Most sex discrimination complaints break down not around the original discriminatory action, but around retaliation. Threats of retaliation escalate the problem created by the defendant’s sexism. They demonstrate a disregard for the process; they are easier to track and to prove. They are, also, against all sorts of laws.
So how does FIFA respond to the sex discrimination complaint filed by 40 women players, regarding FIFA and CSA’s decision to play the Women’s World Cup on artificial turf?
FIFA threatens players from a handful of FAs that it thinks it can bully—Mexico, Costa Rica and France (which wants to host the next women’s World Cup). Officials told women on these teams to withdraw their names from the complaint or they would not be selected to play and, in the case of France, their country might risk losing its future bid.
Result: said players withdraw their names—and file a retaliation complaint. And the number of players signing on to the original complaint jumps to 62.
Read the retaliation complaint here: Oct 2014 Letter-to-human-rights-tribunal-re-threats-against-players.
The Sport Spectacle 
The arrogance of FIFA knows no bounds. Thank god its backfired on them. To my mind its simple. The law bans sex discrimination. Playing the 2015 WC on turf while not playing the male WC on turf is sex discrimination.The law should apply to football . .In my opinion the UK Government of 1975 must take a lot of the blame for this. We were one of the first countries to pass anti sex discrimination laws but we exempted sport from them for some reason (The clause was called a “football clause” by one MP – a racist, sexist scumbag). I wonder if we had included sport in the SDA would we have established the principle that the law applies to everybody. Btw, why don’t the French FA show some guts and withdraw their 2019 WC bid ?
The Guardian did not mention the retaliation in two recent articles. Now, they are saying that men may well play a WC on turf. (Perhaps Qatar is in mind?) http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/octhttp://thegameandtheworld.blogspot.com//29/fifa-artificial-pitch-world-cup
We should link to this article or the ones linked to here. FIFA’s spurious claim to consider turf good for Men’s WCs has nothing to do with the retaliation charge. The Guardian has not passed this on.
Proving that the English FA is sexist is like shooting fish in a barrel. Here is one of the latest: http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/oct/29/fa-official-banned-female-referee
A county FA VP states that women will never ref where he works. He is banned for four months– nothing. And the FAs response, due to a grammatical challenge, argues that “anti-discrimination” has no place in the game.
Reblogged this on bainalan05.