“It’s getting people talking”: Student-athletes, historian react to Canadian women’s national soccer team protests

Written for The Aquinian

(*artwork: Equals by Incé Husain)

On February 10th, the Canadian Women’s National Soccer Team went on strike against Soccer Canada to protest the budget cuts and unequal pay they are facing just six months before the Women’s World Cup. In a statement addressed to Soccer Canada, the team conveyed that this treatment is rooted in gender inequity. Canada Soccer shut down the strikes by threatening to sue the team. In a whirl of media spotlight, they resumed play - their kits inside out, their Soccer Canada crests taped over, or wearing purple jerseys embroidered with the words “enough is enough”.

At STU, student-athletes and faculty interpret the protests with optimism, and discuss their understandings of gender inequity and activism in sports. 

Abby Cameron, a 4th year student-athlete studying human rights, criminology, and sociology, plays on the STU women’s soccer team as a left back and winger. She began playing soccer when she was three or four years old and can’t imagine life without it. She says it is fulfilling to be part of a team of girls who challenge her. 

“Being part of a team is huge for me. It brought a lot of different views and aspects into my life,” says Cameron. “It’s great to be …constantly around a group of girls who are always challenging me physically at soccer and out of soccer at school.”

Cameron says it is sad that the women’s national team must protest for equal pay. Though she believes that gender equity in sports is generally improving, the protests show that significant gender inequity in sports still exists. She commends the women’s team for taking action, and believes that student-athletes can show solidarity by spreading the word about the protests.

“From my perspective, the women’s team was doing a good thing and standing their ground. That’s kind of the only way to bring about the change that’s probably needed,” says Cameron. “Bringing attention to it and talking about it is probably realistically the most important thing that we can do at (our) level.”

Cameron conceptualizes being a “woman in sports” as having a lack of televised female role models to look up to, a norm that can cause detachment from the sport. Growing up, she didn’t know many professional female athletes, and says that only male athletes seemed to be viewed as “the stars”. She shares that comments on online sports pages devalue footage of great plays by women, comparing them to men who “did it better”. She feels that respect for female athletes is lacking and can be instilled through equal media coverage.

“It’s hard to care for something that is never televised or never shown, whereas men’s sports are always on TV,” says Cameron. “With respect for women in sports will come a bunch of the other changes like better pay, better treatment.”

Though Cameron says that playing soccer with STU is equitable, she feels that men are taken more seriously in broader sports-related contexts. She shares that she underwent knee surgeries following an injury and met with physiotherapists to help her return to soccer; while some practitioners were helpful, others brushed off her recovery as something that wasn’t urgent. This trend didn’t occur for her male counterparts who had more minor injuries. 

“There were some physios who were just kind of like ‘oh you’ll get back to your sport whenever you can’, versus, I know some of my guy friends who have had more minor injuries and have been taken a lot more seriously,” Cameron says. “Men in sport I guess have more priority than women in sports.”

At the college level, Cameron believes that activism for gender equity would involve women standing up for themselves. Though it is harder for men to advocate for gender equity in sports because they won’t “feel it and understand it”, she says they can support women athletes by attending their games and talking about their accomplishments.

“Men just need to be able to recognize that there is a difference between men’s and women’s sports but they’re both valuable, and there should still be equality and fair pay for women in sports, even if it looks slightly different than men in sports.” 

She believes that the dialogue around the protests will trickle down to advance gender equity at local levels. Ideally, the protests will be successful for the women’s national team, but Cameron considers the attention the protests have amassed to be a victory in itself.

“It’s getting people talking,” says Cameron. “The more people that talk about it, the more people that will care, and the more people that will work for change.”

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David Armstrong is a 3rd year student studying journalism, criminology, and psychology at STU, and plays for the men’s soccer team as a right wing. His connection with soccer formed in the ninth grade when he attended his first international tournament. On the field, he is “laser-focused”, thinking of nothing but the game and relishing that “magical” state of immersion. 

“When you’re really wrapped up in the game… It just seems like there’s nothing else in the world at that time. Those 90 minutes that you are out there and you’re competing - anything else can be happening off the field but no matter what it is, your mind is really just not going to be there.”

