Can fan culture become more inclusive? The case of Wales ft. Penny Miles

Co-hosts Guy and Francesco dive into the world of away fandom, focusing on the experiences of female and LGBTQ+ supporters. Joining them is Penny Miles, a researcher from Bath University, who has been studying the challenges faced by marginalised fans following national football team in Wales (with a bit of Chile!).

Together, they explore the current state of away fandom and the obstacles that these groups encounter. Penny shares her insights on the unique issues female and LGBTQ+ fans face, from safety concerns to the impact of traditional fan culture. She also offers valuable suggestions for how mainstream (predominantly male) fans can create a more inclusive and welcoming atmosphere at matches.

Tune in for an enlightening discussion on how to make football fandom a space for everyone!

Transcript

Can fan culture become more inclusive? The case of Wales ft. Penny Miles

Francesco Belcastro 00:08

Hello, and welcome to a new episode of the FootPol Podcast, the podcast where football metes politics. I'm one of your co -hosts, Dr. Francesco Belcastro, and here with me is my other co -host, Dr. Guy Burton. 

Guy Burton 00:18

Hi, Guy, how are you? I'm good. Thanks, Francesco. How are you doing this morning? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:22

I'm not great because I've been watching the news and they're really depressing. And and it's now a year of ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:36

And I feel it's a terrible thing. And so, yeah, unfortunately, we started. I hope that this finishes soon and I hope that people are responsible for it end up jailed in in Diego somewhere. So, yeah, I know it's not the lightest way of starting a podcast in the morning, but it's just it's hard to ignore what is out there. 

Guy Burton 00:58

Yeah. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:58

And both me and you have got a background in this politics, academics, even though we both do slightly different stuff now or also the different stuff now. So it's it's very tough. 

Guy Burton 01:13

And there's also... No, no, no. 

Guy Burton 01:15

And there's also a dimension of football dimension to all of this as well, isn't there? 

Francesco Belcastro 01:19

Oh, absolutely. Because obviously there's been there's been two things. One has been the one that, you know, the destruction of the infrastructures of sport in Gaza, which is not the main thing, but it's it's probably in itself. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:31

And then there is there's been an issue about suspending and not suspending Israel from from football that we've looked at in the past. 

Guy Burton 01:39

Yeah. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:40

And we will look at again. 

Guy Burton 01:41

Yeah. And we've looked at it in previous episodes. 

Guy Burton 01:43

So do check those out. We've also done an episode on the war in Gaza as well. I mean, that was a several months ago, but we may have to update it at some point, given the given the widening of the war as well. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:54

So we will conclude this by saying that we wish that this finishes soon. I mean, the positive thing is that we've got a fantastic episode today and then a great and a great speaker.

Guy Burton 02:04

And I think it's gonna be a bit more a bit more uplifting hopefully I think.

Francesco Belcastro 02:08

It would be you remember what the topic is and what the guest is, Guy?

Guy Burton 02:12

Yes actually I've been looking forward to this for a while because we're being joined by Penny Miles from Bath University aren't we who's gonna talk about Welsh football.

Francesco Belcastro 02:19

Yeah yeah more than was football we're gonna be talking about football culture, women and their role and and how this has changed and and I think we're gonna be talking about Wales but about a few other things as well and because as I will introduce Penny better in a few seconds she's also looked at South America, Chile in particular. Maybe if we are lucky we'll get to ask her something on that as well.

Guy Burton 02:45

Okay.

Francesco Belcastro 02:45

Well Penny welcome apologies for my rant early in the morning and welcome to the show 

Penny Miles 02:53

No, thanks very much for having me. No, I think it's really important when you sometimes when you're doing research on football, you tend to think, you know, is this a little bit when you've got things like Gaza going on? 

Penny Miles 03:08

How futile is it what I'm doing, doing this research on football? And so no, I think discussions around that and keeping it present are hugely important. In my past life, I did research around human rights. 

Penny Miles 03:22

I used to live in Chile and looked at post -dictatorial violence. And so seeing the lack of use of kind of international law at the moment is quite worrying, I think. So I'm afraid I will keep on that downside, just in solidarity with the Palestinian people. 

Francesco Belcastro 03:45

Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Well, I think before we move on, Guy, I need to introduce Penny a bit better. We've said a few things about her already, but just for the listeners who might not know her yet, she's a lecturer in Latin American politics at the University of Bath. 

Francesco Belcastro 04:03

Her teaching covers Latin American politics and society, transition to democracy, LGBTQ+ politics and gender and transnational, transitional justice, apologies. So very, very topical. Her research centers on two main areas: LGBTQ+ politics and gender and football. 

Francesco Belcastro 04:22

She also worked as a consultant researcher at the University Diego Portales in Chile, and currently sits on the Football Association of Wales Equality Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board. So we got an excellent person for today's discussion. 

Francesco Belcastro 04:38

Penny, once again, welcome. Guy, you want to start with the first question? 

Guy Burton 04:41

Yeah, sure. I mean, maybe we can start with, before we start talking about the case of Wales, if we could just talk a bit about football and gender. 

Guy Burton 04:49

And so, you know, one of the things that is, well, I guess you're going to tell us. I mean, when we think about modern football, is there something about it that makes it unwelcoming for women and also actually previously overlooked groups? 

