Euro 2024: women need safer fan spaces at big football tournaments to stamp out hostility and abuse

By Stacey Pope, Durham University

With millions of people attending matches and enjoying Euro 2024 in Germany’s fan zones, the issue of supporter safety is paramount. Yet how secure women feel at big tournaments, and what can be done to create safer spaces for female fans, receives less focus. Not feeling safe is a particular concern for women at high-profile men’s tournaments, including the Euros.

Crowd disturbances and violence at men’s international matches have always received widespread media coverage. In the aftermath of the Euro 2020 final against Italy, English football faced questions around the mob mentality on display, yet this ignored the problem of misogyny that included sexist chanting, sexual harassment and even sexual assault.

The ensuing Netflix documentary The Final: Attack on Wembley, which examines the scenes of chaos at England’s national football stadium, did not examine how this hyper-masculine behaviour affected women as fans, police officers and stewards. Instead, it focused on the usual headlines: ticketless fans, cocaine and alcohol consumption.

https://youtu.be/sYH7gRgJ2Bc?si=6x6YPFvxcCrt6frI

This is a real oversight, especially given that men’s professional football in England remains one of the last bastions of male domination and has a significant problem with sexism and misogyny.

In the research for my book The Feminization of Sports Fandom – which examines the opening up of opportunities for women to become fans over the past three decades – I discovered that this embracing of sport by women has not led to greater equality, nor resolved issues around their safety.

A recent survey of 1,950 male football fans revealed that openly misogynistic attitudes still dominate football fandom in the UK. For this study, my colleagues and I identified three groups of fans.

First, those with progressive attitudes who support gender equality and wider coverage of women’s sports. Second, fans with openly misogynistic attitudes who saw women’s sports as inferior – effectively, an anti-feminist backlash against women invading the traditionally male-only space of football, whether as fans or players.

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