The gendered effects of COVID-19 on elite women's sport

TL;DR: The authors provide an overview of how the pandemic is negatively impacting a wide variety of elite women's sports, where women have traditionally existed on the margins of the sport and could be considered as maledominated labour industries.

Abstract: The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in early 2020 prompted widespread global lockdowns as the world looked to contain and reduce the impact of the virus, including a pause on most sporting competitions (Parnell et al., 2020). COVID-19 has greatly affected the world, exposing stark inequalities, especially across gendered lines, in areas of society such as the labour market, domestic responsibility and economic hardship (Alon et al., 2020). Sport is a crucial, interwoven aspect of society and like wider societal trends, elite women's sport has been adversely affected by the pandemic, facing an existential threat (Bowes et al., 2020; Clarkson et al., 2020; Rowe, 2020). The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of how the pandemic is negatively impacting a wide variety of elite women's sports. Specifically, we cover sports where women have traditionally existed on the margins of the sport and could be considered as male-dominated labour industries. Centring primarily on the United Kingdom, we present a brief chronology of the impact of the crisis on elite women's sport, across football, rugby, cricket and golf – in many ways different from the men's versions – spanning the eight months since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 until the time of writing in November 2020. Throughout, the chapter utilises qualitative data from elite sportswomen encouraged to share their experiences during the pandemic (see Bowes et al., 2020). Subsequently, this chapter concludes with a summary of the challenges for women operating in (semi-)professional sports environments.

Summary

Introduction

• Throughout this collection, academics researching women’s sport have presented, and troubled, narratives of progress within elite (i.e., emerging, [semi-]professionalised) women’s sport, across a range of sports in different contexts, including American football, basketball, cricket, cycling, golf, ice hockey, tennis and rugby.
• The start of 2020 saw one of the biggest challenges the sports industry – men’s or women’s - has ever faced.
• Specifically, the authors cover sports where women have traditionally existed on the margins of the sport and could be considered as maledominated labour industries.

Football

• Widely recognised as the most popular watched and played sport across the world, football’s global governing body, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), estimate globally 13 million women play organised football.
• These events cause great concern to the women’s football community when historically funding to the women’s game has been cut by the FA in “financially turbulent times” (Woodhouse et al., 2019, p.2007).
• As one semi-professional player1 from the FA Women’s Championship stated: “Women’s funding is the first to be cut when financial issues arise.”.
• The authors found a wide range of responses that were deeply rooted in their historical, social and political contexts.
• Clarkson et al. (2021) identified ways that other nations could successfully manage the tensions between the economic impact of Covid-19 and their social and ethical responsibilities to women’s football.

Rugby

• Like football, and as Snyder and Taylor et al. have highted previously, women’s rugby on a global level has experienced unprecedented growth with a reported 2.7 million women playing rugby in 2019 – a 28% growth on 2017 (World Rugby, 2019).
• At a domestic level, the England’s women’s Premier 15s (rugby union) and Super League (rugby league) competitions were paused in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic, as were their male equivalent leagues (RFU, 2020).
• This highlights the unequal landscape in both codes of rugby and a key argument that advocates for women’s sport are commonly levelled with: the sport is not economically viable and therefore in times of hardship, men’s competitions should be prioritised.

Cricket

• The emerging professional landscape of women’s cricket has seen increasing numbers of paid opportunities for women across the globe, as discussed by Parry et al.
• In England, elite women’s cricket has benefitted from significant investment from the NGB, the English Cricket Board (ECB) and has been dependent on the ECB as well as men’s cricket for its development and support (Velija, 2015).
• Giving evidence at a government committee meeting in May 2020, Tom Harrison, ECB’s chief executive officer predicted the economic cost of Covid-19 could total £380 million (Stocks, 2020).
• The men's game will be a financial priority” Globally, the 2021 Women’s World Cup (WWC) was postponed in August 2020 as a result of Covid-19 to 2022 (ICC, 2020), with the International Cricket Council (ICC) citing a lack of preparation time for women’s teams as the reason for the delay.

Golf

• As Matz and Bowes’s contribution notes, golf is one of the most established professional sports for women, with the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) the longest running professional sports organisation for women.
• As Skillen (2020, p. 167) notes, “in those critical days in early March when other sports were ceasing to function in any meaningful way, golf continued”.
• Research, linking to the sport’s historical, social and political context, Uncorrected Proof could explore the broad range of working conditions sportswomen face (i.e. professional, semiprofessional, amateur) using a variety of qualitative methods to elicit rich, in-depth information about the gendered effects of the pandemic.
• So far, scholarly attention has only focused on the sport of football, and a wider academic understanding of the threats facing other sports is important to develop their understanding of what decisive action is required by NGBs.
• But for the professionalisation of women’s sport to continue, it must be viewed as integral to core business with any financial cuts spread equitably across both men’s and women’s competitions.

