The objectification of women in sports is a tale as old as time. Whether that is scantily clad "grid girls" standing in front of cars before the Grands Prix or the Darts Corporation's "walk-on girls", there is a long history of women being treated as accoutrements in live sporting competitions. Now while the aforementioned practices have since banned the use of both "grid girls" and "walk-on girls", one game where women are still prized solely on their looks is, of course, the football.
Certainly, whenever watching televised football, the camera always seems to zoom in on one of two things: children holding amusing signs, and beautiful women.
This practice may be about to change, however. In a bid to tackle sexism, television stations have been told by FIFA to stop zooming in on attractive women within the crowds.
The head of sustainability and diversity at FIFA, Federico Addiechi, has spoken positively of the changes. "We've done it with individual broadcasters. We've done it with our host broadcast services," he stated, before explaining that FIFA is prepared to "take action against things that are wrong".
There have been an unprecedented number of reports of sexism at this year's World Cup, with female reporters allegedly being harassed, not just online, but in public too. Certainly, while pre-tournament concerns that Russia 2018 would see a barrage of homophobic and racist attacks have not materialised, accounts of sexist behaviour have been rife.
The anti-discrimination collective, Fare Network, have been working with FIFA to monitor behaviour and attitudes in and around the World Cup games, and its executive director, Piara Powar, has since stated that sexism has been the biggest issue at Russia 2018.
Speaking to journalist at a press conference about diversity issues before England's semi-final against Croatia, Powar said that he and his time have "documented more than 30 cases" of mostly Russian women being "accosted in the streets" by male football fans. He added, however, that the real number of incidents is likely to be "10 times this".
He also said that there have been several cases of female reporters being kissed or groped while on air.
When quizzed on what FIFA could do to tackle such behaviour, Addiechi explained that the federation has been working with local organisers and the Russian police to identify these fans, some of which have since lost their FAN-IDs and been ordered out of the country.
Addiechi has since clarified that halting the zooming in on "hot women" in the crowds is "one of the activities that we definitely will have in the future - it's a normal evolution."We have done it on a case-by-case basis when some cases arose and they were pretty evident."
"We've done it with individual broadcasters. We've done it as well with our host broadcast services," he continued, before adding that it is not yet part of "proactive campaign".
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