Guy Burton 05:02

You know, maybe you can give an idea of where we are in relation to this and what this means when we're talking about things relating to inclusivity, because of course that's a background that you have there. 

Penny Miles 05:12

Yeah, I mean, for me, it's about the historical context of football. And so, as you've mentioned, I'm used to kind of studying political and judicial institutions in Chile. And I thought that those were very kind of hegemonically male spaces. 

Penny Miles 05:29

I then, kind of through personal reasons, start studying football. And it's as though I'm kind of reverting back to the 1950s. And I started this research project in 2016, 2017. So I think kind of women's exclusion within that space historically has allowed for kind of not just the institutions to consolidate themselves as these male spaces where it's kind of very complex for women to kind of enter and to rise up to the governance structures. 

Penny Miles 06:00

You've still got a lack of women at the top level. If you look at FIFA, if you look at UEFA, if you look at many national associations, you might have women working within those institutions, but where are those women? 

Penny Miles 06:11

They're predominantly within the lower structures within those spaces. So you've got the top down kind of level still constructing itself as this kind of white in the UK context white hegemonic male space. 

Penny Miles 06:30

But then you've also from a bottom up got these kind of subcultural and cultural spaces that have been built up within the terraces, for example, whereby the fan spaces that I'm predominantly looking at have been predominantly male. 

Penny Miles 06:46

Now we have seen changes within that. So Pope's work at... Stacey Pope's work is really quite important in terms of looking, you know, the shifts as to why more women are becoming present in our terraces, watching men's football we're talking about here. 

Penny Miles 07:02

But still the female fans that go there tend to have to mould themselves to those male subcultural practices. And so there's not being a reconfiguration nor of the institutional space at the top level, nor really at the subcultural space down below. 

Penny Miles 07:19

But then in the middle, we've also got these kind of brokers. So if we think about the media, for example, so I've been observing media as a part of this as well. And in terms of written media, for example, that remains also predominantly male space. 

Penny Miles 07:35

We've... The past couple of years, we've had greater female presence, you know, programs like Football Focus, within football coverage. But in the work I've been doing, that wasn't the inclusion of women didn't really come in till 2020. 

Penny Miles 07:50

which is still pretty late. And so you've got kind of these different levels where these practices around masculinities and maleness, not necessarily directly wanting to exclude women, but by the nature of the construction around kind of maleness are often more indirectly exclusionary of women in LGBTQ+, in the context I'm looking at race is quite relevant, you know, absence of non -white people within those spaces is glaring, 

Penny Miles 08:26

and that's across institutional, across the fan spaces, etc. And so I think it's kind of the interlinking nature of those. 

Francesco Belcastro 08:38

Sorry, Guy, before we go to the next question, can I just sort of signpost something for listeners, we had two excellent episodes last season, one with Shirin Ahmed on the role of women inclusivity in the media and sport in particular. 

Francesco Belcastro 08:53

And we also had the Fulham Lilies last year in an episode together with the New York Boys. What's the name of the New York team, Guy? 

Guy Burton 09:00

New York International. 

Francesco Belcastro 09:02

With New York International. That really, really developed a lot of the themes that Penny mentioned, but from a sort of fan point of view. 

Francesco Belcastro 09:09

So I would encourage listeners to go and look at that. And then Guy, what do you want to ask? 

Guy Burton 09:16

Yeah, I was just going to, if I could just push Penny a little bit here. So I mean, you were just talking about how, so the current, the nature of the game at the moment, at least in terms of sort of the institutions and sort of the around it, seem to be they're not rejecting the role of women and previously marginalized groups. 

Guy Burton 09:36

They are open to it, but this is what I wanted to, I'm curious to ask you: So they're open to it, but does that mean they're open to it so long as women in previously marginalized groups fit themselves into the existing structures? 

Guy Burton 09:48

Or do you think that there is more a receptivity for a radical re -imagining of what football should look like? And that's a big thing to ask, but what's your take? 

Penny Miles 10:01

I don't think there's going to be a radical re -imagining happening anytime soon. 

Penny Miles 10:07

I think there's greater understanding of the need for change. Well, within sections, male allies are very key within facilitating women's access to this space, for example, also involved in kind of policy change. 

Penny Miles 10:27

I think things are changing, the push from outside, from kind of the Me Too movement externally, pushing for change when I, if I do talk about Chile at the end, I think that there's a very strong feminist movement in Latin America that is pushing for footballing institutions and cultures to change. 

Penny Miles 10:50

within within that context. We don't have such a strong movement here, I don't think, but I think there is an understanding of the need for change, whether that will also, whether those who need to cede power in order for that to happen will do so is another question, because in terms of there does have to be some kind of shift in the power dynamic. 

Penny Miles 11:26

Women and from other groups do have to be let into these spaces and then have to be acknowledged within that. And I think there's been, from what I've seen, kind of... greater critical mass of women. 

Penny Miles 11:41

So rather beforehand, there might have been just one or two solitary actors often working alongside male allies to try and create change. I think the critical mass of women is quite important in a strengthening in voice and in confidence. 

