There’s a strict line of separation that supposedly differentiates girls from boys. That line is drawn from conception itself, dividing the world into pink and blue, dolls and cars, makeup and video games, nurturers and providers. Because of this division, the world of sports is also neatly pushed to one side—that is, the male one, as we all know.
Of course, while common sense tells us that women can enjoy sports just as much as men, their interest in them, especially football or anything to do with the Premier League, is still treated with suspicion or called ‘pick me’ behaviour. It is something to constantly justify, defend and prove. The boundary is reinforced through a thousand little microaggressions. Every four years, social media is flooded with memes of men telling their wives or girlfriends, “Don’t text me and don’t call me for the next 90 minutes. I’ll be busy watching the World Cup.” The joke, apparently, is that football belongs to men and women are merely interruptions. It’s all harmless banter until you realise that this culture of ownership creates spaces where women constantly feel unwelcome. The hypermasculinity surrounding football has long been linked to everything from online harassment to spikes in domestic violence around major tournaments.
Amidst all this, being a football fan as a woman means existing as a minority in a fandom that thinks you simply don’t belong. No matter what you do, you’re likely to be accused of being performative. 25-year-old content creator Himani Gupta tells me this happens almost every time she posts about football on social media, where she has a large audience following her. “If I post about football, they just can’t believe I actually love it. Men think football belongs to them. They even behave like they’re in the team themselves.” What happens when a woman feels just as passionately about the game? “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “They just think it’s performative. Everything women do seems performative to men these days.”
Why do female fans still have to prove their interest in football to men? Despite it being obvious that women have always watched, played, participated in and excelled at sports, their presence continues to be treated as unusual. “The growing visibility of women in sport, as fans, athletes and professionals, has challenged that assumption somewhat, but not everyone has caught up,” says Indian sports journalist Suprita Das. “The jokes are ultimately less about sport and more about who is considered entitled to belong. A classic FIFA World Cup joke that does the rounds every four years is how women only watch because the footballers are easy on the eye.”
