Emma Hayes shares a feisty four-minute monologue on male privilege when questioned on Joey Barton's sexist tirade against women football pundits - after the ex-manager called for the Chelsea boss to 'cross into the men's game' in 2017

Emma Hayes went on a four-minute rant about male privilege after the Chelsea boss was asked about Joey Barton’s controversial comments on female pundits.

Barton shared a series of sexist posts on social media on Wednesday, claiming that women should ‘not be talking with any kind of authority’ about men’s football.

The Chelsea manager has worked as a pundit and co-commentator for ITV for both men and women’s football. Barton said in 2017 that he would like to see her ‘cross over into the men’s game’.

Hayes answered the question about Barton, without mentioning his name, in a four-minute monologue which included arguing that a good surgeon does not need to have been a good patient to perform operations.

‘The realities are that male privilege has been something that's always been at the centre of football in this country,’ Hayes said.

‘Women were banned playing football up until the 1970s. I don't expect any individual personality to understand their privilege, nonetheless you only have to see scores of women across the internet or in the business, whether you're a presenter, a coach or a player to realise that we're routinely used to dealing with systemic misogyny, bullying, and behaviour that has been pretty normal for a large part of the football public.

‘The realities of it is that I find the debate interesting and we should have that debate without being personal about it and I’m not referring to any individuals.

‘But I feel that sport is the last place in society where that male privilege exists and so naturally if I go all Darwinism on us and speak evolution theory, the realities of it are that, when there is an existential threat, you either evolve or you die. It’s one or the other.

‘I think when it comes to the sport of football in this case, we have to remember that society isn’t always as well represented across the media or across the game in coaching or playing.

‘If you haven’t experienced systemic misogyny like lots of us have, you can’t for one moment understand how detrimental some of these conversations are, knowing that anything anyone says just enables an absolute pile on, particularly on social media which, let me be clear, doesn’t take a lot for people to pile on women. It’s pretty normal for a lot of people that support football.

‘So it’s sad, a little bit, not that we are having this conversation, we should have the conversation about the broader issue of it.

‘But I want to accentuate the positive, I want to accentuate the positive contributions that many of us, myself included, have made to the game of football and that unlike other professions.

‘I have to say this cause I’m always fascinated with it, rarely do we go into a hospital and if we have a female physician who is carrying out a surgical procedure on someone’s kidney, often we won’t turn around and say to that surgeon, “I hope she was a good patient once cause being a good patient means that you’re going to be a good doctor.” Well we know that’s not true.

‘Talent and experience might help and a good skill set. It’s the same about being a great banker. Does that mean you had to be a frugal spender to be a good banker?

‘Much in the same way, do you have to be a well-travelled passenger to be a good pilot? I think we become so unaware of our confirmation biases, but two, when there’s an existential threat, the things we do to make ourselves relevant create a lot of noise around a very, very, very interesting topic but perhaps we could do it better in another way.’