Smashing the glass ceiling. Football, media and activism ft. Shireen Ahmed and guest co-host Eugenio Giovagnoli

Co-host Francesco is joined by a guest co-host Eugenio Giovagnoli to talk to Canadian sports journalist and activist, Shireen Ahmed. Shireen has been at the forefront of the battle towards inclusivity in football, particularly in the media. She reflects on the current challenges, the achievements so far made and those that remain, along with a look at the state of the women's game across different countries and with a particular focus on Canada. As well as examining the state of Canadian women's football, Shireen emphasises the importance of bringing new voices to the conversation, and the struggles to eliminate gender-, race- and religious-based discrimination from the game. 

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Pushing against prejudice in football media ft. Shireen Ahmed (and a look at women's football in Canada)

Francesco Belcastro 00:08

Hello, and welcome to a new episode of FootPol, the podcast where football meets politics. I'm Dr. Francesco Belcastro, this is a special episode, I finally managed to get rid of Guy Burton! Guy, if you're listening to us, we miss you a lot. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:28

But I'm very happy, because we've got a special guest host, Eugenio Giovagnoli. Hello Eugenio. 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 00:35

Hello, hello Francesco, how are you?

Francesco Belcastro 00:37

I'm good, I'm good. Now Eugenio is a big football and sport, football and politics fan, rather, and he's a graduate of the Brussels School of Governance. Eugenio, is that correct? 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 00:49

Yes, yes, it is. The next student of Professor Guy indeed. I've survived. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:55

So we kept some sort of continuity there. 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 00:59

Continuity indeed. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:00

Yes, yes. I'm particularly happy today, because we have a great guest and a great topic. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:05

Now, people that listen to the podcast know that we are committed and very interested in inclusiveness and in football for everyone. And today we've got someone who has devoted their career really to this topic. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:18

And Shireen Ahmed, we really want to welcome to the podcast. Hello, Shireen. 

Shireen Ahmed 01:22

Hi, thank you for having me. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:25

Thank you for accepting our invitation. So I'll give a sort of brief introduction, which will make justice to all of you have done, but just so our listeners know who you are. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:36

I mean, some of them will be familiar with your work already. Shireen is a sport journalist and activist who focuses on the intersection of racism and misogyny in sports. She's an industry expert on Muslim women in sports. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:48

And she's published extensively in Canada, the U .S., Europe, and Australia. She's the co -founder of Burn It All Down, a feminist sport podcast, and then we'll perhaps talk can talk a bit about that. And she also is a teacher, a university, she teaches sports journalism and media at Toronto Metropolitan University. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:09

Shireen, hello and welcome, welcome to the show. 

Shireen Ahmed 02:12

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:15

We're so happy to have you. 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 02:17

Yes, indeed. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:18

Yeah, fantastic. Eugenio, I already forgot, am I doing the first question or are you doing the first one? 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 02:23

Yes. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:23

OK, great. It's good to have someone young as a co-host like Eugenio, because he remembers stuff, unlike me and Guy. You flatter me. OK, so Shireen, let's get started. So you're an activist as well as a journalist and a media commentator. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:38

Can you tell us a bit about how your activism on inclusion and equality relates to sport, generally, and football in particular? 

Shireen Ahmed 02:46

And thank you so much for framing in that way. I'm not. I don't know if I set out to be an activist per se. 

Shireen Ahmed 02:55

I'm really interested in football and journalism and I'm a storyteller. but my relationship with football goes back 40 years. And it is definitely- included in that are parts of microaggressions, macroaggressions and racism against me, racist abuse. 

Shireen Ahmed 03:11

I've seen that happen. I've had it happen to me. I've watched and learned about systems in which it occurs. And so it would be remiss if I said that my personal experience didn't also meld in with what I do. 

Shireen Ahmed 03:30

But also, I think it's important to say that football is my first love. I mean, we can't help who we fall in love with, right? And I mean, if I did, I wouldn't have definitely not been an Arsenal supporter if I could prevent it because that's a lot of heartbreak right there. 

