Rebecca Welch

[RustyRef]

I agree with the stats but disagree with 'blaming' (for lack of a better word) women for it. We need to look into why women don't want to get into refereeing.

All referees start at grassroots. A few years ago our local RA had a big campaign to recruit female referees and we had a large number start. Many of them quit after a few games, either themselves quit or pulled out by their parents after seeing how they were treated by players and fans. There are deeper problems in the game to resolve before we can have the stats balanced.

I'm not blaming anyone at all. There have been loads of initiatives to recruit and retain female referees, including but not limited to free female only courses, female development groups, and female referee academies. And to an extent they have worked as numbers have increased, but nowhere near enough. My point really was that you can't force anyone into refereeing, if they don't want to do it you are going to have an imbalance that isn't representative of society.

And you are right, there is a problem once female referees do progress. When I first got my level 4 I regularly worked with a female L3, who I thought was very good and managed games really well. Players were generally really good with her and didn't treat her any differently to a male referee, but the same couldn't be said of the paying spectators and she got way more abuse from the crowd than any male L3 I worked with. That was 15 years ago and I would like to think that society has changed to the extent that this wouldn't happen anymore, at least not to the same extent, but unfortunately at any game there is at least one village that has lost its idiot for 90 minutes and some people can't help themselves.

 

[Justylove]

I believe that it's going to be a generational evolution, rather than a revolution, which is far slower than I would personally like to see.

"Trail blazers" (and that's in air quotes simply because I don't want it to seem condescending) such as Sian Massey-Ellis and Rebecca Welch as well as some of the top European refs are great for raising the awareness of women operating at the top level of the sport and are the role models for girls and women to believe that there is a role for women in elite men's football, however that takes time to filter through, those young female referees who are inspired today are at least 10 years away from reaching that level, if they can get there at all.

In my 7 1/2 years of refereeing I've seen some strides in women referees being more accepted in the men's game, even simple things like having a specific and suitable changing area for female officials, as opposed to in a cupboard full of **** or a dirty disabled toilet. There are more women operating on the leagues that I'm on, although nowhere near as many as there should be.

The added impetus that the WSL coverage provides also is another potential tool to recruit female officials, giving those who might not initially want to do men's football a pathway to qualify and referee.

However, there is a fundamental issue in our sport, that transcends gender, race or any other measure, and that is that the retention of qualified referees is poor, too many leave the game, tired of the lack of respect that they get for performing their duties. Getting female referees into the game is one thing, keeping them is another matter. Until or unless this issue is really taken seriously, then it's likely to be 3 steps forward and 2 back for the number of female officials in the game.

 

[deusex]

"Virtue signalling" is a nonsense term used to try and dismiss people who state a positive and virtuous opinion.

The implication of course, is that Paul, James and presumably now myself all don't actually believe what we're saying and just think we "should" say it to look good? The fact that someone can't even conceive of the possibility that someone else might actually think more women at the top levels of football is a good thing says a lot more about you than it does the so called "virtue signalers".

That's some fine virtue signalling...

 

[PinnerPaul]

The ban was lifted 50 years ago Paul. That was my point. It didn't and hasn't affected any modern-day female referees, Rebecca included.

OK, point taken but even taking that on board and ignoring the usually excellent! Big Cats comment about 'ignoring' history, so we've gone from zero to erm........one in 50 years! Surely that has to be worthy of comment/discussion and means there is room for a slight! improvement in terms of representation of women in refereeing?

 

[Ref1981]

As Sian Massey-Ellis and now Welch have shown it is indeed possible for women referees to get to the high levels of football. Hence I don't think there is a conspiracy in the FA to prevent woman referees of reaching the highest levels (at least UEFA has shown it is a great way to get positive visibility for refereeing). But taking into account the previously mentioned statistic of 10% of referees being woman (I do not know how accurate it is, but based on my own experience it is somewhat correct, maybe even too high) in case of all things being equal there should be 10% woman referees in every league.

So the question is why the situation is what is it?

*Warning* from now on my message will include admitting that there are physical and mental differences between men and women that are effected by biology. If this is unbearable to you, please stop reading.

*Disclaimer* the whole theory is based on my own experiences and my rather limited understanding of biology, so I might be completely wrong. However, in my eyes this offers some ideas on why we have so little female referees on the top

To answer to that question, we have to look what it takes to reach high level of football refereeing. My top five would be:

-Skill
-Fitness
-Referee mentality
-Time
-Passion/ambition

The skill of the referee would not only include things like understanding the game and players, knowing the lotg and --- but also things like authority and knowing how to deal with players. Although the skills can be learned off the pitch to some extent you will need to get to the pitch and actually deal with the players and the game to learn to the full extent. Here we run to the first issue: mens game differs radically from youth and female football in terms of what the players expect of you. So to learn to referee mens football you have to referee mens football. If you want to go far you have to start early (I'd say there is not much point in promoting 40+ refs to any top league, whether male or female) and you (to my understanding) start from the bottom. So in order to became something in the mens game you would have to go to the park on Sunday morning to referee and start that at a young age. Hardly very appealing and requires a lot of love for the game. I'd argue that this is a one "gatekeeper" for women in mens game.

