“Shut up. What do you know about football? You should be in the kitchen making your husband’s tea.”
Angela, a 72-year-old Liverpool FC fan, has attended matches for decades, yet she still faces questioning and hostility—simply because she is a woman.
Anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out received 131 reports of sexist incidents at football matches between the start of the season and the end of February, more than double the number for the same period last season.
One female fan explained that misogyny has stopped her from taking her daughter to men’s games. “I’ll take her to the women’s matches if they remain safe, but not to the men’s games until she is older. I wouldn’t feel safe exposing her to sexism,” she said.
Experiences at Matches
Zoe Hitchen, a former English Football League photographer, began photographing men’s football while at university and worked professionally from 2008 to 2010. She regularly faced sexist comments, including questions like: “Do you even know what football is?”
“It felt like attending men’s matches meant grinning and bearing harassment,” Zoe said.
Sexism wasn’t limited to fans. She described mascots groping her while she photographed games. Clubs were often unresponsive to her reports. “I remember telling security: ‘That’s assault. You cannot touch me,’” she recalled.
Other fans have faced harassment in stadium facilities. One woman described encountering men in women’s toilets, saying: “I walked into an open cubicle only to be greeted by a man. It happened again in the next one.”
Online Abuse
Online spaces present another challenge. Simran Atwal, a Derby County fan and volunteer at Her Game Too, says women regularly face abuse on social media. Photos shared online can be commented on, shared, and manipulated without consent.
“One picture of me and friends before a Derby game was circulated, and the comments were sexualized. We had no control over it,” Simran explained.
Some images are altered using artificial intelligence to create sexualized versions of women without consent, a practice known as ‘nudification,’ which is illegal in the UK. One fan noted that many women experience this, causing ongoing anxiety over images being permanently online.
Sexism in football—both in stadiums and online—remains a pervasive issue. Fans, photographers, and campaigners continue to push for safer, more inclusive environments for women.
