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World Cup 2018: Is football still sexist?
It is 2018, so no one objects to women knowing stuff about football, talking about it, or just watching a game, right?
Well, some incidents in this World Cup have left people wondering how much has actually changed in the beautiful game and whether women are being treated unfairly.
On Tuesday, Getty images published a photo gallery of “the hottest fans at the World Cup” featuring exclusively young women.
The post attracted criticism from social media users for being outdated. Twitter account Women in Football asked, “times are changing so why don’t you?”
The post was later removed by Getty, who said it was a “regrettable error in judgement” and that the photographic agency would be launching an internal investigation.
Female sports commentators in particular have been patronised, criticised and even harassed on camera by social media, passing fans and pundits alike.
Brazilian sports reporter Julia Guimareas was reporting live from Yekaterinburg, Russia when she was forced to dodge a kiss by a passerby.
“Don’t do this. Never do this again. It’s not right,” she shouted after him, forcing him to apologise.
A tweet congratulating Ms Guimareas for standing up to harassment was liked 64,000 times.
Australian SBS World Cup presenter Lucy Zelic has been attacked by online trolls for making a point of pronouncing players’ names correctly, as they would be in their home country.
After she was branded “annoying” and “insufferable”, Zelic’s co-host Craig Foster hit back at critics on Monday, explaining that their programme aimed to respect diverse linguistic traditions and cultures.
It has been a World Cup of firsts for women, which has raised the profile of female sports commentators.
BBC journalist Vicki Sparks became the first woman to commentate live on a televised World Cup match in the UK last week, while US networks Fox and Telemundo both reported that they featured the first women to commentate live on World Cup games in North America.
But not everyone was a fan of the change.
Ex-footballer Jason Cundy, who was not invited to commentate in this World Cup, has come under fire for saying that women’s voices are too high-pitched for football punditry.
-BBC Trending, bbc.com
