls shouldn’t take part in sport in any respect, or in the event that they did, it ought to be in “female” sports activities comparable to athletics.
The researchers additionally discovered “excessive hostility” in direction of the growing media protection of girls’s sport, which was seen as “constructive discrimination” or “PC nonsense”.
The ultimate group of followers, who have been within the minority, would categorical progressive attitudes in public, however revealed misogynistic views of girls’s sport in additional personal moments.
This group tailored what they stated relying on the social scenario or who they have been with.
Co-author John Williams, from the College of Leicester, stated: “The rise in media protection of girls’s sport on each the BBC and subscription channels was overtly supported by some males.
“But it surely additionally clearly represents, for others, a visual menace – an assault on soccer as an area for ‘doing’ masculinity.
“That is at a time when there are extra widespread anxieties circulating amongst males about the best way to set up and carry out satisfying masculine identities.
“For males like these, there was a pronounced anti-feminist backlash in direction of the ladies’s sport.”
Further reporting by PA
Kaynak: briturkish.com