Armstrong considers the women’s national team to have the “biggest women’s soccer players in the world”. In the wake of their Olympic gold medals and consistent levels of success, he says the budget cuts are “just not something that make any sense”. He believes that the media dialogue around the protests are “in the right place” while Canada Soccer is “absolutely in the wrong”. He explains that the lack of clarity around Soccer Canada’s funds have plagued its relations with both the men’s and women’s national teams, but that men don’t suffer as much because they get enough funding from outside the national level. 

“I think just overall spreading the attention to it is what’s going to be most important,” says Armstrong. “Because if everyone knows this is an issue and everyone can back them in it, then it is really, really hard to ignore.” 

Armstrong believes that university-level athletes can also show solidarity for the women’s national team by donning purple jerseys during matches and warm ups. This could set off a “chain reaction” of similar displays across the country that would propel more activism, put pressure on Soccer Canada, and keep the protests in public consciousness. 

“If you create a ripple effect like that across the country, that’s something that, once again, is very hard to ignore.”

At STU, Armstrong says that women’s and men’s teams have equal access to quality training facilities, travel funding, and hotels. But in the social sphere, Armstrong says there is disparity in the levels of interest in the men’s and women's teams driven by stereotypes about women’s physical abilities. This is compounded by the greater number of male sports fans.

“For a lot of places, the men’s (sports) will be favored a little bit, but that's just because a lot of the time you’ll see more male sports fans in general,” says Armstrong. “But I would say that definitely is a factor of why there’s a lot of games where, (for) the men's team, there will be more people in the stands than the women’s teams is because of that… stereotype around women’s sports. A lot of people believe that the intensity isn’t as high, and because a lot of the time they’re not running as fast, hitting each other as hard, all that type of stuff. There is that certain level of gender inequality that the women’s team itself just doesn’t have anything to do with.”

At the university level, Armstrong believes that advocating for gender inequity in sports would look similar for men and women. They have “similar social status” in their social media presences, which they can wield to spread awareness about the protests. 

He is optimistic that the protests will be successful.

“The Women’s World Cup is coming up very shortly,” says Armstrong. “This is the biggest tournament where the entire world is watching women’s soccer, so (Canada Soccer) really do not want to be caught up in a big battle with their players over money.” 

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Michael Dawson is a history professor at STU teaching a course on sport and world history. The course details the development of sports across time and how it can be used to interpret historical events that intersect with gender, sexuality, disability, and race. He hopes to make students aware of historical inequities in sports to build insight into how they permeate present day society. This would develop empathy and nuanced understandings of activism. 

“If you’re an activist, you need to focus on what’s not right, right now. You can feel empowered by looking to the past and seeing how people have changed things in the past and how things have gotten better,” says Dawson. “But the flip side is you can also go to the past and look at how people have restricted each other’s rights, victimized one another. That can also, maybe not empower you, but it can engage you, it can enrage you. It can be fuel for trying to do something.”

Dawson explains that modern sports were established to “serve the interests of men”. Their creation in the 19th century intersected with a social “masculinity crisis” in the Western world that strived to reinforce gender ideals. Sports were a tool for inculcating male ideals like strength, power, and conquest; women’s attempts to access sports were always met with resistance, with early women’s sports tailored to female ideals like graceful movement, being fully clothed, and not sweating too much. This dynamic paved the way for gender inequity in broader society. 

In the States, changes began when feminist movements advocated for including sports education in women’s schooling, and governments began legalizing the right to equal education. Dawson says that fair government regulations will result in large-scale gender equity in sports, and that this will lead to equity in broader society. 

“If you’re going to improve the world of sports you’re going to improve the world more broadly,” says Dawson. “Sports is important because it’s incredibly influential - economically, politically, socially, culturally.” 

He considers Soccer Canada’s shutdown of the strikes to have sent a “chilling message”. It fits the historical trend of women being silenced for seeking equal access to sports. He foresees that the women’s team will be met with resistance, but is optimistic about the protests.

“I’m optimistic there will be improvements,” says Dawson. “But everything that I’ve studied suggests that improvement’s going to be incremental, and the agitation, the campaigns, the efforts to move things ahead, inevitably face push back.” ♦

A modified version of this article appeared in The Aquinian on March 19th , 2023:

https://theaquinian.net/womens-soccer-protests-illustrate-gender-inequality-in-sport/