Second thing I'd put under the "skill" is authority. Although affected by many other factors the most primal authority comes from physicality. So muscle, height and tone of voice bring you authority. Women in general are shorter, less muscular and have a higher tone of voice when comparing to their male counterparts. In my opinion this is a thing that does effect their (or anyone else with the qualities mentioned before regardless of their gender). As a thought in regards to this: whom do you think could calm you down/prevent you from doing something stupid Nestor Pitana or Clement Turpin?

Then into fitness. Rather simple thing. Women are generally slower and weaker than their male counterparts (check any olympic results for example, the male top performers perform better than females). Not necessarily a sex difference but difference in body composition, which is affected by sex. So shortly, it is harder for women to meet the physical requirements for top level football.

Thirdly referee mentality, certain mental toughness, resilience under pressure etc. Women are higher in neuroticism (neuroticism=tendency towards negative emotions). So we can make the argument that the kind of "referee personalities" are rarer in women. Which would result in A) less women referees overall B) higher quitting rate of female referees C) lower number of female referees in the top.

At fourth place is time. Not only the time you need to invest in training and to games but also the previously mentioned starting early. It has been studied that men and women value different things in the workplace (not a study in itself but it combines a few different studies nicely). So women tend to value work-family balance and other "soft" factors more than men. In order to reach the top in pretty much anything you need to make sacrifices and for example, have to spend time away from your family. Hence I'd say that there are fewer women willing to make those sacrifices than men. This would result in less women in the top (If you wont be willing to make the sacrifices to succeed someone else surely is and will succeed).

Fifth is passion/ambition. I do not expect this to have major gender related differences, although men are higher in aggression (and ambition is a one form of aggression).

In conclusion, there are factors to success in refereeing that exist more likely on men resulting in less female referees in the top. Even though individually they seem rather small, when combined it has a great effect.

Lastly, someone pointed out having role models for women wanting to became referees. While I understand that it raises awareness of the possibility of becoming referee I doubt it alone will make anyone a referee or at least make them not quit after a game or two. Out of interest, how many of us became referees because we saw someone refereeing in the UCL?

 

[GraemeS]

Ugh. A forum full of men is explicitly not the place to go into detail on this discussion, but fine. For the sake of argument, I'll play along with your "5 key personality traits" approach.

1a. Skill - you explicitly state that this is something that can be learnt, and in fact is something every SG1 referee has learnt over time. So is a woman reaching the top levels and acting as a "role model" likely to inspire more women to try? Yes. Is more funding, training and support for those at the start of that journey going to help? Also yes. So all this point shows is that it might be a good idea to support and celebrate women who have made it, and to use that to inspire others to try.
1b. Authority - you're highlighted one way authority can be generated, but it's narrow-minded to suggest "intimidation" is literally the only way to run a football match. I can't think of the last time I went out to a football match with the intention of trying to scare a player into submission! Most people on this forum aren't 6ft6 brick ****houses with shaved heads and a Paddington-esque "Hard Stare" - we all find our own ways to run matches and to get through to players

2. Fitness- I can't argue with the fact that the fastest woman in the world is slower than the fastest man. But being a referee doesn't require you to be the best, or the fastest - it requires you to reach a standard of "good enough" to keep up. If you're telling me an average 30yo woman who's given funding and time to train for a bit can't get to a point where they're at least passing the same fitness tests as Jon Moss, then I think you're in a dream world.

3. Mentality - I don't know where you got that paper from and it may have since been widely discredited. But again, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and accept it on faith - if you actually read in detail, although the mean score is higher, the standard deviation for women is much wider. Meaning negative one SD from the mean falls in about the same place for men and women. And as with my fitness point and as is the case with men too, we don't need every woman to meet this standard, we just need to encourage those who are suitable to try, and support those who have taken the first steps.

4. Time - Again not an unfair point on the surface level, but it's not hard to look a little deeper and ask "why?". There are a whole host of reasons why men might feel like they are more able to find the time for refereeing - some of them reasonable and others based on outdated societal constructs that should be challenged. Maybe there's enough in this point that I would accept "time" as a justifiable reason why we'll never see 50:50 gender balance in PL referees. But let's not forget - this thread exists because one woman has refereed one match in the fourth tier of English football. So I refer you again to points 2 and 3 - the idea that no woman has ever had the possibility of finding enough time to do something that hundreds of men have done over the last 100+ years feels like nonsense.

