Everton smash glass ceiling on Boxing Day in the ongoing fight to beat sexism
Fair Game’s Matt Riley reports on a huge step forward for Her Game Too as our partners secure the backing of a Premier League club
ON BOXING Day, as we woke up woozy and kilos heavier, wonderful news began to help clear our heads at 10am. Her Game Too, Fair Game’s partner and friend, was about to kick into an even higher gear. Those of us who had followed their progress knew they were an unstoppable force, but the Premier League often march to a different tune to the clubs below. Not any more. Of all the Premier League members to smash through the glass ceiling, Everton was the perfect choice with their highly respected CEO leading the charge.
Known as ‘prof’ to her colleagues, Professor Denise Barrett-Baxendale MBE is the CEO of Everton and one of the most high profile women in football. With more than a decade at the Toffees, she knows the club inside out, focussing on her remit of working closely with the local community. The Everton in the Community initiative has gone from strength to strength under her stewardship. Internationally recognised and the winner of a century of local, national and international awards, it shows Denise is a team player who looks out for the club and community. The MBE she received in 2014, was for her services to Merseyside. During the Covid pandemic, Denise and her team were given a Gold award at the 2021 Football Business Awards for their response to the crisis. In a swift and focussed response, Denise oversaw twenty thousand checks and welfare phone calls, seventeen thousand emergency food parcels and three hundred thousand meals for school children. If you need help in a crisis, Denise is the person you want with you.
There is also a poignant and poetic symmetry to the timing of Everton’s decision. As I look at in the later chapter Born Out of Time: The Ballad of Lily Parr, huge crowds watched women’s football before the misogynists at the FA banned them in 1921. There were few bigger games than the one played exactly a century and a year ago at Goodison Park in front of 53,000 fans. The synergy between the values of Her Game Too and The people’s club also gives great credit to both sides of the partnership. It will join other initiatives under the umbrella campaign of ‘All Together Now’ that, for three years, has been highlighting and challenging some of the poor treatment faced by women at matches. Everton Women are also the only team in the WSL to play at a purpose-built football stadium, showing their heartfelt commitment to supporting the whole game.
Joint founder of Her Game Too Lucy Ford was justifiable proud and humbled by the latest chapter being written for her campaign:
“This is a major milestone for us and our campaign to have a Club the size of Everton supporting us. The poignant date of the announcement is also special to us as on this day 101 years ago Goodison Park played host to one of the most seminal women’s games in history.”
When the official Everton Twitter account shared the news with their 2.6 million followers, the response was overwhelmingly supportive with comments like @connor_t94’s “Incredible step in the right direction for the team at @HerGameToo #HerGameToo massive steps this” and Caz’s beloved Bristol Rovers Women’s @GasGirlsWFC with “Superb news for our friends at @HerGameToo! Amazing to see the campaign going from strength to strength”.
But. dispiritingly and illustrative of why Her Game Too need our full support were comments from a small minority of the mindless. For @DavidFo38145364 it was an example of “more woke nonsense” and .@RCharlton1966 sputtering into his keyboard tucked away in his mother’s back bedroom with, “What next? Can’t I just go to a bloody football match without political messages being rammed down my throat? Christ”. The beauty of the comments is that the heartfelt support will encourage more Premier League clubs to sign up, and the apoplectic brain donors’ responses will have exactly the same effect.
Fair Game, naturally, fully supports Her Game Too and remain hopeful that Everton can become the first club to raise their heads above the parapet and back Fair Game and Tracey Crouch’s fan-led review.
In the meantime, this breakthrough gives Caz, Lucy and the team a much bigger platform to show and a louder megaphone to share the message of how to address sexist attitudes in the game. It also gives an added sense of momentum and profile to all the clubs already signed up from The Championship down through the professional and amateur leagues. Her Game Too have established and developed a huge range of innovative, hard hitting and creative campaigns, but now they will also be able to tap into a high-profile and professionally driven marketing power, overseen by a widely respected woman at the top of her game.