A real fan cares about football, not the gender playing

It’s not just discrimination, but the nonchalance and subtle unwillingness to address issues of inequality that can be hard to take. 

How many times have you heard someone say of a movie, “The first half was so much better than the second?” Have you ever seen someone heartily gobble a pizza and then leave the entire crust on their plate?

For many of us, life exists in a simple continuum of halves. We choose the part we like and ignore the other. We say we love football when what we really mean is that we love men’s football.

Last week, the Columbia women’s league organisers shared, for the first time, a brief explanation of how they went from attracting less than 50 fans, to attracting 50,000 during the women’s league finals.

In 2019, someone tired of the contempt with which spectators treated women’s teams came up with a strategy to speak directly to the fans.  

This included the top Columbian women’s’ league team removing half of their badge and playing with only half of it, while the men’s team did the same and played with the other half of the badge.

It caused quite an online storm in Columbia, but shortly afterwards, every team in the country joined the movement, and all teams played with half badges for the first time in history. The message on display was: Half love is no love at all.

The result was that fans became 100 per cent fans. Over the course of the season, attendance in women’s league matches increased steadily and on the day of the final between Independiente Medellín and América de Cali, a record 50,000 spectators showed up, which represented a 633 per cent increase.

That was the highest attendance ever recorded in Columbia in a league match and yes, it can also happen here in Kenya. 

Displaying half badges throughout the season was Columbia’s chosen strategy, but the message delivered is the same: Gender discrimination in sports is banal, unglamorous and omnipresent.  

I suppose someone will say that if women’s football is that interesting, spectators won’t need to be guilt tripped, cajoled or persuaded to go see them in action at the stadium. Fair point.

But I would feel more comfortable with the world if there was any correlation at all between the neglect of women’s football, and the quality of output in games involving women.

For this reason I enjoyed the spirited debate the strategy has elicited, and the fact that it had wider resonance, even beyond Columbia. 

For how much longer will sports stakeholders amplify the inequality that already exists in the game? Members of the #TeamEquality brigade say that a real fan cares about football, not the gender. Isn’t that right?

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