Shireen Ahmed 03:48

But that being said, like, I think one of the things that sports has a really difficult time understanding and people have a time understanding or those with privilege, you don't critique something because you dislike it. 

Shireen Ahmed 04:02

You critique it because you care about it. And because I care about sports and the sports ecosystem and women's football and football in general, I more specifically talk about women's sports now because they're growing at a rate that I want to be in on the grass floor. 

Shireen Ahmed 04:18

But it wasn't always like that. And I critique and I look and I apply and I write my columns, I do work around it just because I care about it that much. And that is something that I think is really difficult for people to understand. 

Francesco Belcastro 04:37

That's great. I mean, I think you're not the first Arsenal fan that we've had on the show, but we're really glad to have you on board and to discuss these very important topics. Eugenio? 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 04:49

Yes. Thank you for this introduction and the stress about your work and your attachment to the work and your passion about the sport and the work you do. Now getting a little bit more into the objective if you want of your journalism and activism, would you say that in the West, in sport but specifically in football of course, the space is becoming more welcoming for women and women as players, women as fans and also as pundits and commentators? 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 05:27

And do you think that this happens also for people that are not only for women but also people of ethnic or religious minority background? 

Shireen Ahmed 05:39

Well, I've been a player for many decades, many, many decades. 

Shireen Ahmed 05:44

I don't want to age myself, but I mean, I remember watching Pele play! That's how old I am! But I think women's space, and I'm not going to pretend like women's space is devoid of homophobia or racism or classism. I'm never gonna say that because it's not true. 

Shireen Ahmed 06:07

Um, do I find it better than men's football? Sometimes yes, because of the way that capitalism has sort of infiltrated in football generally I've been to three World Cups now and he Women's World Cup in Australia that I covered for CBC Sports was incredible to be in a place where everybody was enthralled with women's sports. That being said places like England don't have a very racially diverse team. Canada does more than others and the youth teams are coming up or starting to look a little different, but I don't think it's a monolith. 

Shireen Ahmed 06:51

I think it depends you are in the world like the comments I'm gonna make about Canada or the observations. I've had in England are different than what I could say about France, for example, or Australia. Now all of these places are racist in different ways like we've seen a couple years ago, 

Shireen Ahmed 07:08

it was, there was a player I want to say from Juve women's side who did a very racist gesture about an East Asian community and I think that that's something- I think it was was it the Italian team or was it Juve? 

Shireen Ahmed 07:23

I have to go back and check I can't remember but I remember like it happens in a lot of spaces. I do think that there's ways in which spaces for women have opened up, but it's not because of the generosity of men all the time. It's because of women have earned those spaces themselves. 

Shireen Ahmed 07:43

I do think definitely there's allies. I Couldn't have gone as far as I have without having allies that are men and decision -makers who hired me, who believed in my work and amplified it. I think that's really important point to say. 

Shireen Ahmed 07:57

But at the same time, I'm one of the only, I'm definitely the only sports reporter or sports journalist rather. And I'm a senior contributor, I write a column, I have a huge platform in Canada. I'm the only one who looks like me. 

Shireen Ahmed 08:15

I do some... I have mentoring. And we all know each other, we all have a WhatsApp group. But it is harder because the sexism I face is coupled with Islamophobia, gendered Islamophobia and racism and xenophobia. 

Shireen Ahmed 08:31

So the struggles that I fight against are sort of they're multiplied. So how I feel about it and the advice I give to racialized young women, or queer women, I have a student who's a racialized queer and disabled person, like what they're going to face is going to be

Shireen Ahmed 08:55

very, very different than a white girl, what have as students. 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 08:58

Yeah, yeah. 

Shireen Ahmed 08:59

So even within that, and I'm not going to pretend that it's all like, Hey, all women, girl power, it doesn't work like that. 

Shireen Ahmed 09:06

Some of the biggest obstacles I've had in my career are white women. And that is not something that I'm shy about. I'm not saying all white women at all by any means. I have so many friends in this industry that are wonderful. 

