A woman's touch
May 17, 2011
With the German Football Association now estimating that around one quarter of Bundesliga stadium goers are women, the traditionally male-dominated sport is witnessing a quiet revolution. Where once women would have been mocked, now they are seen as an integral part of a happy stadium family.
"Football used to be about men huddled on the terraces," says national league spokesman Kay-Oliver Langendorff. "Now it's a real event. The stadiums are safe and comfortable, so people bring their children and make a day of it."
Germany's stadiums are amongst the most family friendly in the world, thanks, in part, to the investment boost prompted by the country's hosting of the World Cup in 2006. For Alexander Krause of the Cologne-based market research company Sport+Markt, the link between renovated stadiums and growing numbers of female fans is clear.
"It's no accident that Germany is leading the way in terms of female supporters," Krause says. "If you go to a country like Poland, where the stadiums are in very poor repair, you will find very few women attending the matches."
Dortmund's Signul Iduna Park, home of the current Bundesliga champions Borussia Dortmund, was one of the stadiums to have been renovated in the run-up to the 2006 World Cup. It also underwent major alterations in the late 1990s and again in the first few years after the turn of the century.
More women, less extremism
Forty-nine-year-old radiographer Martina Kyriakidis has been attending Dortmund matches since the age of 13, and remembers all too well what the stadium used to be like before the renovations: "We always had to use the men's toilets," Kyriakidis recounts. "There were only two female toilets for the whole of the south terrace, so you can imagine how long the queue was!"
Kyriakidis' 17-year-old daughter Nina is not old enough to remember the toilet problems her mother faced as a teenager. A keen football fan since the age of 6, Nina is, like her mother, an active member of Dortmund's Evinger Sturmfalken fan club. As far as Nina is concerned, the most significant developments in the stadium have been social, rather than structural.
"The right-wing extremist scene has disappeared," Nina says earnestly. "The fans pushed them out." The politically engaged teenager believes that right-wing extremism had been a key deterrent to women interested in football and, now that the sport has cleaned up its act, women feel increasingly comfortable about coming into the stadiums.
Regina Ruml, the charismatic 60-year-old chairwoman of the Evinger Sturmfalken fan club, goes even further. She believes that rather than women being deterred by racism, it was actually the racists who were deterred by women. According to Ruml, there is a direct causal link between the fact that one-third of Dortmund's stadium goers are women, and the club's success in promoting tolerance. "The atmosphere is better when women are there," Ruml claims, "people hold back in front of them."
This calming influence is, in Ruml's opinion, the result of differences in the manner in which men and women watch football. "With men, it's all about winning, winning, winning," says the medical insurance saleswoman with a grin. "If you're a woman, you see things a bit differently. You're not just interested in the points, you're interested in the game and how it is being played."
The future is female
Women don't just contribute to the atmosphere in the stadium; they also represent an increasingly important market. According to Sport+Markt, women account for over 100 Million euros worth of Bundesliga-related purchases per year, and this figure is set to rise.
"Female fans are the sport's biggest growth factor," says Sport+Markt's Alexander Krause. "The male market is already saturated. All you can do is make sure that the levels stay constant. With women, however, it's different. Only 25 percent of stadium fans are women. What's to stop it becoming 50-50?”
If women really do represent a demographic with the potential to increase by 100 percent, then it is no wonder Sepp Blatter, president of football's international governing body FIFA, believes that "the future of football is female." With the Women's World Cup due to start in Germany in June, however, the German Football Association is hoping that this prophesy will be played out as much on the pitch as on the terraces.
Author: Kate Laycock
Editor: Darren Mara