Fern Whelan revisited the old team photos in preparation for her new job. Whether at school or in youth football, she was usually the only black player in the picture. “It was normal for me at the time, I didn’t really question it,” said Whelan, who won three caps for England ten years ago. “Today the situation is different, today we have a stronger voice.”
Whelan works for the English professional association PFA and wants to increase diversity in girls’ and women’s football. One of her appointments during this European Championship took her to a conference in Manchester. There, in the National Football Museum, the guests were also happy about the success of the English team.
But her words sounded less euphoric. While support for women’s football in England has been increasing for years, the visibility of black national team players has been declining. At the 2007 World Cup in China, six black players were part of the English team – now at the European Championship there are three. Jessica Carter, Nikita Parris and Demi Stokes – none of them play a formative role.
This ratio is in contrast to men’s football. Eleven black players were part of the England team at last year’s European Championship. According to the Black Footballers Partnership network, 43 percent of Premier League players are non-white. In the Women’s Super League, just 9.7 per cent of players are black or, as the English say, come from “racially diverse backgrounds”.
It’s not just about the lack of role models – there are also cultural barriers
“Young girls see almost no one who looks like them. They lack heroines to emulate,” wrote longtime England international Anita Asante in a guest post for the Guardians. “The English women’s scouting system does not have enough people on the ground. There is a lack of resources and ingenuity to look in the right places.”
Anita Asante reached the level of performance a good 20 years ago at Arsenal FC in London. The structures were not yet professional. Asante describes that the most important women’s teams were quite diverse back then. With the introduction of the Women’s Super League in 2010, women’s football increasingly adopted support models from the Premier League. Talent bases were established in the suburbs of large cities or in rural regions. Low-income families are less able to afford to send their children to football boarding school. Girls’ football clubs rarely offer a driver service.
There are also “cultural barriers”, as Eartha Pond puts it. The sports teacher had once played professionally for Chelsea, Everton and Tottenham, among others. She is now involved in local politics in the London district of Queen’s Park and advises the English Football Association FA on promoting women. “The clubs and associations should speak cautiously with the families,” says Pond. “It cannot be taken for granted that parents from black communities let their children stay somewhere else for weeks.”
What initially sounds harmless has a serious background. After the Second World War, millions of people from the Caribbean countries, Africa and South Asia had come to Great Britain. They worked hard but were discriminated against when looking for housing, healthcare or education. Between the 1970s and 1990s, they got to know football stadiums as places where the far-right National Front wanted to recruit strong white men. And in which the few black players were pelted with bananas and humiliated with monkey noises.
Open racism may have disappeared from the top leagues – the structural disadvantage remains
In the new millennium, the Premier League and FA wanted to win back black people’s trust, with tougher sanctions against racism and with prevention. In no other country in Europe does civil society around football have such a diverse network as in Great Britain. The networks “Kick it Out” and “Show Racism the Red Card” promote education. The “Football Black List” proves that the few black coaches are fired faster than their white colleagues. The “Black Collective of Media in Sport” documents the low visibility of non-white people in sports reporting. And the Black and Asian umpire group points out that their members often feel unfairly judged by white game observers.
Open racism may have disappeared from the top leagues – the structural disadvantage remains. For a long time, the FA did not want to deal with its own committees, which are usually made up of white men. After recurring debates about racism, she referred to the increasing number of black national players – or she drew attention to role models like Hope Powell. The former national player was often racially insulted in the 1980s. Powell did not want to be defeated and took over as coach of the English national team in 1998. She stayed in office for 15 years and inspired many girls for football.
But the development is not linear for the better. In 2017, national team player Eniola Aluko went public with allegations against Mark Sampson. Hope Powell’s successor as national coach racially insulted Aluko. A long debate ensued in the media, football and the judiciary. Aluko did not feel sufficiently supported by the FA as a victim and at times withdrew from social media due to abuse.
Fern Whelan, who works for the professional association PFA, wants to win back trust with concrete ideas. She couldn’t believe that the FA ran an all white player commercial ahead of the EURO. She hopes the tournament will also provide a boost for scholarships, mentorship programs and non-football audiences. There are more projects in England than in Germany, Sweden or the Netherlands, whose female footballers also do not reflect the diversity of society. But that lead is little consolation for Fern Whelan.