"I was groped three times before half-time," recalls Natalie Bromley, when asked about misogyny and sexism in football.

The football podcaster and Burnley fan spoke to the BBC days after a conference was held at Blackpool Football Club in which Lancashire Constabulary vowed to take a zero tolerance approach in the stands.

Bromley clearly remembers what happened at Morecambe's stadium during their League One match with Sheffield Wednesday in August 2021.

The now 49-year-old was in the away end with the Wednesday fans when she said she was repeatedly assaulted.

"Each time it happened, I thought 'Oh, it's happened again'.

By the time she told her husband and his best friend, she said it was too late to do anything about it.

"They were horrified," she said, "and asked why I didn't turn around and knock the guy out, but I didn't know who it was because there were so many people.

"I had normalised and been desensitised to that behaviour because it happens so much."

"It has always been that if you go to a football game and you're a woman, you will be subject to sexism and misogyny," said Durham University sociology professor Stacey Pope who leads research in the area of women, football and inequalities.

"It will just be called 'banter' and there will be this sense that if you're a woman and you don't like it, then you shouldn't go to the match."

Interestingly, Pope found many fans regarded the atmosphere at women's matches to be "much safer, with less vulgarity, drunkenness, and physical aggression" than at men's games.

Pope said: "I remember going out to see the 2019 Women's World Cup to watch England versus Scotland, and I wondered whether I would have travelled to France on my own like that if it were the England men's team.

"The fact I even thought about that highlights the differences between the cultures."

She also highlighted the mass disorder at the Euro 2020 final between England and Italy at Wembley.

"If you look at the Euro 2022 women's final at Wembley, it was the same sport in the same stadium, but no arrests were made."

Despite all of this evidence, Pope truly believes there is room to be optimistic and that progress is being made not only within football but society.

"I feel that, for the very first time, we are on the cusp of change in football," she said.

"People are starting to listen to these issues, and these behaviours are definitely being challenged."

Fiona Martin, now 40, has been going to watch Blackpool play at Bloomfield Road with her parents for more than a quarter of a century.

The Tangerines fan agrees with Pope, and said "things are much friendlier now" than they were.

She said sexism and misogyny were less prevalent, especially at home games, but could still be heard at away games.

"There are thousands of people in an environment, so you're going to get a wide range of opinions and behaviours, but it's not something you hear regularly," she said.

"We have gone through peaks and troughs of different cultures and environments, but the sport is definitely a much friendlier and much more welcoming place than it used to be."

In some ways Burnley fan Natalie Bromley agrees life as a female football fan is "much better" than it was during the 1990s.

She said "better facilities - female toilets for a start - which we never had back in the day, with sanitary products and clean running water" made stadiums more welcoming.

"The football world has adopted loads of initiatives to welcome female fans and make them feel safe, which is reflected in the massive increase in women attending men's games."

She said so much more work remains to be done, however.

Bromley asked: "Not to diminish the progress which has been made to make football a much more enjoyable place... are we on the cusp of some dramatic change? It doesn't feel like it to me."