Since the inaugural season of the Women’s Super League in 2010, it may seem as if the push for more eyes on women’s football in England has come out of nowhere. This section of the sport has seen a meteoric rise in popularity and success in the 14 years of the WSL which has thus far culminated in the English Lionesses being crowned Champions of Europe at Euro 2022 in front of over 87,000 people at Wembley Stadium, in London.
This, however, is not a sport in its infancy. To provide some background to the history of women’s football in England we must look back on the First World War. Men were conscripted and men’s football was suspended during the war, this created a situation where a woman’s place in society rapidly changed, becoming a core element of the workforce to help in the war effort. Women were encouraged to engage in sports to support physical health and build morale in their units which led them to the beautiful game, women began playing football and formed their teams often named after the factories where they were now working; the most famous of these being Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FC.
This became incredibly popular in England with women’s football raising the equivalent of millions of pounds in the 21st century for charitable causes through their games; Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FC played 828 games between 1917 and 1965. The most famous of these games was when they beat St. Helen’s Ladies 4-0 on Boxing Day in 1920 in front of 53,000 people at Everton’s Goodison Park. This game raised the equivalent of £135,000. Still, it unsettled the FA as the attendance for this game exceeded the 1920 FA Cup final which only managed 50,000 in attendance.
Panicked about the legitimacy of the men’s games and afraid this sort of popularity may help campaigns for suffrage the FA engaged in a moral panic around “diminishing femininity” and banned women from playing at FA-affiliated grounds. This effectively disbanded most women’s clubs and the attempts to organise women’s football at the amateur level were restricted financially and drew limited crowds. In a BBC interview in 2005 Dick, Kerr’s player Alice Barlow recounted how women players disputed these rulings, explaining that “we could only put it down to jealousy. We were more popular than the men and our bigger gates were for charity”.
This was the early 20th Century though, now with professionalism surely women are given the correct platforms within professional football clubs that have vast resources due to the game’s commercialisation. Unfortunately not the case with various stories recently of women’s football teams being sacrificed due to the mismanagement of businessmen or the mediocrity of men’s outfits.
Blackburn Rovers
Blackburn Rovers women came sixth in the Women’s Championship during the 2023/2024 campaign, owned by Venkys who have brought Blackburn Rovers men’s team from the Premier League to League One and are currently struggling in the Championship themselves; the owners have decided to pay their women’s football team the national minimum wage of £11.44 an hour on 16 hour contracts which would not include time spent on away games or overnight stays.
This decision comes as Venky’s conglomerate V H Group holds a reported net worth of £1.56 billion, showing exactly the attitude shown toward women’s football from capitalists involved in football in 2024 that they will only spare a part-time contract 21-year-olds are getting in the retail sector all while the men’s teams are not receiving the same treatment for their poor form.
Blackburn Rovers forward Lauren Thomas
Blackburn Rovers women have produced talents such as Bayern Munich midfielder Georgia Stanaway and Barcelona maestro Keira Walsh proving there is talent within the North West. However, the talent in Blackburn will have to look elsewhere if they are serious about a career in the sport as has already happened with 10 players leaving Blackburn this summer following this decision
Reading FC
Taking the example set by Blackburn Rovers but turning it up to eleven, Reading’s women’s football team have withdrawn from the Women’s Championship for the 2024/2025 campaign dropping to the fifth tier of the women’s football pyramid. Centrally Reading has been in shambles, selling their training facilities to Wycombe Wanderers and facing points deductions from the EFL.
Licensing issues have affected Reading’s women, the FA have made it so that women’s football clubs can only really succeed if dependent on a central men’s club we can see this being evidenced by all 12 Women’s Super League teams being established mainly in the men’s game. This is due to financial requirements being based loosely on revenue of the men’s game meaning clubs like Reading cannot keep up as their ownership hurts the club and threatens their existence.
Reading FC and Northern Ireland winger Lauren Wade
This story is disheartening, young women and girls within the club have lost a pathway to the second tier of the women’s game and also lost their local team to support who only a few years ago competed within the WSL, not exactly something that would happen to Reading’s men who have been allowed to play in League One again next season.
Manchester United
Manchester United’s women’s football team who only reformed in 2018, are current holders of the FA Cup and have an immensely talented squad who in 2022/2023 were runners-up in the Women’s Super League. They are not in the precarious position of the previous clubs mentioned. However, a similar situation of being a second thought due to ownership seeing more money being made by the men’s teams thus sacrificing the conditions of the club in favour of the men is seen here again.
Manchester United have recently been purchased in part by the INEOS group led by Sir Jim Ratcliffe has seen at best apathy at worst negligence toward the women’s football team. Last season a new £10m facility for the women and academy teams was opened at Carrington, however, it has been reported that due to a new plan to renovate the men’s facilities, they will have priority access to the purpose-built women’s and academy building whilst they occupy ‘portable buildings’ instead. Further developments in this story have seen Manchester United’s women’s team using England’s St. George’s Park which a four-hour journey away from Manchester.
This disregarding of the women’s football team is not only seen with this decision to move them out of their purpose-built facility but, also in the fact during an interview with Bloomberg, Sir Jim Ratcliffe mentioned he and his time have no details yet on the women’s team instead focusing on the “first team” which has signalled his thoughts on the women as lesser. A further example of this is the Manchester United end-of-year awards ceremony being cancelled on account of the men’s teams’ performance when the women won the domestic tournament and the youth teams also won trophies.
These decisions have been followed by an exodus of top talent from Manchester United’s women’s outfit with England goalkeeper Mary Earps leaving for PSG, forward Lucía Garcia and Captain Katie Zelem both leaving, and winger Nikita Parris also heavily linked with a move away.
Manchester United Captain Katie Zelem lifting the FA Cup
This shows that even if you have virtually unlimited resources the executives at the top do not see this sport as a game but a venture to make the largest profit possible at the cost of women’s football which is a horrible message to send to young girls that your chance to participate in the sport you love is only possible if a men’s football team is profitable. This is compounded by a Football Association that loves the PR of a successful team of Lionesses but does little to protect the existence of women’s teams within the football pyramid.
This is not limited to the top level with girls teams with Thornaby FC in North Yorkshire axing all of their girls’ youth teams leaving 100 players without a club. This was reversed, however, due to pressure from England international Beth Mead amongst others. If that did not happen no doubt the teams would not have returned.
Photo by Daniel Norin on Unsplash
