Standing on a glass cliff?: A case study of FIFA’s gender initiatives

ABSTRACT

Rationale/Purpose: The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has taken gender equality¹ initiatives by inaugurating a female leadership development programme (FLDP)² as well as appointing women³ in leadership positions. As such, we draw from a new theoretical notion, glass cliff to explore why FIFA started FLDP and assigned women to leadership ranks. Methodology/Approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 women who accomplished FLDP. Findings and Implications: There was no direct evidence to support the glass cliff phenomenon in FIFA’s gender-related actions. Although the results are inconclusive, some evidence showed that FIFA’s gender initiatives emerged during their reforming processes in 2015. Our findings demonstrated that FIFA’s historic appointments of women to leadership positions after the corruption and the continuance of FLDP are concerned with the glass cliff effect, as women have never been sought as leaders in football governance. We addressed practical and theoretical implications and suggestions for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Glass cliff
• FIFA
• FLDP
• football governance
• leadership

Acknowledgements

This research was not funded. We, thus declare that there are no conflicts of interest, and greatly appreciate all participants who contributed their time and provided feedback to this manuscript. We thank for those reviewers who provided constructive comments and suggestions to improve this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

George B. Cunningham http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1170-1780

Notes

1 According to the International Labour Organization (2018), gender equality refers to equal allocation of rights, responsibilities, benefits, resources, and opportunities that all people are treated in the same way while gender quality can be understood in diverse ways in sport (Shaw & Frisby, 2006). For example, girls and women are regarded the same as boys and men; in turn, they should be treated equally. On another note, gender equity indicates fair treatments for women and men based on their respective needs. In most instances, gender equity might not include equality to practices using a liberal feminist perspective, but perceptions of fairness. As such, gender equity is considered equivalent treatment in terms of the allocation of rights and resources. Despite its important distinction between these two concepts gender equality and gender equity, however, the meanings are not clearly articulated in practice and thus lead to complex understandings of the terms. In this paper, we question the institutionalized gender inequality. Here we do not mean that women and men leaders to become the same, but the resource allocation.

2 FIFA’s gender initiatives in leadership can be traced back to their appointment of the first woman in the history of FIFA, Lydia Nsekera, to its 25-member executive committee in 2013. Ever since then, FIFA elected three women, including Lydia Nsekera, to the executive committees, and Moya Dodd, one of these members, committed herself to put extensive efforts to improve gender balance in football. As a result, FIFA formed a task force, chaired by Moya Dodd, to identify key areas and create detailed plans for women’s football during the presidency of Sepp Blatter in 2014. As part of the efforts carried out by the task force, FIFA launched a nine-month female leadership development programme (FLDP) in May 2015. The FLDP aims to enhance gender diversity and inclusive decision-making practices while increasing the number of women leaders. In doing so, FIFA can convert such diversity initiatives into tangible benefits for women’s football and eventually change leadership dynamics in football. After implementing the first edition of the FLDP, FIFA appointed two women in the positions of secretary-general and chief women’s football in 2016. Because Moya Dodd and few colleagues from inside and outside FIFA have done a great deal of work to promote equitable leadership opportunities for women in football, FIFA has held a series of annual conferences and workshops for the development of women’s football, as well as support for women in football governance.

3 While the terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably, there are distinctions between sex and gender. According to Powell (2018), sex is related to anatomical structure, referring to one’s biological categories and physical characteristics that, in most cases, define female and male, as well as living organisms. The term gender, which has generally been used as a synonym for sex for the past decades, is related to an imposed sociocultural and psychological conditions for the biological categories of sex. The discourses surrounding gender is particularly associated with the socially constructed roles, attitudes, and behaviors of and between groups of men and women. For example, participation in sport and physical activities is perceived as inappropriate for girls and women and includes few activities such as dancing and gymnastics viewed as primarily for girls and women, if at all (Cunningham, 2019). As such, gender stereotypes and roles are closely associated with a particular sex and sport—with being masculine, feminine, or neutral (Burton et al., 2009). More recently, researchers have expanded the definition of gender and sex beyond the binary, arguing that gender can be fluid and multifaceted (Halberstam, 2012). In this case, people can challenge the restrictive views of gender to express diverse social meanings and expectations. While we recognize that gender can be seen as a spectrum, in this article, we indicate the term gender as the idea of how boys and girls or men and women are expected to behave at work. In doing so, we are able to discuss traditional gender role expectations associated with those behaviors adopted overtly or covertly by societal conditions.