The fastest growing sport? women's football in England

Abstract

Britain pioneered the first phase of football's popularity among women during, and shortly after, the First World War. The English Football Association found this threat to the idea of football as a game for men sufficiently serious to ban women's football in 1921. Shortly after the ban was lifted, over five decades later, the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 was drafted with the intention of exempting professional football from advances in female equality. The relevant clause that limits women's access to competitive football continues to survive and equality of opportunity continues to be contested at all levels of the game. Nevertheless, women express several kinds of freedom when they participate in football, in spite of the traditional stereotypical media slur of women players as either ‘butch ’or ‘girly’. This contentious connection means that in the foreseeable future women's football in England will continue to be about much more than the game itself.