Elements for FIFA’s feminist transformation: The case for indicators on football and women’s rights

In 2015, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) commissioned John Ruggie, the architect of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), to help FIFA embed human rights into its operations, taking the UNGPs as the “authoritative standard.” In the following years, FIFA made a number of human rights-related commitments and policy changes. However, progress has been more limited in relation to women’s rights. Cases of women’s rights abuses related to football occur regularly and remain unresolved. In this article we explore key elements for a feminist transformation of FIFA’s policies and practices based on the gender framework developed by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights in 2019. We consider the use of indicators as one way to achieve this transformation. Overall, we aim to answer the following research question: how can the 2019 UNGP gender framework help FIFA engage in a feminist transformation of their human rights policies and practices in a way that includes FIFA’s confederations and member associations?