“I'm a Referee, Not a Female Referee”: The Experiences of Women Involved in Football as Coaches and Referees

The development of the Women's Super League (WSL) in English football, increased media coverage of the game, and an expansion of grassroots opportunities indicate a bright future for women and girls who want to play. Yet this vision must be tempered against compelling evidence of deep rooted and enduring gender inequalities within the game. This is the case for both players, and women who undertake non-playing roles, which is reflected in the relatively low numbers of women coaches and referees. Whilst The Football Association (The FA) has signalled addressing these inequalities as a key priority, critics argue that such efforts amount to superficial and limited efforts to support meaningful change. This paper departs from a concern with playing the game and responds to calls for more research to explore the experiences of women involved in football in non-playing roles. More specifically, it focuses on women coaches and referees, and addresses the following question: how do women in positions of power in football negotiate their place in what remains a distinctly male-dominated profession? In addressing this question, we take a theoretical position located at the nexus between radical and post-structural feminism, acknowledging the significance of structural power relations and individual agency in shaping daily lived social realities. Data were generated from interviews with 14 women coaches and 10 women referees. These interviews explored the structure and culture of the game and its impact on women's experiences of men's and women's competitive and grassroots football. Through a rigorous process of thematic analysis, three themes were identified: gendered entry into football careers; reinforcement of women's difference on the football field; and coping strategies for remaining in the game. Centralising the women's voices in this research highlights the insidious and persistent nature of gendered microaggressions, the sexism of football culture, and the ways in which these women negotiate this masculine terrain in their pursuit of being coaches and referees. “Andy Gray and Richard Keys hauled off air for sexist comments” (The Guardian, 24 January, 2011) “Crystal Palace Women goalkeeper accuses clubs of ignoring FA protocols after she was subjected to sexist abuse” (The Telegraph, 16 January, 2020) “Football manager demands ban on women referees” (The Guardian, 12 November, 2006) “Richard Scudamore sexism scandal intensifies as conspirator in sexist emails investigated by own law firm” (The Telegraph, 16 May, 2014) “Soccer chief's plan to boost women's game? Hotpants” (The Guardian, 16 January, 2004) “Women in Football survey a damning indictment of sexism in the workplace” (HRreview, 11 March, 2014) “Clattenburg criticised for claim female referees must pick career or children” (The Telegraph, 1 October, 2021

Lunar Outgassing, Transient Phenomena and The Return to The Moon, I: Existing Data

Herein the transient lunar phenomena (TLP) report database is subjected to a discriminating statistical filter robust against sites of spurious reports, and produces a restricted sample that may be largely reliable. This subset is highly correlated geographically with the catalog of outgassing events seen by the Apollo 15, 16 and Lunar Prospector alpha-particle spectrometers for episodic Rn-222 gas release. Both this robust TLP sample and even the larger, unfiltered sample are highly correlated with the boundary between mare and highlands, as are both deep and shallow moonquakes, as well as Po-210, a long-lived product of Rn-222 decay and a further tracer of outgassing. This offers another significant correlation relating TLPs and outgassing, and may tie some of this activity to sagging mare basalt plains (perhaps mascons). Additionally, low-level but likely significant TLP activity is connected to recent, major impact craters (while moonquakes are not), which may indicate the effects of cracks caused by the impacts, or perhaps avalanches, allowing release of gas. The majority of TLP (and Rn-222) activity, however, is confined to one site that produced much of the basalt in the Procellarum Terrane, and it seems plausible that this TLP activity may be tied to residual outgassing from the formerly largest volcanic ffusion sites from the deep lunar interior. With the coming in the next few years of robotic spacecraft followed by human exploration, the study of TLPs and outgassing is both promising and imperiled. We will have an unprecedented pportunity to study lunar outgassing, but will also deal with a greater burden of anthropogenic lunar gas than ever produced. There is a pressing need to study lunar atmosphere and its sources while still pristine. [Abstract abridged.]Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Icarus. Other papers in series found at http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~arlin/TLP

Globalization, multinationals and institutional diversity

This article aims to explore the impact of globalization and in particular multinationals on diversity within national varieties of capitalism. Do the actions of multinationals create more diversity within national systems, do they reduce diversity or do they have relatively little impact on diversity within national systems? The article argues that there are distinctive structures of institutional diversity across different national systems. Therefore, the question is not how do MNCs impact on institutional diversity per se but how do they impact on these different structures of diversity? In order to develop this argument, the paper also differentiates types of multinational. The article uses distinction between market-seeking, resource-seeking, efficiency-seeking and strategic asset-seeking in order to identify a range of different MNC activity across manufacturing, professional and financial sectors. These different sorts of MNC activity vary across time and contexts in terms of their significance. The article looks in detail at four different models of capitalism and examines how the entry of different sorts of multinationals with distinctive objectives impacts on the relationships between key social actors which underpin and reinforce these models. In this way, it suggests how institutional diversity within different types of capitalism may evolve under the impact of MNCs and globalization