The FA Released Absolutely Clueless And Sexist Recommendations For Getting Young Women Involved In Football

There’s this dynamic when it comes to tackling sexism in society. Where efforts are led by men, they make sexism out to be this abstract, context-free force that men somehow have had no part in perpetuating. These men also believe that they, specifically, have the solution to such a vexing problem, and managed to come up with the solution without consulting any women.

Where better to see this dynamic than the Football Association.

A document produced by the FA on encouraging girls and young women to get involved in football was recently publicized. The document, which the FA insists was compiled after “research and feedback,” offers some truly awful tips that infantilizes women and casts their particular concerns as shallow and aesthetic. Some of those tips include advertising “in places where girls go” such as coffee shops and toilets (the only two places girls congregate, after all), making sure girls playing football have “colorful bibs” that “smell nice,” and incorporating breaks in play to allow girls to check their phones and scroll through Twitter.

The BBC spoke to an educator who came across the document and decided to use it as part of a writing lesson for her students, many of whom are, in fact, girls who play football. “I was absolutely horrified, and actually laughed out loud at some of the suggestions,” said Carol Hughes, deputy head of Lumley Junior School in Chester. “I took it to another teacher and she had the same response.

Lumley students had similarly dim views of the recommendations. As one student put it: “we aren’t brainless Barbie dolls. We don’t all like the same colour – pink.”