Since finishing my dissertation on women's sports I have spent a lot of time discussing gendered stadia. Tonight my beloved Arsenal take on Brighton in the WSL. It is amazing, and exciting, that they once again should get a crowd of around 40,000 at the Emirates. However the Emirates is a stadium built for men's football - a sport played by men and mostly watched by men (~80% male audience). Men's football culture emerged with the sport at the end of the 19th century, while women's football is a cultural product of the 21st century. Much of the stadium design stems from these cultural origins of a hundred years ago. The players got changed in a shed and this space was where the team could have a private exchange of tactics. So we have built modern equivalents of these boxes in our modern stadia with no personal privacy - indeed in lots of sports media is even allowed in these changing rooms. At the Emirates tonight the length of the bag search line, the endless queues for the women's loos (maybe could be solved with a gender neutral approach?), the lack of healthy food options, and the lack of family friendly infrastructure (especially at club level) also highlights the weakness of the male football cultural origins of a gendered stadia on the unique fanbase of the WSL (a much more diverse and inclusive audience). In March 2024 the NWSL football team The Kansas City Current opened their new $120m CPKC Stadium. It was the world’s first stadium purpose built for a women’s professional sports team. The stadium was designed by women for women, and women’s sports, and built by a women-owned constructions firm. Built with female athletes in mind it includes: Larger locker rooms, private restrooms and change areas, custom showers and vanity areas, women-specific recovery centre, player-specific training areas, smaller bench heights and seat depth, a customised pitch, family friendly facilities, merchandise and concessions stands that cater to wider audiences, inclusive facilities for adults and children with noise sensitivities, and nursing rooms for new mothers. Incredible! I am sure Arsenal are looking into how to support the unique needs of the WSL players and fanbase in the men's stadium tonight and am sure things will get better with time. However I worry that pushing women's sports into men's sport stadia might damage their unique appeal. I can't wait to see women's sports having the infrastructure that its unique audience needs! Would love to hear your thoughts! #football #WSL #NWSL #womenssport #womensfootball #stadium #stadia #EPL #PremierLeague #soccer
Females dont really like gender neutral toilets because quite frankly they tend to be disgusting (urine everywhere). However modern stadium designs and I believe wembley stadium also has twice the amount of female toilets vs the mens. But also enclosed shower cubicles for female players is requested a lot, rather than the male open plan scenario
Thanks for sharing David. I agree with your sentiment - so much more needs to be done to get women to watch women’s sports and we are yet to see that. It will take some bold moves! Its also a no from me on the gender neutral toilets.
The other thing that I find a little bit frustrating is the lack of foresight on match days of the demographic coming. Bag searching and female security should naturally be increased to make the process much further going in, especially in club areas that are more affordable on women's match days so you get a lot more families coming. Feels like everything is so slow and inefficient on a women's match day.
GORDON GILL
1w
What happens at the top end is one thing but you have to remember that at grass roots level ladies only use men’s facilities, how many female only clubs are there? Cricket is my game and we encourage ladies, we have both a ladies and girls teams but they want to play with discounted memberships and match fees. They don’t want to pay the same as the men, how is that sustainable?
Sam Evans
2w
Completely agree. I never knew you were a Gooner David - I always knew you were a good ol boy! I had 80 people turn up to an event I host called IdentiBeer on Tuesday, but only 4 women. This needs to change, but speaking to Women in Identity and others it´s not that straightforward, in terms of how to position it, venue, time, met up name! Challenge accepted.
it is an interesting topic that - Toilets & Gender! esp at Games. I personally would like to see clean , accessible and non smelly spaces for ALL. Iv'e seen rather disgusting female and male toilets so ..its down to behaviour I feel. Gender neutrality goes both ways and needs to be inclusive esp. for it to really work. IMHO all that is needed is More toilets with stalls , non exclusive, kept clean and self cleaning, nice smelling e.g. Japanese Toto, loos :-)
Women often carry sanitary products in their bags. Not what I would have thought bag searches are for! In my experience of going to the Emirates whilst body searches are done by women, bag searches are always done by men. Maybe one to think about? As well as the equalities impacts on discouraging bags to be taken. Well done to Arsenal though for recently starting to provide free sanitary products in their toilets. Some great campaigning out there resulting in positive change ❤️
Absolutely fantastic, David (though I’d nitpick and argue that healthy food is a non-gendered issue) - bravo!
Love the insight as always David Sargeant!
Sports, Tech, and Betting - Consultant, Advisor, Investor
2wAnother issue with sharing a stadium! https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/nov/08/forcing-arsenal-women-out-emirates-stadium-wasted-opportunity-fixture-clash-men-champions-league