Stop harming women in football #WhoseSideAreYouOn
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We are an award winning campaigning group known as The Three Hijabis. We’re three British Muslim women, football fans, and equalities experts with particular focus on misogyny, violence against women and girls and anti racism. We are working to make football and sports inclusive and safe for everyone.
The Three Hijabis was formed after the viral success of our petition after the final game of the men's 2020 Euros, to ban racists from football. Our petition reached over a million signatories in 48 hours, making it the fastest growing anti racism campaign last year. We saw our petition open up conversations on the extension of banning orders, and national discussion on racism in the game.
Since then, we have teamed up in coalition with EVAW (Ending Violence Against Women) and Level Up at the start of 2022 to put forward an open letter to the Premier League and Football Association (FA) to address gender based violence, after a number of high profile cases of Premier League players being accused of serious crimes against women.
As football fans, we have a mixed relationship with the game. On the one hand footballs plays such an important part in our lives, in our families and our communities, and we love the connections and power the game can bring.
But we also know that the beautiful game has a deeply ugly side.
Gender based violence is a huge problem in all societies and across all communities and we see that being played out by some of the biggest players in the game, enabled by the culture within football.
We launched an open letter to the FA and Premier League with 4 main asks. These included:
- Introduce mandatory training for all players, managers, coaches and owners on gender-based violence. This should cover domestic and sexual abuse, consent, healthy relationships, the impacts of violence and bystander intervention. It must be developed and delivered with specialist women’s organisations and organisations ‘led by and for’ Black and minoritised women.
- Introduce a Tackling Gender-Based Violence Charter for clubs to sign up to that sets out minimum standards for policies and action to tackle unacceptable behaviour.
- To adopt clear sexual misconduct policies and protocols with the power to impose appropriate consequences and disciplinary action on players, from suspension without pay to lifetime bans.
- For Academies to introduce prevention programmes for young people that take a “Whole Club Approach” to eliminating violence against women in football. This means consulting local specialist organisations, enforcing clear standards of behaviour, implementing policies in responding to allegations (with recognition that players themselves may experience abuse) and providing access to confidential support for those concerned about harm they may cause or have caused.
Throughout a number of meetings and a ‘listening day’ at the Premier League alongside women’s rights organisations, this summer we saw the Premier League take one of our asks and implement it, by making sexual consent training mandatory for all staff and first team players. This was a huge win for us and we know this is only the start of the work needed.
We want to harness the power of football fans and the beautiful game to ensure that all our asks are achieved, because we know what a huge impact this will have for marginalised groups who also love the game.
We know we’ve got a long way to go, but we are already seeing change happen.
How the money will be used.
Everything we have achieved so far has been through our own passion and understanding of the important platform we have been given to influence change. Throughout this time we have worked on our campaigning on our free evenings and weekends, and have been limited in our ability to dedicate more of our resources on this work.
Your support will allow us the ability to ensure that we are holding footballing decision makers to account in tackling misogyny and gender based violence associated to the game, focusing on getting all our campaign asks actioned on.
These funds will support our coalition campaigning and raise money for The Three Hijabis, EVAW and Level UP.
Why this is so important
Football is part of our country’s culture and DNA, and our top players are some of the biggest role models for our children.
We know, that big tournaments such as the world cup, lead to higher levels of violence towards women in the home, whether their team wins, loses or draws.
We know, that for many women, spaces where football is played, or shown, can often be intimidating and scary places to be with increased levels of sexual harassment.
We know that there are many issues that this tournament in Qatar will raise, and we want to ensure that this issue is on the top of the agenda.
We have achieved a great deal already and we know there’s still lots to do. We are proven change makers, and your support will enable us to keep going to ensure that our asks are delivered on.
#GenderBasedViolence
#WhoseSideAreYouOn
Organizer
The Three Hijabis
Organizer
England