5. Passion - I'm actually going to challenge you on dismissing this point as well! As Paul has previously pointed out, women's football was banned for a long time and as a direct result, has struggled to even achieve the same levels of popularity as other woman's sports have relative to their men's equivalents. So why would a woman be expected to develop a passion for a sport where they have been made explicitly unwelcome? Getting the WSL on mainstream TV, getting women into the limelight at the top of the men's game, giving female pundits equal billing on TV coverage - these are all important steps towards actually giving women a chance to develop that passion that they have been actively pushed away from in the past.

I find your summary paragraph wild as well - I don't know anyone who got into refereeing before their 30's who hasn't at some point thought "maybe I'll find I'm really good at this and end up in the PL"! Sure, for a lot of us, the difficulties of that journey quickly take away that motivation, but I think it's very strange that you don't think the possibility of reaching the top is a partial motivating factor for most young referees, at least when deciding if they want to turn up and do the course. Conversely, a woman who gets into refereeing and is very good....maybe will get a few WSL matches and the associated £85 match fee. If you want the definition of something that won't motivate someone to work their way to the top, I'd start there.

 

[Ref1981]

Good answer GraemeS! Few things I'd like to say in regards to this.

1. In regards to the "skill" of the referee my main point was that to referee high level mens games you also need to referee low level mens games, which is not particularly appealing and personally I consider it somewhat scary. So I'd assume it would not be any less scary to under 20 year old women, which could and would make pursuing higher level male games undesirable, compared to for example high level of womens football.

1b. I indeed highlighted only one part of things that creates authority. Certainly I'm saying that one should be a size of an house to became a referee. What I am saying though is that it has an effect on how players react to you, you have to look like an athlete (I remember Collina had said something similar regarding looking like an athlete).

2. The standard of "good enough" is still very good. If you have watched some top level female referees and compare their movement on the pitch to men on the same level with them, the difference is, at least to me, apparent. Obviously there are women who can meet the requirements, but still they are a minority.

What comes to "an average 30yo woman who's given funding and time to train for a bit" I've always thought that you have to be good enough to be a pro referee before becoming pro referee. With endless resources we could make almost anyone a referee but unfortunately we are not living in a such a dream world.

3. There are numerous studies stating the same thing. If I understand what you mean is that women and men score the same average score (which is correct) but men tend to be more on the extremes (as in the picture below)

But if you want to succeed in high pressure profession (such as refereeing) you have better chances of success the lower your neuroticism (=the further right you are on the graph) and there are more men than women on the absolutes, hence more men have higher tolerance of negative emotions than women.

4. I'm not touching the first points you made. You might be correct with the social constructivism, or not. In any case I'm not trying to say that no women could or could have became a top level referee. I am only providing my theory about why there are far more male than female referees on the top. The reason being that traits that predict success exist more likely on males, which result in more male top referees.

It is in the interest of every football fan, player and a referee to have the best referee possible on every game regardless of the referees gender, sexuality etc. I'm all for having female referees on the game and would certainly hope for more of them (I hope there would be more referees in general, and there is a great amount of potential in getting more women into this great hobby).

5. I didn't at any point say that women have any less passion than men. Passion and ambition are two very different things (I have a great passion for hard rock music, yet I have no ambitions regarding it).

Also, the ban of women football has probably had an effect on woman refereeing. When I started out my mentor was an 60+ guy who helped me a great deal during my first seasons, I can't imagine there is many 60+ woman refs mentoring. Yet I think even if we would have 50:50 ratio on males and females as referees we wouldn't see a 50:50 ratio on top leagues for the previously mentioned reasons.

Finally I have to admit that your last statement is absolutely true. I didn't think it like that. While I still don't think hardly anybody will became referee because they want to reach the top, I agree that it is a good motivator for young people who already are refs. I'd also be interested in hearing what you think would motivate the (woman) referees? The match fees are paid by the clubs so increasing them would hurt the clubs (at least for now when their revenues are still very low).

Personally I think one thing hurting development of woman referees is focusing them too much on the female game. I feel like it would be a lot better to make them ref the games of the level they are without special focus. This would allow them to get more experience on male football (which is in my view very different) and helping them to climb the ladder there.

 

[deusex]

Ugh. A forum full of men is explicitly not the place to go into detail on this discussion, but fine

Yes only women can have an opinion on this.
God your virtue signalling is our of control. Is there not a BLM forum you can go spout this rubbish on?

 

[deusex]

OK, point taken but even taking that on board and ignoring the usually excellent! Big Cats comment about 'ignoring' history, so we've gone from zero to erm........one in 50 years! Surely that has to be worthy of comment/discussion and means there is room for a slight! improvement in terms of representation of women in refereeing?

Please show me the FA rule that stops women from becoming a ref.
Less women want to be refs than men so there are less women in refereeing!
There is no agenda.
In my county, sub standard female refs are being practically given their L4 just for turning up
You support this I assume

 

[Ross]

Put a fork in this one....