The real reason female footballers aren’t on birthday cards

Oh dear… it appears that birthday and greetings cards are sexist. This is, at least, the claim of a group of MPs who have submitted an EDM (Early Day Motion) calling for more representation of female footballers on such items by their manufacturers. The motion was tabled by Liberal Democrat MP for Epsom and Ewell, Helen Maguire, who told the BBC that the greeting card industry was ‘not moving with the times’. 

Poor Ms Maguire explained how she had been motivated by the trauma of searching for a card for her ‘massive football fan’ office manager and finding only those depicting male players. One can only imagine the distress this induced. Ms Maguire concluded that the ‘under-representation of female athletes… undermines efforts to promote gender equality in sport’. She is supported by 12 of her parliamentary colleagues.

Even the BBC, a tireless promoter of ‘gender equality’ in the sporting arena (see the new presenting line-ups for Match of the Day and Sports Personality of the Year) was moved to include in its report the question of whether such a motion was a good use of taxpayer’s money.