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Playing the game

The new Women’s Super League season kicked off in September with renewed media attention. ALEX CULVIN analyses the growth of women’s football

Women’s football is in transition. There has been a significant expansion in both public interest in,

and media attention to, women’s football, income from sponsorship and, crucially, the payment of professional women players. As this process happens, it is important to understand how women players cope with their new higher profile, but also a career that remains highly precarious.

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While women’s participation in football and media support for the game is at its highest, we must ‘cheer with reserve’ a different reality for the majority of women footballers. The picture presented in the media is positive. We see stories of Manchester City’s wealth, Chelsea’s investment, symbolic statements in name changes from ‘ladies’ to ‘women’ and England Lionesses’ success. We are frequently reminded that women’s football is the fastest growing team sport in England. The ban on women It would be interesting to know where women’s football would be if the FA had not banned women from playing on affiliated grounds in 1921. That ban followed a war-time boom in the popularity of women’s football, when matches drew large crowds. Perhaps the best-known team, Dick Kerr Ladies, has become legendary, its popularity indicative of the huge demand for women’s football at the time. Dick Kerr organised the first official women’s match on Christmas Day 1917. By Boxing Day 1920, the team, formed predominately of female munitions workers from Preston, played St Helens at Goodison Park, home to Everton FC. A reputed 53,000 fans attended the match, with several thousand more outside the ground.

The FA ban was instituted less than a year later, on 5 December 1921. It remained in place for 50 years, until 29 November 1971. Academic experts claim that the ban on women’s football was directly connected to its rising popularity, and thus its assumed threat to the men’s game. Looking at the facts, it is hard to disagree.

Modern developments in women’s football have been both rapid and radical. In addition to moving the season from summer to winter last year, to coincide with the men’s Premier League, the FA has completed a major restructure of the league pyramid. This year, Manchester United – the only Premiership club without a women’s side – announced they would be launching a professional women’s team. The move was highly coveted, and celebrated, by the FA to mobilise and support women’s football. That Manchester United Women could effectively buy their way into the

Women’s Championship prompted mixed responses in the football community, as smaller established teams struggled to cover fees. Yet the addition of United has certainly enhanced the reputation of the game.

Another cause for celebration, alongside professionalisation, is vastly improved match-day attendances. The remit of the professionalisation drive was to increase both participation and support, both of which have been achieved as the FA continues to focus on quantitative rather than qualitative change. Glossy images generate a perception of development and steadily increasing equity. Material changes seem to underpin this picture – for example, the FA improving the annual central contract for senior England women players from to £16,000 to £25,000 in five years has undoubtedly provided financial stability for select individuals. A fuller picture of Women’s Super League (WSL) players’ working conditions, however, reveals stark inequalities persist. Players’ conditions I have interviewed players in all clubs in the WSL – recently renamed following several restructures. The rebranding and restructure provided opportunity for all clubs’ players to become

70 RED PEPPER Autumn 2018