Women’s football is no dyke’s paradise

She is married but has been called a gay. But then, that is not unfamiliar to women are involved in what is largely a man’s sport.

“If I left female football it would be because of that,” says Elaine Walker Brown, who heads Jamaica’s female football programme.

But Walker-Brown and others who play women’s football reject that it is a hotbed of lesbians. They say, though, that some in the sport project a masculine image — much of which has nothing to with sexual preference.

“They do everything the men do,” says Camele Legister-Jones, who has been playing soccer for five years. “They smoke, curse bad words and dress masculine. You cannot even tell if they are males or females… It is a growing trend now.”

Her husband, Oneil Jones, who coaches the Greater Portmore female football team, says he too sees the trend, especially among the top players.

“I see it more among the better players like on the national side,” he says. “They only wear man jeans and look like men. They have rowdy behaviour especially when they are in their crews. You can’t tell that it is not a bunch of men.”

Where such behaviour predominate, Oneil Jones believes, it is likely to be largely an act by women out to prove that a worthy of being in a tough sport controlled by men. Indeed, most of the female players could hardly be identified from any other woman.

“They look and act normal,” says the Greater Portmore coach.

Of the muscled behaviour of the minority, he says: “I suspect they adopt these traits because they are trying to break into a male-dominated sport. So the thinking could be once you behave that way you will get acceptance.”

Indeed, only a relative handful — 4,000-5,000 — of women actually play football, or soccer, in Jamaica. And it is only recently that game is being seriously organised around clubs and that women’s soccer has fallen under the umbrella of the Jamaica Football Federation.

While Jamaican women are well-known as football fans, people like Walker-Brown are aware that they have a job do to actually bring more females onto the pitches. Not least of the job is changing the image of the sport from being a dyke’s paradise.

“People just assume that because you play football, you are a dyke,” says one player who asked not to be named. “But the truth is , even though I know a few players who are, it is not the majority.”

Yet this player claims to see more openly gay activity now than when she started playing in the mid 1990s.

“I have seen more persons with same sex preferences now than when I just started playing five years ago,” she says. “It is more open now. So people will know that X and Y are together.”

But part of the problem, suggests Walker-Brown, is perception.

“Maybe it is because the girls do a lot of things together,” Walker-Brown says. “For example, the Portmore Strikers — they are a very close team. They have good team spirit and people might interpret it and say things about them being lesbians.

“I don’t see the same thing happening with the males. Many of the teams are close and you don’t hear them being labeled ‘b____ men.”

Yet Walker-Brown is well aware of the issue of female players assuming masculine attitudes and the perception that this creates.

“I don’t see them curse or smoke but they do dress like boys,” she says. “They put the bag sideways across their shoulders (instead of over their backs)… and walk and rock like the boys. They used to have the rags in their back pockets but they are cutting down on that.”

That attitude has created sufficient concern as to gain the attention of the JFF and the national football authorities.

“There are only a few of the girls like that but it is something that we are addressing on the national team,” says national women’s coach, Christopher Bender. “…I have spoken to some clubs who are getting resource persons to deal with etiquette, deportment and personal hygiene etc.”

Indeed, Bender believes that the attitude of players will, in the end, determine the growth of the sport.

“How they behave on or off the field is important,” he says. “They have to sell the sport.”

The more respect the players bring to female soccer, Bender argues, the more the likelihood that corporate Jamaica will bankroll the development of the sport.

Nikki, who keeps goal for the local woman’s football team, Barbican, agrees.

“Me nuh like how dem dress and talk like man because dem a hold down the women’s football side,” she complains. “They must draw up heir socks and dress like women so that they can get more opportunities.”

Bender and Walker Brown say that the sport does offer tremendous possibilities for educational and social advancement once the female players remain focussed.

“They are studying more now and the scholarships are coming,” says Walker-Brown. “But I find that the brighter ones don’t pick up the male traits – it is sometimes those who are less educated,” Walker-Brown says.

Jamaican women footballers get about five scholarships a year to study mostly at US colleges, Bender suggests.

Both Bender and Walker-Brown argue that much of the discipline required for the advancement of the sport, and for female players to fully realise the opportunities, need to come from the home. Parents, they say, have to be more involved with their children, especially those who are in school.

“Some of the parents don’t even know where their daughters are,” says Walker-Brown. “They will call me and ask if the girls are at camp and I will say no or this is the schedule or so on.

“Some in the schools need parental guidance and this is where I come in. Sometimes I have to tell parents what to do and how things are going.”

According to Bender, the female football team requires more guidance than the male – a role that he said both coaches and parents needed to look more closely at.

He says: “Coaching the females is different from the males as they require more guidance outside of the technical stuff.

“Some girls don’t know better and think that it is okay to behave a certain way. The coaches sometimes spend more time focussing on winning medals rather than developing human beings. That is something we have to look at.”

Jackie Walters, a longtime Jamaican football coach, has consistently underlined the potential of female football.

“I don’t think Jamaica realises the level of talent that women possess in terms of football in this country,” Walters says.

The fight according to Bender, is to change the Jamaican culture to accept women on the football field.

“In this 21st century you still have many persons who think that a female’s place is in the kitchen or in the home and not on the field,” Bender says. “Our culture still has not accepted female football.”

Perhaps it is the culture too that encourages the masculine behaviour of the girls, says Vikki Hanson, who plays for the Greater Portmore Sports Club.

“To some extent the spectators expect some of the masculine action too,” she says. “It is seen as a dis to ‘play like a girl’ but when you ‘play like a man’ you know you are good. That is how some people think.”

For Kameka Murdy, who plays right back, forward and midfield for Harbour View, the issues go beyond female football to women’s sports in general.

“The issue is the same in most of the other female sports – it is not just football. Many of the women dress like men and that is why we don’t get the respect we deserve,” she says. “For my club I don’t see any homosexuality but if the girls dem duh them thing a fi dem business. I just go and play.”