Penny Miles 11:56

Because if you're on your own, it's very difficult to challenge, I think, if there's a massive use that facilitates the challenge as it were. And I think that is just not happening within one space, but across the spaces. 

Penny Miles 12:11

So across the institutions, across the media, and then reflected within the fan space. At the same time, you still have quite significant backlash to that. And so you've got that kind of continual kind of negotiation. 

Penny Miles 12:26

It's not just females that face backlash. 

Francesco Belcastro 12:30

Yeah. And I actually want to mention that for this episode, we are focusing particularly on women's fund, but your work has looked a lot of LGBTQ+ fans. 

Francesco Belcastro 12:39

And it's important to remember that when we mean inclusivity, we don't mean only for women's fund. And it was something on a particular aspect of your research, because you've worked a lot on away fans and national teams. 

Francesco Belcastro 12:53

And it seems to me that if I can sort of oversimplify the sort of away fans culture, it's something that it's probably one of those areas or subcultures of football, which is prevalent and it's got a lot of positive aspects. 

Francesco Belcastro 13:10

What is it in relation to the Welsh national team in particular? And how do women LGBTQ+ fans and any anyone in general doesn't fit the stereotype of, you know, sort of national footballer, national supporter, sorry, national team supporter relate to it as an exclusive and inclusive thing?

Penny Miles 13:31

So it's, it's quite an interesting subculture. So I studied it kind of ethnographically and then also. kind of through interviews. So I was doing participant observation whilst traveling away as a fan myself. 

Penny Miles 13:46

So it's kind of about sacrifice, about sacrificing your time, your finance, the hardship of travel is kind of quite prevalent in terms of what away fandom is. It's very much about longevity of fandom though. 

Penny Miles 14:00

So you kind of consolidate your authenticity as a fan by having been embedded within that space for quite a long time. And that is something that the female fans that I did interview, they were kind of part of this kind of established woodwork as it were. 

Penny Miles 14:18

You've got the dress code, not just red, but the kind of the bucket hats, a sort of look that certain fans like to wear, the trainers that they like to wear. So you can be kind of othered if you don't quite conform to that. 

Penny Miles 14:32

So as in others work, those female fans who don't dress in according to that kind of informal rules, dress code can be othered, you know, if they do dress more feminine, you can either be othered or open to kind of basically sexual harassment, unfortunately. 

Penny Miles 14:51

It's a bilingual space as well, the Welsh language is really quite important within this space and it's something that the FAW I think has kind of been quite mindful to kind of cultivate that and to develop that, they tweet a lot bilingually, they use the Welsh language significantly, they bring it into press conferences. 

Francesco Belcastro 15:12

Sorry, but the FAW is the Welsh Football Association for listeners who might be less familiar, right? 

Penny Miles 15:17

Yeah, sorry. Sorry. Football Association of Wales, yes, yes. 

Francesco Belcastro 15:20

Thank you. 

Penny Miles 15:21

And so because the Welsh fan base draws quite a lot of support from North Wales where the Welsh language is stronger, it's kind of a way of using language to try and kind of unify fans and all of the fans that I've spoken to, 

Penny Miles 15:41

and if you spend time in that space, it is quite a naturally bilingual space and so being comfortable with the Welsh language, even if you don't speak it, but just trying to use some Welsh language is quite an important feature of kind of the Wales away space. 

Penny Miles 15:57

And so there is a kind of boundedness that is created as with most subcultures, but I'd say that the loyalty system, so the FAW's loyalty system of how you access away tickets, also kind of cements that as a quite a bounded space and so it can be hard for newcomers to come in, be those, be that women, be that Welsh black people or Welsh South Asians trying to kind of start in this space. 

Penny Miles 16:30

As a visual other, you can be other more easily if you don't conform to the rules of kind of that space. But [Loughborough University Professor Richard] Giulianotti's done quite a lot of work on kind of away fans looking at the Tartan Army. And I think there's quite a lot of similarities there. 

Penny Miles 16:48

This kind of gregariousness of the fans, drinking culture being a very big part of that. And whilst he sees it as kind of quite unproblematic, it's the drinking culture or alcohol use that has been the driver for the instances of sexual harassment, verbal and physical that fans have reported. 

Penny Miles 17:14

So it's been in and around a pub or it's been by fans who have been drinking. I've also, you know, part of my, as a female fan researcher, I am also the target of some of that kind of banter, etc. And so that kind of gets built into kind of the analysis that I'm doing. 

Penny Miles 17:38

But there's also kind of associated practices that, that come out through the drinking culture as well. So if you, you know, you've been on a bus for a long time, lots of men all in one space, they get out. 

Penny Miles 17:53

The first thing they do is all just kind of go and wee against the wall. And so you've got like this kind of male physical reclaiming of the physical space in a different way as well. And so there's kind of more indirect ways that, that kind of maleness of the space that I was talking about, that might not be kind of directly wanting to exclude female fans or LGBTQ+ fans, etc., might also be one way of doing that. 

Penny Miles 18:20

And then if you think about maybe Muslim fans who might want to come along, to what extent are they going to want to take part in what is predominantly a drinking culture? You know, and, you know, I have spoken to non drinkers, I've spoken to English fans who come along. 