Shireen Ahmed 09:19

And for the most part, they've been incredible with me and generous. And we learn from each other. We share, but they won't experience all the things and obstacles and challenges that I have to, or black women have to, or indigenous women have to. 

Shireen Ahmed 09:36

Would it surprise you to know that in Canada, I don't know of a single indigenous woman reporter dedicated to sports the entire country? There's not one. 

Francesco Belcastro 09:45

Incredible. 

Shireen Ahmed 09:47

And that's something that I think a lot. 

Shireen Ahmed 09:49

And that is sort of instructive in the way that I work. And I'm mindful of that because as much as I'm mindful as who's at the table, I can't help but think of who's still not here. Who's not in the room. 

Shireen Ahmed 09:59

Yes. And everybody needs to think about that. My friend, Marsha-Gay Knight, runs an organization called Black in Sport Business, BSB, and she says this all the time. Look who's in the not in the room and then bring them in. 

Shireen Ahmed 10:16

So even with, even women's sports, we're not there yet. 

Francesco Belcastro 10:18

That's great. Could I just perhaps ask you a follow up question? Could you mention the sort of risks or damages connected to the capitalist model adopted in male football? 

Francesco Belcastro 10:30

Is there a danger that as women's football becomes more and more popular, we also see some of the issues that we associate with men's football which typically we didn't have in women's football appearing there? And what can be done about that? 

Shireen Ahmed 10:45

Yeah, definitely. I think that's a very fair question. And as we want women's sports to grow, we're also, there's also people that are interested in business and my. and access. And when we talk about space for women as players, pundits, like players need to be paid. 

Shireen Ahmed 11:02

They need living wages. And for a long time, many federations and not just in the, you know, Global South and the Global North project, there were certainly... I mean, the United States is a famous case for this. 

Shireen Ahmed 11:15

Canada - the players association - has just lost, sorry, in Canada, the players association just launched a $40 million lawsuit against the former board of directors of the Canadian Soccer Association. That's wild - for negligence. 

Shireen Ahmed 11:32

So... For affecting their potential earnings. And I think this is something that money in this system that we're in, this capitalist system will always exist. I'm really hopeful that there will be people. But to say that women in power, women in powerful positions don't follow that same pathway would be naive. 

Shireen Ahmed 11:53

I mean, we live in a capitalist system, and people conflate money with success sometimes. And you know, we've seen reports of them, you know, from s=Soccer Australia and the over one billion dollar economic impact that women's sports had on that country. 

Shireen Ahmed 12:13

And as much as for those of us, it's about the players being in signage, having the kids with their names on it, being able to buy merch, seeing the little girls there. That meant something. But for the business people, they're salivating, your eyes are blinking, you know, money signs. 

Shireen Ahmed 12:34

So there's a lot of different people who are invested in this, some with purer intentions. And, you know, again, I'm not naive. So I'm hoping it doesn't go down this horrific path that it has in certain places. 

Shireen Ahmed 12:52

But to be really honest with you, the head of FIFA, the head of soccer confederations and federations in the world and national organizations are all men. And again, I'm not saying that women are devoid of any sense of power, you know, power or hungry, but I just I'm really hopeful. 

Shireen Ahmed 13:13

That's why my heart is always invested in grassroots, because that's where I think the purity of sport shines the brightest is with the kids or pick up or accessible football. So as long as those programs stay strong, I think we'll be OK. 

Francesco Belcastro 13:33

That's a great message. I think it's it's very important. Eugenio?

Eugenio Giovagnoli 13:35

 Yes, you just talked about the this lawsuit that the association filed in Canada. And this question, in a way, connects to that, but looks at it in a different in a different position, because, you know, in England, the success of the of the Lionesses has changed completely the way that women's football is seen not only by fans, but more generally in society. 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 14:00

There has been a largely positive change, but of course, there's also been, unfortunately, some misogynistic pushback. Since you're Toronto -based, what is the situation like in Canada from this aspect, which is a country that has a very different football culture from England? 

Shireen Ahmed 14:18

And that's a really important question, because you're right. We have a very different relationship with football. The Qatar Men's World Cup in 2022 was the first time Canada had been to a World Cup in 36 years. 

