‘Girls and women are more emotional than men,’ said Kenny Shiels, claiming female football matches often see teams letting in a series of goals ‘in a very short period of time’.
It is, the manager of the Northern Ireland women’s football team implies, down to the fact that women can’t take that first disappointment.
Well, his team did let in four goals in the second half to England’s Lionesses. But it isn’t as if his players sat down on the pitch hugging one another tearfully, or stormed out in a huff shouting: ‘My mother was right — you’re not the manager I thought you were!’
But a losing football boss needs a reason, so like a proper hard-man from Derry, Mr Shiels pointed to the innate wobbliness of females. Then, realising there would be trouble, he hastily added: ‘I shouldn’t have told you that.’
He knew that women wouldn’t like it, and indeed we don’t. It incautiously echoes an old male belief that we are ruled by our emotions: barely rational, uncontrolled. And it all stems from the fact that we women have wombs.
The manager’s team did let in four goals in the second half to England’s Lionesses. But it isn’t as if his players sat down on the pitch hugging one another tearfully, or stormed out in a huff
This has always freaked some men out. You find it all the way from ancient Greek beliefs in hysteria, to Victorian doctors with their belief that a womb is a sort of bomb waiting to cause depression, fainting, madness and everything from shoplifting to nymphomania.
The idea didn’t occur to any of them that women’s ailments or crimes might have been brought on by the men who dominated them, legally and physically.
Yet ancient nonsense lingers on, and the idea of women being more emotionally fragile than men is still with us. Yes, even in 2022.
But anyone who thinks men don’t fall prey to their emotions — that they remain coolly and robotically unemotional, while women weep and wail — is, quite frankly, deluded. And nowhere is this more obvious than in the world of football.
Take any crowd on match day and you’ll see the full spectrum of emotions. One minute roaring with approval; the next a seething mass, moving on to the pub to brood and booze, possibly swinging a few punches along the way.
As for the male players themselves, they can usually be relied upon to perform a full operatic range: histrionic dives, over-familiar embraces, heads in hands in despair when all seems lost. It’s hardly stiff upper lip.
When England lost the Euro 2020 final last summer, many players either refused to accept or removed their runner-up medals. Emotional or what? Women would more likely smile and politely take what they were given.
For what Mr Shiels failed to acknowledge is that we all have emotions. The difference between men and women is that women also possess the greater ability to express them when they choose, and control them when required.
Sometimes we may be provoked to lose our cool. But in expressing it, we’re also dealing with it, which is healthy.
Men aren’t always the most level-headed in the work place. While less likely to cry, they can often damage their own mental health more severely and permanently than women
By contrast, men more often go into deep brooding fury at life’s unfairness, at the expense of their own mental health and their family’s nerves.
They are more likely to swing between extremes: a stoic exterior masking an intense inner-emotional turmoil that does them great harm, or a violent emotional eruption that places others at risk.
So let no one make generalisations about women’s emotional fragility, or claim that the idea of missing one goal — or job, or romance — knocks us off balance. Because a woman’s life is full of disappointments, and we shoulder them all.
We are dogged. We are troupers. We plod bravely on, because it is in our robust biology and fate. We are doomed by chromosomes to be physically less muscular and usually shorter than great hulking men.
We put up with years of menstrual aches and pains and awkwardness, and undergo huge hormonal change in midlife.
During this, we generally carry on with normal duties — domestic or professional. We have to be brave in childbirth, tigresses in defence of our infants, endlessly patient with ungrateful children, family leaders and organisers without much appreciation.
As for professional and creative disappointment, male-dominated society has made us so used to it that it is almost routine, with women’s brilliance often ignored or under-used.
In short, Mr Shiels, resignedly taking the occasional loss is women’s special power. And if our side lets in a goal or three, it isn’t because we were having a girly meltdown. It’s because 11 other girlies were better on the day.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk