Chris Paouros: We’ve had visibility, now we need accountability
Action needed to ensure real legacy of England's Euro 2025 win
By Chris Paouros
When the Lionesses wrote to the government after Euro 2022, it changed things. Within months, girls were guaranteed equal access to football in schools. It showed the power of visibility and a clear ask.
Three years on, after another Euros, we’re in a different moment. The women’s game has grown. More girls are playing and participating across all roles in the game. But the abuse aimed at players like Jess Carter and the everyday sexism, misogyny and racism faced by women throughout football shows visibility isn’t enough. If Euro 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that hashtags don’t fix cultures. You can celebrate visibility all you like, but if the structures stay the same, women will keep paying the price, online, on the pitch, and in the boardroom. Awareness isn’t enough anymore. We need accountability.
And to be clear: this isn’t just about women’s football. The Euros shine a light on the women’s game, but the issues: abuse, exclusion, lack of accountability cut across the whole sport. Women in coaching, refereeing, club staff and fans face the same barriers in the men’s game too.
If we want football to work for everyone; players, fans, coaches, staff, we need more than statements and campaigns. We need accountability. A funded, national plan that tackles gendered abuse, online harms and systemic exclusion, across the men’s and women’s game, on and off the pitch. What could that plan include?
1. Setting minimum standards for tackling violence against women and girls
Every club, league, broadcaster and sponsor should meet consistent standards for how they prevent and respond to abuse. There needs to be clear protocols, trained safeguarding staff, survivor-centered responses and visible consequences.
Right now, if you’re a woman in football what happens when you report abuse is left in the lap of the gods. We need systems that protect people, not just brands. The Worker Protection Act 2023 has already raised expectations on proactive steps to prevent sexual harassment in workplaces. Football should meet, and exceed, that statutory baseline, no club or governing body should wait for a headline before acting.
2. Embedding safety and inclusion into football’s culture so that the standards stick
Too often football acts only when something hits the headlines. That’s PR, not prevention.
Safety and inclusion need to be part of day-to-day governance. That means:
Independent oversight of complaints and safeguarding
Transparent reporting on what happens when people speak up
Measuring outcomes, because right now, too many complaints go nowhere, or worse, come back on the person who raised them
If an organisation has no plan until something blows up, it’s already failed. Complaints systems are not just about fixing individual cases, they’re one tool for building a culture where women, all women, can belong and thrive.
3. Acknowledging structural exclusion and making leaders accountable for fixing it
Accountability starts with naming the problem. Discrimination, sexism, and harassment are embedded in deeply rooted structures within football and leaders need to stop treating inclusion as optional. It’s part of the job. Football’s structures don’t just fail to support women they maintain inequality and for Black women that harm and misogynoir is felt more sharply.
We also need data to prove where the barriers are. You can’t root out racism or misogyny if you can’t see who’s being excluded. That means:
Publishing transparency data (building on the FA’s Rule N) to show who’s progressing and who’s being left behind
Understanding why people fall out of the system; talking to Black players who want to coach, parents of South Asian academy kids, women stuck in middle management
Using that data to set targets at every level, not just the boardroom, to stop creating ‘doughnut’ organisations with diversity at the bottom and at board level through NEDs but a hollow middle where the power sits.
If you can’t name the problem, you can’t fix it. And if you only fix the optics, you haven’t fixed the problem.
4. Holding social media platforms accountable for online harm
Abuse on social media isn’t just personal, it’s performance. People do it for clicks and outrage. Platforms profit from it. Football needs to stop pretending this is someone else’s problem. If we wouldn’t accept this abuse in a stadium, why do we accept it online? The tools exist to moderate content and take down hate. We need timely removals, penalties when platforms fail, and action to strip abusers of the spotlight they’re chasing. What happens online is part of the game now. The game has a duty to make it safe.
5. Funding equitable pathways into coaching, refereeing and leadership, especially for Black and Brown women
We can’t build an inclusive game on pathways that were never designed for women in the first place. Qualifications are expensive. Roles aren’t flexible. Mentoring is patchy. And the drop-off for women of colour is huge.
Investment is the fix, not goodwill. That means:
Funded, flexible routes into coaching and refereeing
Mentoring and progression support that works for real lives
Data to spot the “cliff edges” where women leave the game and fix them
It’s not about “empowering women”. It’s about resourcing them. There’s a difference. Part of this should include actively recruiting talent from other industries into senior off-field roles. Football won’t accelerate representation by relying only on its existing networks, we need to open the doors wider and bring in expertise from outside the game.
We’ve moved beyond awareness. Women playing and working in football are visible now, but visibility won’t keep anyone safe or make football truly inclusive. Accountability means asking harder questions: Who’s benefiting from the status quo? Who’s paying the price? And what will we change so the next letter doesn’t need to be written? Because if we want football to be for everyone, then everyone in the game from managers to CEOs to sponsors to fans has work to do.
Chris Paouros is a business consultant, leadership coach and anti-discrimination activist. She is vice-chair of Kick It Out and the Football Supporters’ Association. A life-long Spurs fan, she co-founded Women of the Lane, the club’s supporters’ association for women fans of the men’s game, and the Proud Lilywhites, the club’s LGBTQI+ supporters’ association.