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Nine women, one plan (nd current)

Bibiana Steinhaus (center) prevailed as referee, now she wants to change football with eight colleagues.

Foto: imago images/Lackovic

At first they only sent WhatsApp messages, SMS or emails every now and then. The displeasure about a lack of gender equality or a lack of participation in the decision-making processes in troubled professional football had existed for a long time among nine prominent women. Now they are confronting German football with eight demands. It is about equality, the support of women in the professional field of football and the appropriate recognition of women playing football. And they want to have a say: It cannot be that more than 90 percent of the important positions are still held by men.

“The diversity of the players on the pitch and among the people who are enthusiastic about football is not reflected in his management bodies,” says a position paper drawn up by nine women active in football: Almuth Schult (goalkeeper from VfL Wolfsburg), Bibiana Steinhaus (referee), Claudia Neumann (ZDF commentator), Helen Breit (chairwoman of the fan organization “Our curve”), Gaby Papenburg (presidential candidate at the Berlin Football Association), Jana Bernhard (managing director of the sponsors’ association S20) , Katja Kraus (managing director Jung von Matt Sports), Katharina Kiel (founder of Talentzone) and Sandra Schwedler (chairwoman of the FC St. Pauli supervisory board).

“So far, football has worked according to its own rules, and for the first time there is pressure from outside. We want to increase that, ”Katja Kraus explained to“ Die Zeit ”about the advance. The entrepreneur and book author, mother of three and former national goalkeeper repeatedly criticized the functionary level in football as “a hermetic system that revolves around itself and also nourishes itself.” Is the 50-year-old perhaps even the one who runs the German Football Association ( DFB) leads out of his crisis as the new president? She actually has “no ambitions” for the office, but would take a close look at “under what circumstances and, above all, in what constellations” she could take on responsibility. Perhaps no one from this group of nine really wants the DFB job, but the fact that this threatening backdrop is in the room for many a functionary who is afraid of his benefices, who can usually rely on his male friendships in tricky situations, pleases the pioneers.

In his farewell declaration, the recently resigned President Fritz Keller suggested a “management style based on trust and reliability, especially with consideration of diversity” – because women would probably not have performed such intrigues as those men who fought worse for months under the roof of the DFB as teenage boys in the playground. The initiators find it frightening that the DFB Bibiana Steinhaus, who is still working as a video assistant, is said to have suggested that she should consider very carefully whether she wants to be part of such an initiative. Katja Kraus describes this process as “astonishing”: “After all, we are not a terrorist cell, but women who are committed to gender equality.”

Their demand: to install 30 percent women in the presidium, board and management of the associations by 2024, as well as in the supervisory boards of every professional club. By then, every club should have at least one woman on the board or in the management. “With the minimum of 30 percent we are aiming for, we went relatively low there. But even 30 percent are beyond the imagination of many «, says the former presenter Gaby Papenburg. Programs on equal opportunities, salary transparency, better framework conditions, gender-equitable language at all levels of football and consistent sanctioning of all forms of sexism and discrimination are also required.

“The economic and cultural benefits of mixed-gender teams are sufficiently dependent in the world of work,” it continues. Individual protagonists such as DFB Vice President Hannelore Ratzeburg, DFB Director Heike Ullrich or the former national player Nadine Keßler, who has been promoted to head of women’s football within Uefa, are often used as an argument that successful careers are quite possible for women. “However, no strength arises from the exotic. And no structural foundation either, ”warns the initiative. There are many women “who have the competence, experience and integrity to take on management positions.” You should finally be given the chance to prove yourself.

According to the “Equal Play 2019” study, half of women employed in sport are disadvantaged because of their gender. “This is a devastating situation that needs to be changed immediately,” states the position paper.

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