Penny Miles 18:36

So people who can be more easily othered, as it were, you know, is a very white space. I have seen across eight or nine away matches, I think, recorded in my field notes of hundreds of fans, only four biracial Welsh male fans. 

Penny Miles 18:56

And female fans stand at an average of eight to nine percent. So a much higher ratio of white female fans within that space. OK, they're diverse across, not across sexual orientation and gender identity, actually, across age, nationality, region, whether they're first language Welsh or not. 

Penny Miles 19:19

There is a diversity across those demographics. Not so much class, it's still a heteronormative space from the data that I've collected. However, that said, when the Qatar World Cup came about, we do have a fan group called the Rainbow Wall, so that's the LGBTQ+ fan group. 

Penny Miles 19:47

And they kind of, there was a campaign around, you know, LGBTQ+ inclusion, particularly at this World Cup. And the Red Wall, as the kind of fan base is called or refers to itself, very much embraced these rainbow hats that were bought out by the Red Wall. 

Penny Miles 20:05

And so you'd see a lot of dads, fathers, straight men, supporting the Rainbow Wall by wearing these hats. And they still the bucket hats, so it's a rainbow configured bucket hat. You know, I don't know how many fan bases might do that. 

Penny Miles 20:23

And so it's not, it's not kind of the most perhaps complex space to negotiate as a fan, but I think there's very much an underplay of the implications of the gendered implications of a heavy drinking culture. 

Francesco Belcastro 20:43

Can I ask you one thing on that, sorry, because you mentioned the reference to the Scottish fans, the Tartan Army and the Welsh national fans. I think both of them, as you said, they share similarity and one of them is kind of more from an outside, a more benign view of kind of the fan cultures compared to some of their neighbours, for example, or other big European countries. 

Francesco Belcastro 21:08

Is that like, it seems that there isn't the same prevalence of, I don't know, social problems, violence, we have seen not only in England, but also in, I'm Italian myself, so there's been as well some issues around the supporters of the national team, around the idea of for example, race. 

Francesco Belcastro 21:28

So it seems that the national fans base inWales has not experienced the same problems. Does that mean, is that correct? And does that mean that it's a slightly more welcoming space in light of what you just told us? 

Penny Miles 21:41

I'd say outwardly, potentially, yes, you know, there are still some instances. There's a lot of kind of good social work that goes on. So there's a group that fundraises every time they go out and they give money to a local charity. 

Penny Miles 22:01

So there's quite a level of social consciousness, I think, within the fan base. There's not huge issues around violence that I'm aware of. It's not something that the media has picked up on. Personally, I've seen instances of Welsh fans engaging in violent behaviour, which is going to happen, I think, at some point within those kind of, especially drink -fueled kind of spaces. 

Penny Miles 22:32

But yeah, I think from what I see outwardly, there are quite a lot of similarities with that. And what Giulianotti says is that the Scottish purposely don't engage in violent behavior so that they can posit themselves as this good counter to the English violent other as it were. 

Penny Miles 22:51

But what was quite interesting in the female fan narrative, so I think there's quite often a dismissal of all English fans as kind of violent etc. When I spoke to the female fans, because I talk about the Euros as well as general away fandom, we played England in Euro 2016, and what the female fan narratives do is kind of change the narrative around the English fan as other. 

Penny Miles 23:22

So they talk about their engagement, they talk about how the English fans that they spoke to were also impacted by the violence that took place that, you know, and just the kind of media stereotyping and how problematic it was for these kind of English fans that they met. 

Penny Miles 23:37

And so just kind of, I'm trying to get a bit more nuance in kind of stereotypes on both sides, really. But I just thought that was quite, quite an interesting and different take from, you know, what you might read online, etc. 

Penny Miles 23:53

and historic kind of the English and they're all, you know, or they're at it again when, you know, who is actually perpetrating the violence, etc? 

Francesco Belcastro 24:05

It's interesting because then in a way means that so expanding the fan base could means breaking this kind of like rigid stereotypes in more than one way, more than one sense. 

Francesco Belcastro 24:17

And perhaps we often think about the most obvious ones, but this one is one of the I would personally never never thought of. 

Guy Burton 24:23

So Penny, some of the things that you were just talking about, which just got me thinking, I mean, you mentioned, for instance, you're talking about the drinking culture, and of course, you know, the away fans. 

Guy Burton 24:33

And we've just talked about, you know, whether there is actually that much of a difference or not. But is there also something about, you know, the Welsh, the Welsh fan base obviously being somewhat different, because Wales has not qualified for international tournaments for, until quite recently, I mean, they were a good team in the past, but then we have decades where they weren't qualifying for anything. 

Guy Burton 24:55

And maybe sort of the ultimate thing that they had was the Home Championship, which finished about 30 odd years ago. So what did that do to the fan base for Wales? And then does that also mean that because it was maybe smaller, you're going to correct me on this, that actually it was more welcoming to to other previously excluded groups. 

Guy Burton 25:16

Another thing I'm also just curious about as well is, you know, what, given what given this, what is it what are the those groups within the Welsh fan base doing to sort of make the game or make the experience more welcoming. 

Guy Burton 25:31

I mean, are there things that, because you pointed out that these are still spaces which can be problematic. So what sort of interactions taken by these subgroups to bring more in? I mean, maybe you could elaborate a little bit there. 

