If the men’s team had the success of England’s Lionesses, there’d be a Bank Holiday and knighthoods, says Fleet Street Fox. No matter how many times you smash the patriarchy, there’s always more of it
The future king was there. Three Lions On A Shirt was belted out from the stands. And a clean sweep of newspaper front pages this morning, to be followed by an open-top bus parade through the capital city and a Downing Street reception.
To many, those are all signs that women’s football is now as beloved and celebrated as that played by men. And for the fans, that’s absolutely true. But for the England Lionesses who swept to victory in the Euros for the second time in three years, it couldn’t be more wrong.
Because if it had been the Lions who’d lifted the cup – any cup, frankly, and just the once would do – there would be so much more. The actual King watching. A song of their own . A reception hosted by the Prime Minister, not his deputy. Newspaper front pages not just when they win, but when they marry, have babies, retire, or drink a yard of ale in a dentist’s chair.
And there’d be a bank holiday. No ifs or buts about the economic cost, because it would be as important a national event as the late Queen’s Jubilee or the Coronation. Rachel Reeves would say “it’s not like anyone will get any work done, so take the day and at least the pubs will be busy”.
It wouldn’t be a dull Downing Street party if the men had won, in the same way you wouldn’t have had to tell off Prince William in 2023 for not attending the World Cup finals. There’d be a drunken conga through the ballrooms of Buckingham Palace, and knighthoods would rain from the sky.
The Lionesses have been honoured. And manager Sarina Wiegman is to be made an honorary dame. But here’s what’s really wonky: Gareth Southgate was knighted, and under him the Lions won rock all.
At this point a (male) keyboard warrior will say that this is about demanding more for women when they already get plenty. Only Sarina’s salary is about £400,000 with performance-related bonuses, and Southgate was on £5m for a performance that was nowhere near as good. It takes Harry Kane a week at Bayern Munich to earn what Sarina gets in a year, with none of the pressure or paperwork.
There has been equal pay for Lions and Lionesses since 2020, all of them getting a nominal fee of £2,000 per match. For winning the Euros, the women also share 40% of the £4.3m prize pot, landing them another £75,000 each. But the prize pot for the men is FOUR TIMES that. At the World Cup in 2023 where the Lionesses got to the final, they shared £2.3m, which could have been £3.3m if they had won. By comparison the men’s team pocketed £13.3m, and they were knocked out in the quarter-finals.
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When Southgate’s team successfully shot some penalties, the nation decided it was down to the waistcoat and sales of three piece suits leapt. When Wiegman’s team does better, and goes further, there is no such thing as a lucky hairband or sexy spectacles. Had the Lionesses lost, it would have been painted as a shameful defeat. When that happens to the men, over and over and over again, they’re plucky British underdogs who won a moral victory.
What men don’t realise, and women everywhere do, is that as it is for the Lionesses so it is for the rest. The constant need to prove you’re worth accepting even after you’ve been accepted, the lower pay and higher demands, the pats-on-the-head rather than pats-on-the-back. Even when they’ve smashed the patriarchy, taken back control of the game women have played for more than 2,000 years, made it more beautiful, less violent, and told a better story, it’s still not enough to convince some fat desk jockey they’re worth the sponsorship, salary and perks that men take as their due.
Men who do worse. Men who play worse, achieve less, and get more praise and honour for what they can’t do as well. It happens in every workplace, every classroom, every family home. Boys get told ‘well done’, and girls are told ‘try again’. It’s the same for actual lions, too – the men get the glorious mane, and wander up for first gnaw on the antelope after the women went to all the effort of killing it.
There are just two perks women footballers have which the men don’t. They’re allowed to be gay, and they keep being given a damned good reason to go out and smash it again next week. Sport often leads the way in social change – women’s football in Victorian England, the apartheid boycotts of the 1980s – so perhaps one day the Lionesses will have won enough that mums and dads, bosses and big brothers and HR directors, will all start treating males and females according to their successes, and not an outdated sense of social inferiority. Maybe it will take a Lionesses v Lions match to finally settle the point; I bet you the men would rather not.
But don’t worry too much about missing out on a Bank Holiday. Because if the Lions were playing last night, you still wouldn’t have one.