Full text

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Clarkson, B. G., Bowes, A., Lomax, L. and Piasecki, J. (2021). The gendered effects of Covid-19 on elite women’s
sport. In A. Bowes and A. Culvin, eds. The Professionalisation of Women’s Sport: Issues and Debates. Bingley:
Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 229-244.
Chapter 14
The Gendered Effects of Covid-19 on Elite Women’s Sport.
Beth G. Clarkson, Ali Bowes, Lucy Lomax and Jess Piasecki
Abstract
The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in early 2020 prompted widespread global lockdowns as the
world looked to contain and reduce the impact of the virus, including a pause on most sporting
competitions (Parnell et al., 2020). Covid-19 has greatly affected the world, exposing stark inequalities,
especially across gendered lines, in areas of society such as the labour market, domestic responsibility,
and economic hardship (Alon et al., 2020). Sport is a crucial, interwoven aspect of society and like
wider societal trends, elite women’s sport has been adversely affected by the pandemic, facing an
existential threat (Bowes et al., 2020; Clarkson et al., 2020a; Rowe, 2020). The aim of this chapter is
to provide an overview of how the pandemic is negatively impacting a wide variety of elite women’s
sports. Specifically, we cover sports where women have traditionally existed on the margins of the
sport and could be considered as male-dominated labour industries. Centring primarily on the United
Kingdom (UK), we present a brief chronology of the impact of the crisis on elite women’s sport, across
football, rugby, cricket and golf - in many ways different to the men’s versions - spanning the eight
months since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 until the time of writing in November 2020.
Throughout, the chapter utilises qualitative data from elite sportswomen encouraged to share their
experiences during the pandemic (see Bowes et al., 2020). Subsequently, this chapter concludes with
a summary of the challenges for women operating in (semi-)professional sports environments.
Keywords: gender, inequality, women’s sport, sportswomen, covid-19, coronavirus
Introduction
Throughout this collection, academics researching women’s sport have presented, and troubled,
narratives of progress within elite (i.e., emerging, [semi-]professionalised) women’s sport, across a
range of sports in different contexts, including American football, basketball, cricket, cycling, golf, ice
hockey, tennis and rugby. However, the start of 2020 saw one of the biggest challenges the sports
industry – men’s or women’s - has ever faced. The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in early 2020

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prompted widespread global lockdowns as the world looked to contain and reduce the impact of the
virus, including a pause on most sporting competitions (Parnell et al., 2020). Covid-19 has greatly
affected the world, exposing stark inequalities, especially across gendered lines, in areas of society
such as the labour market, domestic responsibility, and economic hardship (Alon et al., 2020).
Sport is a crucial, interwoven aspect of society and like wider societal trends, elite women’s
sport has been adversely affected by the pandemic, facing an existential threat (Bowes et al., 2020;
Clarkson et al., 2020; Rowe, 2020). The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of how the
pandemic is negatively impacting a wide variety of elite women’s sports. Specifically, we cover sports
where women have traditionally existed on the margins of the sport and could be considered as male-
dominated labour industries. Centring primarily on the United Kingdom (UK), we present a brief
chronology of the impact of the crisis on elite women’s sport, across football, rugby, cricket and golf -
in many ways different to the men’s versions - spanning the eight months since the start of the
pandemic in March 2020 until the time of writing in November 2020. Throughout, the chapter utilises
qualitative data from elite sportswomen encouraged to share their experiences during the pandemic
(see Bowes et al., 2020). Subsequently, this chapter concludes with a summary of the challenges for
women operating in (semi-)professional sports environments.
Football
Widely recognised as the most popular watched and played sport across the world, football’s global
governing body, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), estimate globally 13 million
women play organised football. On average, $347 million is spent on women’s football per year by
member associations (i.e. countries; FIFA, 2019a). Prior to the pandemic, elite women’s football was
heralded as entering a ‘new age’, with rapid growth in international media coverage and spectators
(Petty & Pope, 2019), and emergent professionalisation in multiple contexts (see Culvin and Bowes,
forthcoming). Central to this global evolution has arguably been the success of the 2019 FIFA Women’s
World Cup (WWC), with over 1 billion viewers (FIFA, 2019b). Despite decades of inequalities between
men and women in the sport, as of 2020 five countries now openly pay their women national team
players the same fees as their male counterparts – Australia, Brazil, England, New Zealand, and
Norway. Additionally, full professionalisation has occurred in some elite domestic leagues, most
notably within the United States of America (USA) and England, with evidence of emerging
professionalisation across mainland Europe including Germany, Sweden, France and more recently
Spain. While emerging as a strong industry, viable player working conditions are still absent in many

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countries where the effects of decades-long underinvestment and exclusion are still felt by players on
short-term contracts (Culvin, 2020).
Media commentators (e.g., Wrack, 2020) and academics alike have forecast that the Covid-19
pandemic represents a significant threat to the future of the elite women’s game across the world.
Clarkson et al. (2020) identified threats relating to the governance and funding of elite women’s
football in England, and the consequences for player wellbeing. First, with regard to organisational
and economic repercussions, the women’s game is reliant on the continued financial support of both
the national governing body (NGB) the Football Association (FA) as well as their ‘parent’ clubs (i.e.
men’s professional football clubs). The FA govern women’s football and in-part fund the game to
provide top-tier teams with financial support (Wrack, 2018), with Manchester City collecting
approximately £145,000 in the 2018 season (Manchester City Women’s Football Club Limited, 2019).
The FA state that Covid-19 could cost the sport £150 million and as such the organisation need to
make cuts (FA, 2020a). Cuts have been confirmed to coach education and the men’s and women’s
national futsal programme (FA, 2020b). In May 2020, the FA indicated that grassroots (i.e.,
recreational) and the women’s game were strategic priorities and therefore not the focus of the cuts
(Wilson, 2020). Yet recently a leaked report suggests funding for the grassroots game will drop by £22
million a year for the next four years (Fahey, 2020). These events cause great concern to the women’s
football community when historically funding to the women’s game has been cut by the FA in
“financially turbulent times” (Woodhouse et al., 2019, p.2007). As one semi-professional player
1
from
the FA Women’s Championship stated:
“Women’s funding is the first to be cut when financial issues arise.”
Another economic concern is the way that women’s clubs are irrevocably connected to men’s
‘parent’ clubs. As part of the FA’s strategic plan for the women’s game, women’s teams were
encouraged to become a secondary side under the umbrella of a men’s professional club (Dunn &
Welford, 2015). Now reliant on funding and access to resources and facilities, women’s clubs are
beholden to the financial health and (in)stability of elite men’s football (see Hamil & Walters, 2010).
Prior to the pandemic, there have been numerous examples (e.g., Charlton, Notts County) where
women’s teams have been cut adrift from the men’s clubs when it is in debt or has been relegated,
sometimes leaving women players jobless and even homeless (The Guardian, 2017). One
international, semi-professional footballer voiced her concern at this:
1
These football players reported being contracted players with a FA Women’s Championship club, earning a
part time salary, with second occupations

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“Priority is always men’s sport therefore little support for us, and may mean many women’s
teams are cut by parent clubs”
AFC Fylde looked to be the first casualty of Covid-19 when the club announced a restructure
in May 2020 and decided to disband their women’s team (Wrack, 2020). However, the decision was
reversed four weeks later following significant pressure from the media and women’s football
community. This example reinforces the real threat facing elite women’s clubs but also the power that
advocacy can have (Comeau & Church, 2010).
Player wellbeing was also emphasised by Clarkson et al. (2020) as significant threat in elite
women’s football, due to the unique aspects of the women’s game and the unstable working
conditions that women players face (Culvin, 2020). Players felt that these conditions were exaggerated
by the Covid-19 lockdown, with two semi-professional footballers explaining:
“I think we have a lot less access to equipment to be able to keep up with training compared
to men in football.”
“Men have gone back to training and will be getting paid again whereas the women’s league
has been cancelled so the earliest we will play a competitive game again could be late August”
While players in the top-tier of English women’s football (the FA Women’s Super League) have
full time contracts, women footballers in the second-tier (the FA Women’s Championship), as we have
seen with other elite sportswomen throughout the collection, operate on short-term contracts with
players often juggling their playing careers with other part- or full-time work. Accordingly, anxieties
are likely to be felt by these footballers concerning the ongoing viability of jobs that might support
their playing career in light of the pandemic, with football redundancies reaching record levels and
broad unemployment rates sharply rising (Office for National Statistics, 2020; FIFPro, 2020a). FIFPro
(2020a; 2020b) recently reported that 47% of women players have had their wages cut or suspended
accounts of depression in footballers has doubled since the start of the pandemic.
More recently conducted research has compared the Covid-19 responses of different national
football associations: Australia (Football Federation of Australia: FFA), England (the FA) and the USA
(U.S. Soccer Federation: USSF) over the first six months of the pandemic (Clarkson et al., 2021). The
authors found a wide range of responses that were deeply rooted in their historical, social and political
contexts. First, two different responses emerged in England and USA. In England, there was a two-