Penny Miles 25:47

Yeah. So yeah, success has been quite important. There was quite a kind of significant contingent of away traveling fans anyway, that built up kind of over time. You know, they like the away travel, they like going to new countries, etc. 

Penny Miles 26:06

And it kind of became, as one participant put it, Wales is best kept secret. So there was kind of an increase in uptake. After Euro 2016, more fans wanted to kind of travel away and live this success which was just unheard of in Welsh football. 

Penny Miles 26:26

Well, certainly in my lifetime, and for most people's lifetime since we'd qualified previously in 1958, the kind of last major tournament. And it was interesting in terms of success, what was quite interesting was the discourse around not qualifying for the last tournament in that it was now expected. 

Penny Miles 26:47

And so there's been a shift from we didn't think we'd score a goal at Euro 2016 to we now expect that we should be qualifying. And so that shift in discourse is quite interesting. I think from those fans who consider themselves the kind of more hardcore fans, the ones who've been there for the longest as it were, because there is a kind of hierarchy by longevity of service, I would say. 

Penny Miles 27:16

Quite a few of those have kind of talked about there's a new element coming in. So because it's become popular and that new element is maybe younger, a bit more propensity to potentially engage in fighting, not necessarily just there for the football, but there for the drinking rather than the drinking and the football. 

Penny Miles 27:39

And so there were some tensions between the kind of old garden who'd always been there. And then this kind of new group buoyed by the success that were coming in. Not in relation to gender, that was kind of more male on male relations, as I kind of understood it. 

Penny Miles 27:59

And there were some kind of past tensions, I'd say, within that in terms of that discourse being kind of, you know, the disruptive behavior being put on stereotyping people from the Valley. So the stereotyping going on within the Welsh fan base was sort of quite interesting and perhaps a little bit problematic from my point of view to here, a kind of... 

Penny Miles 28:24

attributing that behavior to, you know, Valley boys, essentially. And so without perhaps any data to back that up, I would say that's kind of an anecdotal kind of thing. I can't remember the last question that you asked. 

Guy Burton 28:42

So yes, I was curious about how, given that these are still spaces, which are still predominantly male, I mean, how sort of marginalized groups are, you know, working with each, you know, working within themselves, as it were, to change that. 

Guy Burton 28:56

I mean, because to be a woman or to be an ethnic minority does make you, you know, stand out, and it could be potentially intimidating. So what kind of action? 

Francesco Belcastro 29:08

So what has been done, basically, Guy? 

Guy Burton 29:09

Yeah, what iactions, if anything, you know, are women's groups, you know, in the fan, in the fan base doing or, you know, sort of ethnic groups? 

Guy Burton 29:17

Do we have do we see any of that? Or is it done primarily from the institutional level? By the FAW? 

Penny Miles 29:26

So you've got a couple of groups that have probably been more active within the home space. You've got the Rainbow Wall that emerged that was kind of facilitated by the FAW and some very active voices in the LGBTQ+ community. 

Penny Miles 29:41

They are perhaps more present online at the moment than actively perhaps present in the stadium. You know, they've had some very good campaigns around flags and with the bucket hats that I mentioned, not necessarily so visually present in the away space. 

Penny Miles 29:59

If you think about some of the countries that you have to travel to, that is also going to be quite problematic. If you do identify as lesbian, gay or trans, you know, going to some countries, you're not necessarily going to be showing your flag. 

Penny Miles 30:15

I'm quite mindful when I travel to some places. When we travel with the women, we've got a very big trans flag. And I think about you know, in terms of safety, where's it safe to take it? Where's it not safe to take it? 

Penny Miles 30:27

I didn't take it to Belarus, for example. There's a group that's been set up called AmarCymru, which is about supporting South Asians within Welsh national football. Nothing as of yet set up for women. 

Penny Miles 30:43

It's one of the recommendations that's come out of my research is that this kind of does need to happen. I think with institutional support, I think it partly does need to be organic, but I think institutional support probably does need to be there. 

Penny Miles 30:59

The Fan Embassy does now have a female member within its staff it didn't used to. Since Qatar and onwards, they've had a female member of staff there to help deal with any issues that do arise around kind of sexual harassment, but within the away space, a lot of work needs to be done. 

Penny Miles 31:20

I did speak to when one person who was non -white Welsh and they had travelled to an away match and were very much made to feel not part of that subculture because of the visual other I took it to me, which I don't find hugely surprising. 

Penny Miles 31:51

Even within our home space, Cardiff City Stadium is very close to Cardiff's most multicultural and multiracial spaces. At home matches there is slightly more representation of those populations within the fan space, but this is something that I am quite mindful of, so within the female fan work that I do within the fan base. 

Penny Miles 32:22

I work with local community groups to invite people along to the stadium so that they know that it is a space for them within a space, a fan space that is currently consolidating. What you have more within the men's space is a more consolidated space. 

Penny Miles 32:37

So it's how much harder is it to break into that once those patterns of behavior have been established? And you know, if you just see a white wall of people, do you want to go there? You know, what are your expectations of wanting to go into that space? 

Penny Miles 32:55

And so what I'm trying to do on the women's side is make sure that from a kind of early stage that they feel comfortable. But one match, one of the young people walked in, she goes, oh, we're the only ones here then. 

