Nikita Parris Believes Targeting Communities Will Improve Diversity Of Women’s Game

On Monday, The Football Association launched a new four-year strategy titled ‘Inspiring Positive Change’. One of the aims was to increase the proportion of ethnic minorities playing women’s soccer in England. Only two members of the current Lionesses’ 28-player squad are non-white compared to almost half the men’s squad.

One of them, Nikita Parris said yesterday “I feel so passionate that we should be providing young BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) girls who live within inner cities, the opportunity to easily access their local Centers of Excellence, so the vision of the new Women’s and Girls’ strategy is the right direction we should be taking to provide more opportunities to those who may not have had it before”.

The 52-page strategy states that “there is much to do to make football genuinely ‘For All’. The level of engagement with females from diverse communities is not where it should be. We believe the route to change this is to identify, develop and support local leadership that is grounded in the lived experience of every girl to help us facilitate football for everyone”.

Parris, who grew up in the Toxeth suburb of Liverpool, the daughter of a single mother who was working three jobs to make ends meet, is now a double Champions League winner leading the line with the most successful club side in the world, Olympique Lyonnais. Yet as a young girl, she required funding from Sports Aid, a UK charity that aims to help the next generation of British sports stars. Looking back she realises how much she relied on the support of others to travel to training and matches. “I don’t believe it was the only way, but it certainly would have been harder, had I not had support from family, friends and the other parents from the team that I played for. A large majority of the time, (Everton manager) Mo Marley and (her husband) Keith Marley picked me up and took me, to and from training, 45 minutes each way. We didn’t live too far apart but we’re not next-door neighbors so for them to go out of their way to pick me up, to take me to training speaks volumes of the people they are. It really helped me become the player I am today. Without their support, it wouldn’t have been possible”.

When Parris was first called up to represent England at youth level, the senior head coach was a black woman, Hope Powell and up to a quarter of the squad was black. Now, Parris and her former Manchester City team-mate Demi Stokes are the only black players called up by head coach Phil Neville. Parris can see how a team with a minimum of nine white women fail to encourage ethnic minority women that there is a future for them in the game.

“Yeah, it is understandable, but what I do think is that they do have role models in Demi and me. My role models were Rachel Yankey and Anita Asante so there has been, and are players who play for England that people can look up to. There’s also plenty of other role models within the squad. I do think that it is imperative that we do go inside these communities and really try hard to make sure it’s accessible for young people to be able to play the sport. I’ve been a great advocate of saying that. You know the Center of Excellences in the Women’s Super League or the Championship, they’re not actually situated in areas that are accessible for inner-city communities and the vast majority of BAME athletes or BAME participants are going to come from them areas. So, I do think that The FA do have to look at how the displacement of the Centers of Excellence affects opportunities for girls to get into elite sport – not just taking part in sessions, because I know The FA do support in a lot of activities that helps players get into the sport on a participant level – but I’m talking about if you believe that if you’re good enough to really kick on and be an England future Lioness, about having that elite support”.

Speaking earlier this week on a webinar for Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE), Tziarra King, a forward for the Utah Royals explained how things are little different in the NWSL. “The ‘pay to play’ system here in the United States makes it really difficult for lower income or inner city individuals to have those same opportunities so there’s a lot of room for improvement”.

King’s solution? “Honestly, re-doing the whole system. How can we get it where costs are low? How can we get it that fields are accessible? Are we tailoring it to a population of people that don’t have the ability to pay x, y and z for travel, for uniforms, for registration fees? How can we pare it down so everyone’s welcome and it’s not an exclusive club”.

She also believes that the way the game is sold is deterring ethnic minorities from pursuing a career in the game. “I think honestly people, especially when doing promotions of advertisements, are afraid of inclusivity, are afraid of a picture that’s different from the typical thing. That’s something I am very passionate about because I have short hair, I’m black. I don’t see a lot of things and say ‘that person looks like me’”.

“Representation is so, so important, especially for the younger generation to say ‘I see her, she looks like me, I could be in her shoes. I could be doing the same thing that she’s doing’. There has to be a diversity, diversity is a buzz-word these days but there genuinely has to be people willing to make these advertisements cater to an actual population of people . Not just say, ‘this is what people want to see’. No, that’s not what people want to see. People want to see the widespread of diversity, what makes this world so amazing. So, I just think there needs to be change in that as well”.