As the daughter of a father, I have a message for all the dads out there: We have to stop the framing around this relationship in women’s sports. Hashtag girldad was cute for a while. It looked good on some T-shirts and in your Twitter profiles. For many of you, it was innocent enough, but the “father of daughters” concept has moved past annoyingly meaningless and into dangerously undermining women’s sports territory.
I used to joke that if I could open up a consulting business that warned male NWSL owners not to use their daughters as justification for investing in a team, I’d make enough to retire comfortably. The joke has lost all its humor over the past couple of years, though, as I’ve had a front-row seat to the reckoning in the NWSL over misconduct and abuse and how men with power use their daughters as shields.
It’s happening again right now in Spain. Embattled Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) president Luis Rubiales, currently suspended by FIFA, has used the women in his life — especially his daughters — in his defense.
He addressed them directly in his speech, in which he refused to resign after his actions at the World Cup final, including kissing Jenni Hermoso without consent.
“To my daughters, I say that today they have to learn a lesson, which…