Penny Miles 33:10

Within a space of, you know, 5000 people, you know, she noticed and notices as do everyone else. And we're very much, I'd say, behind the curve on that. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:23

Can I just say, though, I mean, it's important what these groups do, but there is a responsibility by male fans to do more. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:32

And this is not only in the Welsh context, and I think it's important to stress that we have to create more welcoming spaces. We cannot just rely on, you know, and I'm not, I mean, I'm a big fan of what some of these groups do. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:43

I'm not in any way saying that they're doing whatever they can. But there is also responsibility by male fans, and more established fans, as you said, like, particularly in these sort of smaller environments, to do more and more and more. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:55

So that's something that we need to repeat. I know it's been said, but it's very important. Can I ask you one thing on? So people like me who go to practice, or little pitches, and amateur football, whatever you go, there's this fantastic explosion in England of women football. 

Francesco Belcastro 34:16

And when I go and play on Monday evenings, there's these super busy picthes with girls maybe eight or ten and like because it's booming absolutely. And I think it's quite similar in Scotland. I don't know if it's the same in Wales and if that's the case does that affect in any way the space and and how women fans are perceived as well?

Francesco Belcastro 34:42

Or is it gonna do that in the future? Are we gonna get to a stage in which because there are so many girls so many women playing football and it becomes normalized and and people who are slacking them finally shut up does that mean that then eventually there does that have a sort of positive effect on women fans and on women in football more in general? Or other things separate?

Penny Miles 35:10

I suppose taking it from kind of looking at the fan bases the two different fan bases the men's national team the women's national team that kind of quite different demographically in terms of the spaces. 

Penny Miles 35:25

And so I think you're more likely to see those within women's football going to watch women's football that now has a better platform. People are more aware of it. There is actually kind of people know matches are on because in the past, in the very recent past, they didn't know matches were on because the media weren't telling anyone and even the kind of institutions themselves weren't and you couldn't go and see them anyway at three o 'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday. 

Penny Miles 35:52

It's like, well, I'm working, so can't make that one. However, what might be quite interesting is it's often kind of maybe daughters with fathers, so taking fathers to the football. And so if though they are fans of men's football as well, might you then start to see kind of more awareness raising around this? 

Penny Miles 36:21

I think one of the outcomes and the kind of one of the next projects will be to take the data from the female fans around the instances of sexual harassment. And I want to use focus groups of those kind of naturally occurring men who travel away to kind of raise awareness and to try and create that allyship around action, because I think it's mostly to do with a lack of awareness, a lack of awareness of what goes on and not knowing how they can support female fans if they see something that happens, you know, so they organize one example is they organize meetups, pre -match meetups whenever they travel away, and they use that when they do the fundraising. 

Penny Miles 37:10

And quite often, there'd be photos of very scantily clad women. And so I wrote to the there isn't the association of the local female population, i .e. not sexualizing the local female population, because one of the issues that does arise is sexual staring by Welsh male fans towards the local female population, sexual banter, etc. 

Penny Miles 37:41

And I suspect also worse. I haven't seen worse in one interview, you know, some comments did come up around the behavior of Welsh male fans towards the local population, female population. He immediately changed it and said no problem at all. 

Penny Miles 37:58

There was no pushback. I explained kind of why it might be helpful to just trying to change the optics, you know, moving away. It wasn't until 2018 we moved away from the honey shot, you know, female fans should be a certain way. 

Penny Miles 38:11

And so, but there was receptivity. And, you know, once you explained it, it was like, O, okay, that's fine. So once you start to discuss not everyone is going to take this on board. There was a case recently reported about a man and his son laughing after a female fan had just been kind of, I think it was sexually harassed and the response was laughter from those two. 

Penny Miles 38:42

You're not going to get... 

Francesco Belcastro 38:42

In London, unfortunately, after a big match and I think it was Tottenham, Brentford anyway, yeah, so absolutely disgusting, outrageous. 

Penny Miles 38:53

And that behaviour is still going to be there but if you've got the majority of men understanding and willing to advocate and enlightened around how to advocate or what they're advocating for or what behaviours they want to be shutting down, 

Penny Miles 39:07

then I think that's the kind of path you need to go. It's a bit like Show Racism the red Card, we get a poster going, Show Racism the Red Card and everyone holds up their poster, but there is absolutely no content to any of that. 

Penny Miles 39:22

Similarly here, it's about the detail and conversations, etc. 

Francesco Belcastro 39:27

Can I ask you one thing? So from male fans that want to be better allies, what are the main things? Can you give us some advice? I know it's not... And it's a bit... What are the main things that fans can do? 

Penny Miles 39:40

So men tend to travel in groups and there's quite a lot of kind of group behaviour. So if one of their group is engaging in something like sexual searing or sexual banter, etc, it's the mates who need to shut that down. 

Penny Miles 39:56

Not encourage it but challenge it. It's not okay for male Welsh fans to be very inappropriate to local female populations. If they see one of their fans, because it's Welsh male fans on female Welsh fans who are engaging in the physical sexual harassment, if they see that they need to shut that down, not encourage it, not go, Oh, well done, mate. 

