As the World Cup swings into gear and football fans from around the globe cheer and jeer the successes and failures of their respective teams, we’ve started to see an ugly, but sadly familiar, side to the beautiful game: the sexual harassment by fans of female sports reporters.
The BBC reports that Brazilian sports reporter Julia Guimaraes was mid-broadcast outside the Japan v Senegal game on Sunday when a man approached her and attempted to kiss her. In footage posted to Twitter, Guimaraes ducks the kiss before angrily remonstrating with her assailant, a male who looks to be in his 20s or early 30s.
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“Don’t do this!” Guimaraes says as the man disappears out of shot. “Never do this again, okay?”
As a male voice replies, “I’m sorry,” Guimaraes continues to berate her attacker. “I don’t allow you to do that,” she says, shaking her head. “Never, okay? This is not polite, this is not right. Never do this.”
Guimaraes subsequently tweeted that a similar incident had taken place whilst she was reporting on the Russia v Egypt game earlier in the tournament. Describing it as “awful,” Guimaraes told Brazilian sports website Globo Sport that the incidents made her feel “helpless [and] vulnerable.” “This time, I responded,” she explained, “but it’s sad people don’t understand why people feel they have the right to do that.”
Guimaraes isn’t the only sports reporter to speak out about the harassment she’s encountered while doing her job. In March, 52 female sports reporters launched a campaign called #DeixaElaTrabalhar [“Let her work”] to highlight how regularly they are sexually harassed during live broadcasts. “When you turn on the camera, they just start to try and kiss us and hug and touch us,” explained journalist Bibiana Bolson of the EspnW sports network in their campaign video, which was shared widely on Brazilian social media. “It was a very terrible experience.”
The phenomenon of female sports journalists getting harassed in the course of their job appears to be depressingly prevalent during this year’s World Cup—a Colombian correspondent for German broadcaster Deustche Welle’s Spanish channel was also groped earlier this week during a live broadcast. A man ran up to Julieth Gonzalez Theran, kissed her on the cheek, and appeared to grab her breast. After finishing her broadcast, Theran spoke about the incident on social media. “We don’t deserve this treatment,” Theran wrote, asking to be treated with respect.
“Any unwanted or non-consensual sexual contact, including kissing and groping, is sexual assault,” explains Jen Calleja, co-director of anti-harassment campaigners Good Night Out. “Some people commenting have said that they think it’s just ‘a bit of fun.’ But they don’t get to decide what it is, the target of the harassment does.”
Calleja says that unwanted attention can be disorienting or frightening, especially for sexual assault survivors. “Seeing someone coming towards you unexpectedly in a public place, especially as a woman, can be frightening based on previous experiences of harassment and assault in public spaces,” she explains. “It is every reporters’ right not to be harassed, assaulted, or attacked while working.”