Shireen Ahmed 14:30

That's not the case in England. In England, the Lions have a storied relationship far back, right? But they do. And the Lionesses didn't have those opportunities in the same way. However, the Lionesses winning the Euros shifted everything. 

Shireen Ahmed 14:45

I remember being in England, I was there a couple months ago in England. But before that, the last time it was in England was in 2018. I was presenting at the National Football Museum in Manchester at a conference. 

Shireen Ahmed 15:00

And I couldn't find a Lucy Braun's jersey for my life. I couldn't find an Eniola Aluko jersey. I couldn't get one. Now you can. Now when Mary Earps's kit wasn't available, there was public like almost writing online because people desperately wanted it. 

Shireen Ahmed 15:21

And that's wonderful. My daughter who lives in Canada wants Mary Earps's jersey. And I'm like, that kit is so expensive, plus you know, Canadian dollar via via the pound, sterling is in shipping... And I was like, my goodness. 

Shireen Ahmed 15:35

So, you know, all those things. And in Canada, our women's soccer players are heroes. Christine Sinclair is our captain. She is the most, the highest goal score of any player in the world historically, met all women. 

Shireen Ahmed 15:52

She just retired. But before she had carried the team, or she led the team rather, not carried, she led the team to a gold medal win in Tokyo. Many appearances, consistent appearances in the World Cup. So Canada was in a different place. 

Shireen Ahmed 16:10

Like our women were soccer. My sons, I have three boys and a daughter. I say I have three sons and a footballer. Because my daughter's my footballer. My sons got into like volleyball for whatever reason. 

Shireen Ahmed 16:23

And my sons could name you, most of the roster in Canada, but couldn't name you any players other than Alfonso Davies. And now they can. But before they couldn't, it was the women who really were centered here. 

Shireen Ahmed 16:40

So now after, you know, the World Cup and the growth of more... you know, people are like, oh, Canada is a footballing nation now. And I'm like, Canada was always a footballing nation, but it was on the backs of those women. 

Shireen Ahmed 16:52

So, our situation is a little bit different because of a, you know, mismanagement and I guess you could say sort of a weird path, merchandise for the national women's team, they don't have personalized kits for sale, which is a crime in Canada. 

Shireen Ahmed 17:10

Like when Steph Labbe, who is now retired, won the gold, I wanted... She was named the Minister of Defense for this country! And even the Minister of Defense at the time made that joke with her. You couldn't find her kit anymore and she retired. 

Shireen Ahmed 17:28

I wanted to buy my daughter her kit because she's her role model. My daughter's also a goalkeeper. So that's rough. So in some ways things are great and in some ways they consistently need to be better because men keep failing at leading. 

Shireen Ahmed 17:43

And I say this consistently, sometimes sports in media and in practice is women finding solutions to the problems that men create in the space. And in addition to doing our jobs as we're supposed to, we have to deal with all of that at the same time. 

Shireen Ahmed 18:02

So Canada has its own set of issues and there are not unlike challenges in other federations, but they're there. 

Francesco Belcastro 18:08

That's fascinating. Now we focused on Canada, but your work has very much gone beyond the borders to the country and a lot of stuff that you've done has not only been published outside of Canada, but has looked at almost at a global movement. 

Francesco Belcastro 18:25

In this sense, would you say that we are now looking at a global sport movement towards inclusiveness emerging? Is it shifting the narratives about inclusiveness and diversity? And is it still very much a sort of Western-centric debate? 

Francesco Belcastro 18:41

Or do you see that our conversations taking place in different contexts that we should be aware of? 

Shireen Ahmed 18:47

So I think that because who tells the stories is almost as important as what the stories are, a lot of those storytellers are still from the same demographic. 

Shireen Ahmed 18:55

A lot of white men in sport media spaces. There's not a huge racial diversity or gender fluidity range within those spaces. There's really not and or disabled journalists or storytellers and media content makers. 

Shireen Ahmed 19:13

It's changing with social media, but I think that while that one particular lens remains, we're not going to see the in -depth shift that we're really looking for. It's not just about representation. 

Shireen Ahmed 19:27

You can't point at me and be like, oh, well, we have someone who's Muslim, who wears hijab and works for the public broadcaster. So we beat racism in Canada. That's not how this works. 

Francesco Belcastro 19:39

Yeah. 

Shireen Ahmed 19:42

So I think there are ways in which like I teach sports journalism and sport media, and I see students and every year I have more racialised women. 

Shireen Ahmed 19:51

Every year I have more women and that excites me because that means that they're coming up and also media is a dying industry in a huge way. Like Vice News is shutting down in the United States and Canada. 

Shireen Ahmed 20:05

And we've seen so many other places minimize that there's been so many layoffs where I am in this part of the world in Canada and the United States. And very specifically, people who write columns or people from independent media, like it's just been really hard to watch. 

Shireen Ahmed 20:23

And we need good journalism more now than ever. And so I think that the discussion of sport inclusion is it's been very surface level. And it's not just about representation, representation, representation won't solve the issue of systemic racism. 

Shireen Ahmed 20:43

And it was at a conference recently. And in Norway, and I remember remarking, and I said this in my comments publicly that people in this room are more concerned about- with being labeled racist than they are with actually being anti -racist in their practice. 

Shireen Ahmed 21:02

They're more worried about how they come across and how their actions actually are. And so I find a lot of defensive niffin sport. People are like, it's not just, oh, it's Black History Month. Let's write a story about some black athlete. 

Shireen Ahmed 21:18

Like black people will still be black in October. Women will still be women outside of Women's History Month. You know what I mean? We can tell these stories consistently, not as token items or whatnot. 

Shireen Ahmed 21:32

And for me, it's not just about having a broadcaster because you've got Reshmin Chowdhury, who I love. You've got Kate Abdo. You've got Alex Scott. You've got these incredible people in England. And I count them as my colleagues. 

Shireen Ahmed 21:47

And with Reshmin in particular, I count them as a dear friend. And the work that she's done, the struggle she's had to see to make it to where she is, right? But at the same time, who are the decision makers? 

Shireen Ahmed 21:59

I want to know who the executive producers are. I want to know who the leadership team is. And that still looks very similar to what it did 50 years ago. So there's small steps, but I want like meaningful, you know, more meaningful and still strides. 

Shireen Ahmed 22:18

And I'm relentless and I'm not going to stop. So I'm going to keep plugging away. 

Francesco Belcastro 22:23

That's great. Eugenio, do you want to go with the last question? 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 22:26

When I was thinking about this topic, it may seem a little bit, you know, I don't know if banal is the correct term here, but as a younger generation, I've seen the process of inclusion. 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 22:43

For example, not only, of course, in media, but also specifically in FIFA, in the video game, which is I think the most played video game about football in the world without a doubt. And it's been a few years now that women players were in the game but especially this year they put essentially the women card in the most played mode where you can play within the same team with women players and male players. And I was thinking how you know the game is played by young kids even 12 -13 years old, and I was just thinking of maybe how that can... that is a symptom of the movement going towards the right direction and what do you think- I wanted to ask you- if you think it has a concrete effect maybe in sort of you know I guess helping the idea that that women's football is just a reality- absolutely concrete and real and should have the attention that it deserves in the mind of the younger guys, especially because of the mentality that played the game?

Shireen Ahmed 23:54

I think that's a great question just because sexism is a learned behavior. If you go and play pelada anywhere in the world, I go, I was, I've played in the streets of Amman. I've played in Brazil. You, it's a language football is a language. 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 24:11

Yes. 

Shireen Ahmed 24:12

And they don't stop and discriminate. They look at your skills. How are you communicating? And I think this is really interesting. And I love the fact that EA Sports has FIFA players. In fact, during the women's World Cup, they decided to add those women players from Team Morocco. 

Shireen Ahmed 24:29

Nouhaila Benzina is the first woman to wear hijab at the women's World Cup. And that's really important because in leagues in France, she wouldn't be allowed to play because the French ban on hijab, currently, even though FIFA has allowed it, 

Shireen Ahmed 24:43

France still very specifically bans hijab from coaching, from playing, from officiating. So they're very specifically removed Muslim women who choose to cover from sport, which is horrendous in this day and age. 

Shireen Ahmed 24:56

That's also something that a lot of people don't know. And in 2019, I was invited by Fairnet work to go to France to talk about the fact that France is hosting the World Cup, a celebration of the women's game. 

Shireen Ahmed 25:10

And people who look like me were not allowed to participate in it. Like that's insane. And I'm horrified that they're hosting Olympics because they can't ban hijab altogether. So they banned their own athletes from wearing hijab and competing. 

Shireen Ahmed 25:28

Like, I'm a big believer in bodily agency and choice. A woman just like in parts of the world, women don't have a choice and they should. Uncovering is important and uncovering is important. And so is that choice. 

Shireen Ahmed 25:43

Forcing someone out of clothes is as violent as forcing them into clothes. I believe that. Hands down. But the FOC, the French Olympic Committee doesn't believe that. But the point that I'm trying to make is watching players like Nouhaila Benzina be covered, be playing alongside of women in tights, in kits, in shorts, whatever they want. 

Shireen Ahmed 26:05

That is really important because that's a model of what is real that women can and should choose for themselves. And so that's part of why I think you're right, Eugenio, like why is important for them to see that because that visualization actually helps. 

Shireen Ahmed 26:22

Representation, like I said earlier, doesn't solve every problem. But that understanding, conceptual understanding that this is what it can be and should look like. Yeah, absolutely. I'm all for it. I'm not a gamer. 

Shireen Ahmed 26:36

But to see the fact that young boys can be and young girls can be - like I would love - like my nephew is like I want to be Sam Kerr, so he always chooses Sam Kerr, because she's his favorite player, and that's important. 

Shireen Ahmed 26:52

And you want people being Sam Kerr, you want people being different, you know, players around the world. Why not? And this will help. It's, again, a small step, but I think it's, it's wonderful. And I welcome it. 

Shireen Ahmed 27:06

I welcome any sense of disruption. I'm a disruptor. And so disruption is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And I think we will continue to need it. There's a lot of disruption that still needs to happen in the football space. 

Francesco Belcastro 27:20

That's fantastic. Can I just remind listeners that we have an excellent episode with Valentina Fedele about a month ago, maybe two months now, that you can still find on the politics of football and Islam. 

Francesco Belcastro 27:34

And our very first episode was with the excellent Carrie Dunn on the on football, women's football in England. So both of these episodes, if you enjoyed our chat with Shireen, would complimente that very well. 

Francesco Belcastro 27:46

Shireen, this has been absolutely fascinating. I want to thank you for your time and for generosity with the answers. And you have to promise us that we're going to have you back at some point because we have covered something, but there is so much that we have not been able to because of time constraints. 

Francesco Belcastro 28:01

So do we have that promise at some point? We'll have you back as a as a guest? 

Shireen Ahmed 28:07

Absolutely. I would love to be honored. 

Francesco Belcastro 28:09

Thank you very much. Eugenio, thank you very much for co-hosting with me. 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 28:14

Thank you. Thank you, Francesco. And thank you, Shirin. Very, very interesting conversation. 

Francesco Belcastro 28:18

A couple of things to the listeners. Well, the first one is the usual, like us, rate us, share the podcast on whatever app you're getting it from. 

Francesco Belcastro 28:27

And we're going to be back next Monday. Unfortunately, I think I'll have to let Guy come back to the podcast. If he behaves well this week, he might be back. We'll see. We'll see on that. And the topic of the next episode is going to be the politics of football in India and we're going to have Siju Mathew and Siddhanth Aney, who are two Indian journalists and football experts. 

Francesco Belcastro 28:48

All right, great. See you next week. Thank you, Shirin. Thank you, Eugenio. 

Shireen Ahmed 28:52

Thank you. Bye. 

Eugenio Giovagnoli 28:55

Thank you. Thank you. Bye -bye.