Penny Miles 40:26

So it's about why, why are you doing that? And just trying to get them to think, if that was my sister, if that was my daughter, what is your reaction going to be? Yeah. So trying to get kind of that in. 

Francesco Belcastro 40:42

Thank you. Guy, sorry, you wanted to ask...

Guy Burton 40:44

No, sure. And I guess it's sort of, because we've been talking primarily about, you know, fan, fan base, fan bases and fandom in Wales. But of course, you know, you alluded to the fact that you've done some work in relation to Chile. 

Guy Burton 40:56

And I think you mentioned as well, that in terms of the women's game, women's fandom, it's maybe a little bit more advanced, I guess, then, then in Wales, maybe you could sort of elaborate a little bit on that for us. 

Penny Miles 41:07

Yeah, so I did a project looking at how the fan base was starting to develop within... following the women's national team. And so I went to the 2019 World Cup to look at the kind of characteristics of the women's fan base. 

Penny Miles 41:26

So I want to see how many fans were there, you know, what kind of fan behaviors were they engaging in? And then I interviewed 17 fans who traveled to France to watch the team. So I was,.. I think it's up and up. 

Penny Miles 41:47

I'm not sure they necessarily in a greater place. I think that the feminist movement around them gives them a much greater platform from which to advocate for change and to more vocally and more confidently advocate for change. 

Penny Miles 42:03

So there's a much more kind of wider consciousness around the understanding of rights within that kind of generalized social political context than I'd say there is in the comparative Welsh or UK context. 

Penny Miles 42:18

So I was looking at fan -based development. Now, going back to 2019 is quite a different scenario, I'd say in women's football to even now. So their institutional neglect was off the charts in terms of the Chilean FA really had shown no interest. 

Penny Miles 42:35

They pretty much qualified for the World Cup off their own back. And so the fan discourses there were kind of replete with, we're here basically to support the team in solidarity with the team, they've been neglected, they've got here without nothing. 

Penny Miles 42:51

So it was like kind of, yeah, that kind of con padre, con madre, we're here to support you in terms of that kind of massive solidarity. But there was, there was, you did start to see some elements of trying to change the nature of fandom. 

Penny Miles 43:12

And so you would, Spanish is a gendered language. And so you would change the chants from the masculine form to the feminine form. And by the end of the time, you'd see male fans leading the chance in the feminized form. 

Penny Miles 43:27

Now a kind of unlearning chance that you've been chanting all your life is not kind of a quick or easy process. And that was kind of interesting in and of itself. You still had that kind of same fervor that you have at men's football in terms of jumping and singing all the time. 

Penny Miles 43:46

But I think probably some of the most poignant moments were when they played the United States. And so they were outnumbered, you know, probably 90, 99 to one, I suspect, or not far off. And we were sat, my daughter and I were sat near a group of Chilean fans, and they screamed at the top of their voices. 

Penny Miles 44:14

They were louder, this kind of 1% or 2% of fan,s Chilean fans were louder than the kind of 98% of the US fans. And their kind of, their screaming was to make themselves heard so that the players knew that they were accompanied. 

Penny Miles 44:34

They would make sure that they were there when the bus arrived at the stadium. They made sure they were there when the bus left. You know, there wasn't a huge contingent, probably 50 to 100, that were there for the kind of duration perhaps. 

Penny Miles 44:49

But the kind of need to make their presence felt, so a kind of embodiment, a real kind of feminist embodiment around making their their presence felt was really quite strong. And you do get that within kind of Welsh football, but the kind of underlying discourse that went with that. 

Penny Miles 45:12

There was much more awareness of kind of rights issues than you would get, for example, in our comparative context. And I went back to Chile and Argentina last year, just to look at some club football. 

Penny Miles 45:28

I went to watch Boca Juniors play, and they were playing another team from Buenos Aires, and they weren't playing at home, they were playing away. It was impossible to find information about tickets. 

Penny Miles 45:41

I just about managed to find out where the match was on. I got to where the match was, it was even quite hard to find the pitch because it was kind of hidden behind these doors. I got there, there was about 100 people watching. 

Penny Miles 45:55

This was after the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand had just taken place, where Argentina had played. Several of the players playing for Boca play for Argentina, and there was about 100 people there, most of them affiliated to one or other of the teams. 

Penny Miles 46:11

And so their infrastructure is still very much kind of in development, intermittent, as I'd say, you know, with the WSL now that is kind of very much taken off, especially since kind of the euros in England, but they're still, you're still playing catch up, you're still struggling with human resources, like who is manning the kind of social media sites, you're still got infrastructural barriers around ticketing, 

Penny Miles 46:44

etc, etc, visibility. So it was the match was being streamed, but with one camera. So you've got, you have got streaming, but very poor quality streaming. And so you've still got significant barriers. 

Penny Miles 46:57

And that's not dissimilar to a lot of the things that I've kind of seen in the Welsh context. But it was interesting how feminism within the wider society very much played into the fandom and the feminism within the fandom and wanted to kind of reconfigure these spaces, even when they were mixed gender spaces. 

Penny Miles 47:18

That's, I think, where the difference lay for me. 

