The stock of women’s football has seen a meteoric rise in the past few years.
Be it in terms of media attention, commercial value, financial investments etc, all of which have led to plenty of development within the women’s game.
Aside from this progression, there has also been an advancement in how women are generally perceived in Football.
Not that long ago there existed a rather dismissive attitude towards women’s football, but all that has seen a major upheaval since then.
The likes of Alex Scott and Emma Hayes have earned plenty of plaudits for their excellent punditry, whereas presenters such as Laura Woods and Gabby Logan are well-known and respected figures within the game.
Certain Premier League broadcasts have even made the shift to all female punditry panels for specific games, a perfect display of just how far things have come.
But unfortunately, the archaic and sexist mentality of the past still exists in certain places.
And the ‘male gaze’ as they say, manages to take us back years through extremely regressive comparisons, such as this latest one between 2 talented female presenters.
It all happened after a user on Twitter started a sexist comparison between TalkSPORT host Laura Woods and Serie A presenter Diletta Leotta.
For the uninitiated, Leotta has been serving as a presenter for DAZN Italy since the 2018-19 season, covering Serie A fixtures.
Prior to this, she also presented Serie B games and even hosted the 2018 edition of Miss Italia. She also boasts of a whopping 8.3 million followers on her Instagram.
Instead of comparing the two for their skills as a presenter, this tweet essentially trivializes their talents and compares them on the basis of appearance.
As seen below, the caption reads ‘Laura Woods has competition’, which seems to denote that looks are the primary way to compare 2 female presenters.
In contrast, it would be extremely rare to find such a demeaning comparison between 2 male presenters or even footballers, which is far from just.
Naturally, plenty of outrage followed after the tweet went live, as users called out the blatant sexism.
Unfortunately, if you were to take a stroll through the replies, you’d find that a number of accounts seem to be indulging in the comparison, rather than criticizing it.
Some have even gone to the lengths to defend the mentality behind such ideas, a ridiculous notion frankly.
Cases like these serve as adequate reminders, evidently, there is still a ways to go until sexism is finally booted out of football.
Until then, fans and figures from the game must do a bit more and call out displays of prejudice.
