A controversial post sent by a rugby club which said an upcoming game was ‘not for girls’ reflects a wider issue for women in some sports, a journalist has claimed.
Beth Fisher, former hockey international and trustee for Cymru Women’s Sport, said she felt shock and disappointment when she saw Neath RFC’s post.
WRU asked the club to remove the post about the game against Llangennech and it has now been deleted. After being widely criticised, the club has now apologised.
Initially, they defended their message in an online statement, arguing they were trying to provoke debate about sexism in rugby.
Beth said, “To have the arrogance to tweet something like that, and not even think once ‘would this cause offence?’, just astonishes me.”
“We’re still in this era where women are perceived second class citizens when it comes to sport”, she told CJS News.
She tweeted her own criticism of the comments, and said “The amount of misogny and sexism I’ve had off my tweet is beyond.”
“I’m kind of used to it now and I kind of ignore it, but if I was 20 years younger, and I have been 20 years younger, going into sports clubs and organisations is scary.”
The sports journalist said Neath club’s words were a sign of a bigger problem. Beth said, “Until women are seriously considered as equal partners within sports organisations and clubs, we’re going to keep having this problem.”
She also backed previous calls for misogyny to be considered a hate crime.
She said Cymru Women’s Sport, a new organisation to champion women in sport, aims to call out instances of sexism where previously there was no organisation for female players to go to.