Francesco Belcastro 47:21

Penny, this has been absolutely fascinating. Before we say goodbye, can I remind the listeners that we had a fantastic episode last year with Luisa Turbino Torres on women and LGBTQ+ fans, fandom in the case of Brazil. 

Francesco Belcastro 47:36

But I think we spoke quite a lot about connections among different fan bases in South America. And obviously, in this case, it's more like fans, again, female fans, LGBTQ+ fans in male football. But I think the networks that Luisa discussed across South America are very important. 

Francesco Belcastro 47:55

And it doesn't seem to me that there is the same at the moment in the UK or in Europe. 

Guy Burton 48:00

And I was also going to add, because we also spoke a few months ago to Pete Watson of Leeds University when we talked about women's football and how the Colombian women had done such a fantastic job of getting to the last World Cup. 

Guy Burton 48:14

But as Pete pointed out to us, you've also got to remember that they did this pretty much against the odds. That, you know, we've got to remember that, you know, whereas the women's game is gaining more and more attention and publicity, you know, that in certain parts of the world, we are talking about a massive gap. 

Guy Burton 48:31

And it's great to hear what you've just, well, not great, but from what you're saying, Penny, about...

Francesco Belcastro 48:34

It's important.

Guy Burton 48:34

It's important, that's the word: important. What you're saying, Penny, from the trip to Argentina and to Chile, showing that there is still a lot to make up, you know. 

Guy Burton 48:43

So we shouldn't just think that simply because we've got a women's World Cup and we're seeing women around the world playing at this competition that everything is, you know, hunky -dory, that it's not... that we've got full equalit. There is still a substantial amount of work that needs to be done. 

Guy Burton 48:57

So thank you, Penny, for that. And that's really, and also great, thank you for giving us such a rich, you know, insight into the work that you're doing, you know, on fandom, you know, both in Wales and Chile. 

Guy Burton 49:07

Maybe we might actually have you come back on at some point to talk a little bit more about it, about the Chilean experience. Francesco, is there anything else you want to... 

Francesco Belcastro 49:15

Well, I mean, the first, the most important thing is male fans listening to this should take note. 

Francesco Belcastro 49:20

And we should all... Me first... 

Guy Burton 49:23

We need to do better. 

Francesco Belcastro 49:23

We should all do better. Yeah, all of us. Guy, I know that you are a model fan, but I know everyone is like you. You got a boy and a girl. So you want to make football more inclusive. 

Francesco Belcastro 49:37

People should be more like you. 

Guy Burton 49:38

Well, I mean, okay. I mean, I've been taking my four -year -old to a few games. Not many, because he's still a little bit small. He doesn't have the attention span. But because I'm living near Geneva, he is definitely coming to the Women's Euros with me next year. 

Francesco Belcastro 49:50

Yeah, that's important. It's very important. Well, I mean, the first thing to say is thank you, Penny, for a fantastic episode. We've really learned a lot. And I think we touch upon so many important things. 

Francesco Belcastro 50:01

It cheered me up a bit after today's terrible news. Guy, we need to do the usual admin stuff, don't we? 

Guy Burton 50:09

Yes, we do. Just to remind listeners that we always like to get feedback from you and to hear from you what you think we're doing right, what you think we're doing wrong with the episodes, if there's something else you'd rather us talk about, because we actually have had in the past, or generated episodes that are based off the ideas that have come from listeners, and they can do that how, Francesco? 

Francesco Belcastro 50:30

Well, they can get in touch with us in different ways. We are on Facebook. We are on Twitter, X. We are on Blue Sky as football. We are on LinkedIn individually. We are a bit more of a user of LinkedIn. 

Francesco Belcastro 50:49

And we got an email, which is? 

Guy Burton 50:51

It's footballpodcast@gmail .com. So you can send your... 

Francesco Belcastro 50:56

Okay, so please get in touch. We want to listen, get advices from our listeners on what we should be doing. The other thing is that we also need listener's help in terms of liking, sharing, rating, yeah, view, reviewing, whatever the app they're using allows them to do. 

Francesco Belcastro 51:17

It's quite important for us. So please, please do that. And the final thing is that next Monday, we're going to be back with the new episode. We're not going to travel far because we're going to go from Wales to Ireland. 

Francesco Belcastro 51:31

So it's going to be the politics of football in Ireland. It's going to be an excellent historical episode with James Quinn. So it'd be an interesting one. And I think we'll talk a bit about women's football as well with James. 

Guy Burton 51:48

Yes, we will. And when is that coming out, Francesco? Monday morning. So even if the listeners have got a difficult week, they can look forward to listening to your beautiful voice on the first thing Monday morning, Guy!

Francesco Belcastro 52:02

And if they haven't already done so, consider subscribing. so it automatically pops up in their inbox. Subscribe please, yeah exactly. So you never miss Guy on a Monday morning!

Guy Burton 52:10

And the last thing to say is Penny thank you again so much for taking the time to talk to us and also for listening to us go through all of that at the very end! 

Penny Miles 52:23

Thank you very much for having me.

Guy Burton 52:25

No, it was great our pleasure thank you and I'll speak to you again next week Francesco. Take care. 

Francesco Belcastro 52:29

Thank you Penny.  Thank you.

Guy Burton 52:29

Bye.

Francesco Belcastro 52:29

Thank you. Bye.