My daughter turned 4 earlier this year, and like all precocious 4-year-olds, she's very good at objectively observing the world and questioning the status quo. We should all be so lucky to see the world through such a transparent lens, with curiosity as our main driver.
We listen to a lot of records together and she loves looking at album art and asking me about the artists in the photos. “Who is that?” John, Paul, George, Ringo. Last weekend she asked her two additional questions. The first one was, “Why aren't there any girls?”
Of course there was no answer. Sorry, the Fab Four are just John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Again, most of the artists in my record collection are male. That's at least partially my fault.
She thought a little more and put the pieces together in her head. And her follow-up question once again threw me off the mark. “Hmm…why are all Liverpool players male?”
Oh shit. She discovered the patriarchy.
This was totally on me. Of course, we also have a women's team. But I usually only see them during international holidays.
This is not due to a complete lack of motivation, but mainly due to lack of priorities and time. In an ideal world, there would be a lot more soccer to watch, including women's soccer. Manchester doesn't want to see either. I watch Utes. I'm going to watch the relegation scrap. But as a parent of two young children, I play soccer for about two hours every weekend with frequent interruptions. No more.
So I'm watching the Liverpool men's team play. Because they were my first love team and the team that made me fall in love with club football. This is not a conscious decision against women's football, and it never was. But many of our habits, and therefore patriarchy (and other embedded power structures), are perpetuations of previous habits rather than conscious choices.
But we know that the excuse “it's always been that way” is never valid.
And this weekend, there really is no excuse. I promised her daughter that tomorrow I would wear a Liverpool shirt and watch the women's Merseyside derby.
That's the least I can do. In the meantime, I'm thinking about how I can better support the women's team, set a good example for her daughter, and show her daughter that things don't have to be male-dominated just because of the past. can.
