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SFSA – The independent voice of Scottish football supporters

Women’s Football and Social Media Abuse, Report – February 2025

Date: 6th February 2025

The full report is available at this link – Social Media abuse in the Women’s Game

Introduction

In 2022, City Live Glasgow uploaded an article detailing the online abuse Stenhousemuir captain Nicole McPhee received following their match against Rangers in the women’s Scottish Cup. Tweets after the game started pouring in from male Rangers fans calling her ‘out of shape’, body shaming her and even saying she ‘doesn’t look like a professional player.’ In 2023, during the Women’s World Cup finals, one in five of the players involved received abuse on social media, that’s 152 women during the entire tournament. After Spain won the competition, the then President of the Spanish Football Association forced an unwanted kiss on the winning captain; an action that has led to him losing his job and going on trial for sexual assault.

With increasing reports of rising incidents of social media abuse across football as a whole, the SFSA has conducted an online study, seeking the views of female fans, players, and officials about their experience of social media. The survey ran through November and December 2024.

The SFSA’s is committed to supporting female football fans and female footballers and match officials, helping them to build a safer online culture and get a better understanding of the extent of online trolling that, sadly, can be seenon the major social media platforms every day. Our key findings are as follows:

Key Findings

  • Over one third (35%) said they had been abused online.
  • 83% said they had witnessed someone else being the subject of abuse online.
  • Nearly half (45%) had responded in some way to online abuse, commenting or calling out the abuser in a separate post.
  • 1% admitted they had personally abused people online.
  • The three most commonly cited types of abuse are: Misogyny (cited by 92%), Protestant/Catholic sectarianism (90%) and racism (87%)
  • Twitter/X is by far the worst social medium for abuse, with 69% saying this is the case. Facebook was next with 27%.
  • The worst effects of social media abuse in the women’s game are: impact on mental health (cited by 47%), making people generally fearful (18%) and reducing confidence (17%).
  • The most commonly suggested solutions to social media abuse were: banning the perpetrators from social media (79%), banning from grounds (69%), banning from playing if the perpetrator is a player (53%), prison for serious abuse (also 53%) and fines (51%).

Sinead Ramsey, Lead on Women’s Football, SFSA

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