Craig Foster Calls For Equal Representation On FIFA Council

Former Socceroo and human rights activist Craig Foster has called out the lack of equal representation on the FIFA Council.

On the eve of the FIFA Women’s Football Convention in Sydney with the organization’s chief of women’s soccer Sarai Bareman and the former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch – ‘the woman who took on FIFA’ – among the panellists, Foster lamented the underrepresentation of women in the FIFA Council.

“At the moment one-sixth of the FIFA Council is female and that’s seen as a step forward and that’s embarrassing for the game,” Foster told me. “[Gianni] Infantino should be immediately pressed to a vote of the FIFA Council that gender equality is not just the fact that the Matildas and the Socceroos in Australia earn the same money but in fact that women all around the world in soccer have equal opportunity to sit on that FIFA Council because when women have power and representation at FIFA level the game will fundamentally change.”

He slammed ‘the conference business industry that landed during the Women’s World Cup’ as pointless, adding, “I’ve seen at least 15 conferences on gender equality, and yet the only thing I’ve seen come out of them aside from dialogue is a statement of people saying I’m going to continue to support women’s soccer.”

The current FIFA council has 37 members. Each confederation must elect a minimum of one female representative, a rule FIFA introduced with much fanfare in 2016. Sonia Fulford of the Turks and Caicos Islands, Johanna Wood of New Zealand, Maria Munoz of Colombia, Isha Johansen of Sierra Leone, Kanya Keomany of Laos, and Evelina Christillin of Italy occupy those seats. The president of the English FA, Debbie Hewitt, is one of eight vice presents, representing Britain, lifting female representation on the Council to 18%.

The FIFA Council replaced the notorious FIFA executive committee, which awarded the World Cup hosting rights to Russia and Qatar in 2010, a vote that ultimately preceded FIFAGate and the downfall of Sepp Blatter. Sixteen of the 22 men who voted were banned, indicted for corruption, or convicted.

In 2013, Burundi’s Lydia Nsekera became the first woman elected to the FIFA executive committee in the governing body’s century-plus existence, defeating Australia’s Moya Dodd and Fulford in the final vote. An IOC member, Nsekera served two terms, but her contribution to good governance and the game remained vague. Bangladesh’s Mahfuza Akhter Kiron, another FIFA Council member, struggled to name the women’s world champions in 2017.

In a sport that has long had problems with female executives, female membership of the FIFA Council has often looked like window dressing. Recent UEFA elections showed again how hard it is for women to get leadership roles in the game. One of the very few outspoken soccer officials, the president of the Norwegian FA, Lise Klaveness, failed in her bid to become the first woman to get elected on the UEFA executive committee in a direct vote against male candidates. She is just one of eleven female FA presidents in the world.

Hewitt, who called Klaveness ‘a very brave woman,’ did defeat David Martin of Northern Ireland for a seat on the FIFA Council, but she has an establishment profile, with a career in business. Her new role comes with a generous $300,000 salary and other FIFA perks. Having ignored the media for most of her tenure as FA president, Hewitt said at the time: “My predecessors have all taken the salary. It’s a big job. You can bet that I will give it my heart and my soul and whatever the compensation and remuneration is, I will talk to Fifa when I understand what that is and what the whole package is.”

An outlier in the game, Klaveness has spoken up many times, but soccer and the industry do not tolerate dissent, something Foster readily confirms.

“The game is very skilled at just providing small incremental growth for people and at externalizing anyone who says anything that is challenging to the global governing body,” concludes Foster.