06.12.2017

Discover Football women’s football and media conference to address key issues

Fare member Discover Football is hosting an international conference aimed at addressing key issues around women's football and the game's visibility in the media, between 6-10 December, in Berlin, Germany.

It will address topics such as: the lack of funding and media coverage for the women's game; how gender-based discrimination is hindering opportunities for women; the unequal representation of women in sports media; and, the negative portayal of women atheletes and women in sport.

The conference is directed at women who are active in football, including coaches, players, journalists, and will bring together 21 female representatives from across the globe to create a platform to exchange knowledge and draft strategies to make women in football and women's football more visible.

On Saturday 9 December a session open to public will discuss sexism in sports journalism and how media both reproduce and challenge sexist discrimination in sports and society. The panel will include views from women from Indonesia, Israel, Gambia and Cuba and Germany.

Concerns around the way women's football is marginalised in the media has lead to new research in France recently. In October, the rights group Les Dégommeuses published a study on the issue in French media.

Headline findings from the study show that among 1,327 news pages in French print media dedicated to football only 2.1% were about women’s football, a total of 28 pages.

The study, the first of its kind, was presented in Paris as part of the #FootballPeople weeks, as a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 10 French print outlets between 2 and 25 September 2017.

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