Reality checks
Reality checks
As we celebrate the wins in women's sports, we must spotlight the losses, too.
Hi, friends! As you know, women’s sports have been riding a high. And yes, those highs come with growing pains and stretch marks, but the problems we’ve talked about in Power Plays in recent months have been, for the most part, “good” problems to have.
But recently there have been stark reminders that beyond the happy headlines, athletes in women’s sports are still facing systemic barriers, extreme mistreatment, horrible mismanagement, and misogynistic apathy from those in charge on a day in, day out basis. And in today’s newsletter, we’re shining a spotlight on a few of those stories.
This edition of Power Plays is sponsored by the Working Family Party’s “Basketball House,” which throws events that seek to build political power for the multiracial working class by creating community in our fandoms and making collective civic engagement convenient, accessible, and fun.
Later this month at WNBA All Star in Phoenix, on Saturday, July 20 at 11:30amMT, they’re hosting a drag comedy brunch featuring Godoy and headlined by Sam Joy. Click here to reserve a spot.
Last week, the Guardian reported that Reading FC has withdrawn from the 2024-25 Barclays Women’s Championship season due to financial issues. It will drop down to the fifth tier of English women’s football, and the league will operate will 11 teams this season instead of 12 and only one relegation spot.
"To continue to operate at Barclays Women's Championship level, the club requires further ownership cash injection to build a squad capable of competing and to meet the revised mandatory criteria ahead of the 2024-25 season," the club said in a statement, per ESPN.
"This would have included returning to a full-time training model as well as further investments in facilities and personnel. Whilst these requirements are in-line with the exponential growth of the women's game — it is widely accepted that a direct financial return on annual investment is not expected for at least five years. Unfortunately, given the current economic realities of the Club, the outlay required to reach these levels are just not possible without significant owner funding."
According to Jessy Parker Humphreys at the Athletic, it’s nothing new to see men’s teams sacrifice their women’s teams when things get even a little muddy:
The willingness of clubs to drop their women’s teams on a whim has long been a feature of the game. Manchester United did it in 2005 when the Glazers completed their takeover, then Charlton Athletic did the same two years later when their men’s team were relegated from the Premier League. London City Lionesses declared independence from Millwall in 2019 after they felt they were being held back by the men’s club and in 2021, Leyton Orient withdrew permission for their women’s team to use their name so they could start their own side. They now play in the seventh tier, when previously they were in the fourth.
Maggie Murphy, the former CEO at Lewes Football Club, wrote on LinkedIn that the financial and facilitative requirements for the higher tiers of women’s soccer have become so extreme so quickly that its straining a system that was never built with women’s soccer in mind in the first place.
“The consequences of a strategy that forces the hand of men’s clubs, is that we are creating an entire women’s football ecosystem that is more dependent than ever on men’s football,” Murphy wrote. (Bookmark this quote, we’re going to be coming back to this specific topic later in the summer.)
Elsewhere in England, Tom Garry of the Guardian reports that the Manchester United women’s soccer team has been forced out of their fancy new state-of-the-art facilities into trailers because the men’s team’s facilities are under renovation, so they’re now taking over the women’s facilities. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so insulting.
Last month, another lower-tier club, Thornaby FC, voted to disband their entire women and girls’ program, leaving 100 women and girls without a club to call home. It only reversed course after receiving significant pushback on social media.
Just today, the Daily Mail reported that the Blackburn Rovers, a team in the second tier of English soccer, are paying their women’s players salaries of £9,000-a-year, which is less than minimum wage. In total, Blackburn only budgets £100,000 for women’s salaries. These are supposed to be professionals!!!
Former players took to social media to reveal that the problems at Blackburn were much deeper than that, too.
“When I was at Blackburn, the club captain, the vice captain and I had a meeting with [the chief executive of the Rovers] Steve Waggott. We wanted to discuss the conditions we played in, which included sharing two portable toilets with the entire boys' academy. He told us we needed to be grateful for that £100k,” Ellie Leek, who currently plays for Stoke City, posted on Twitter.
Shannon McLoughlan, who used to work on the communications team at Blackburn, said on Twitter that during the 2022-23 season, players and staff for the women’s team “were not allowed to use the toilets, drink machine, and desks/canteen” each day until “the men’s team had gone home.”
“This is honestly only the tip of the iceberg of the poor standard us staff & players had to suffer whilst at Blackburn,” she added.
These injustices are unacceptable at any level of sport, but it’s important to note that even the best of the best are still fighting for bare necessities in some nations. Argentina — whose men’s team won the World Cup in 2022, and whose women’s team has qualified for the last two women’s World Cups — recently had four players walk out of a training camp due to the ludicrously poor pay and conditions.
“We reached a point in which we are tired of the injustices, of not being valued, not being heard and, even worse, being humiliated,” defender Julieta Cruz posted on Instagram. “We need improvements for Argentina’s women’s soccer national team, and I am not only talking about finances. I speak about training, having lunch, breakfast.”
It’s exhausting. It’s infuriating. And it’s imperative that we don’t look away. Because that’s exactly what the Powers That Be want us to do.
(Sorry today’s newsletter was depressing. Need a palate cleanser? I got you.)
Love you all.