Women have been playing football for as long as men yet they are nowhere near as equal to each other.
There is a unique story to the history of women’s football which is unknown to a lot of people, which gives a glimpse into why women’s football seems so far behind the men’s game.
The Current State Of Women’s Football
In recent years, especially since the 2019 Women’s World Cup it is not unusual to see some women’s fixtures bringing in large numbers of fans, not too dissimilar to numbers men’s matches see week in week out.
The 2019/20 WSL season has seen the record attendance for women’s football beaten twice, whilst England’s Lionesses have also been breaking their own records of spectators.
Currently the biggest attendance for a WSL league game is 38,262, which was set when Tottenham Hotspur Women faced Arsenal Women at the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, in November 2019.
Earlier that month England’s Lionesses had just broken their own record for the highest attendance of a Lionesses’ home fixture, with 77,768 people watching them play Germany at Wembley.
Although teams are not getting these numbers of spectators for each and every game, the number of people turning up to matches is increasing, with the average attendance for a WSL match this season being just over 4,000.
This season alone there has been an average increase of 425 people per club, this is helping the women’s game to continue to grow further.
Closer to home in East London, this season West Ham Women have also enjoyed a rise in spectators with 24,790 fans watching them take on Spurs Women at The London Stadium.
This follows on from West Ham finding themselves in the limelight at the end of last season where they made it to the FA Cup Final.
An impressive crowd of 43,264 fans made it to Wembley, to see them take on Manchester City, which ultimately saw The Hammers defeated 3-0.
Another remarkable fact coming from East London is from Millwall Lionesses.
In the 1980’s Millwall Lionesses, now the London City Lionesses, were the first women’s team to join forces with their men’s side and become affiliated with them.
A Flourishing Sport
All of these numbers and statistics surrounding the women’s game sound amazing when you look at the growth of the fans and people interested in women’s football over the past few years, but if you look further back through history these numbers become somewhat disappointing in a way.
Dick Kerr Ladies F.C are one of the pioneering teams within women’s football and where one of the most successful teams during the 1910’s.
Playing their first games in 1917 they were easily attracting spectator numbers for each match anywhere between 4,000 to 50,000, with their first match taking place on Christmas Day 1917 in front of 10,000 people.
To put the popularity of women’s football back then into perspective, their lowest attendances were the same as the weekly average that WSL matches now reach and sometimes peak at.
Based in Preston where women’s football seemed to be thriving, Dick Kerr Ladies were one of a number of teams made up from the women working in the factories in the North of England.
Boxing Day 1920 was when the team played in front of their biggest crowd where they drew in 53,000 people to watch the match. Fixtures like this were trumping the numbers which had been attending men’s games.
Before the influx of teams in the North of the country, Crouch End in North London was host to the first official women’s football match, between the British Ladies Football Club who split themselves into North and South teams.
Considering at this point in time there was no established fan base for the women’s game; over 10,000 people turned up to watch.
This trend in large numbers of people flocking to women’s matches continued for many years as the figures surrounding Dick Kerr Ladies matches prove.
Dick Kerr Ladies FC playing against Ellesmere Port Cement Works Team in 1921 before the FA’s ban was implemented:
A point sometimes made around these figures is that between 1914 and 1918 men were off fighting in World War One, so there was fewer men’s matches taking place so the only option to watch football was to watch the women’s game.
This may have been the case but the figures of high attendance numbers continued into the 1920’s as the Boxing Day match proved, after the war was over.
With numbers of this magnitude it is hard to work out how a sport which was flourishing so much ended up being banned.
The Ban
Despite women’s football continuing to grow and accumulate an impressive fan base, the FA did not seem to be on board with the rest of the country in enjoying it.
In 1921 the FA banned women playing football matches at grounds which were members of the football association, this was a ban which would be set in place for half a decade until it was finally lifted in 1971.
‘Distasteful and unsuitable for them [women] to play’ was the reasoning from the FA, this is how they viewed the women’s game to be.
Although the FA put this ban in place as a response to the health of these women, believing that football was ‘too much for a women’s physical frame’, many sources believe that the FA did not want women’s football to overtake the men’s game and become more popular indefinitely.
The ban was a massive blow for women’s football and completely changed the trajectory in which it was heading. Looking at the popularity it had gained since the first ever official match, one can only imagine the heights it would have already reached if it’s progression hadn’t been halted for 50 years.
In 1969 the Women’s Football Association was formed with the hope to oragnise the women’s game, but it was a further two until the FA lifted the ban.
Once the ban was lifted it was recommended that the national associations should take control of the women’s game in their individual countries, so women’s football was no longer under the control of the FA.
This ignited the revival of women’s football and the first women’s FA Cup Final was held in the same year.
Since the ban was dismissed England’s Lionesses have competed in five of the eight official FIFA Women’s World Cups.
Despite never winning the tournament, women’s football in England has progressed so far that even just competing in these tournaments is something their predecessors could have only ever dreamt of.
Looking To The Future
Nowadays the thought of banning anyone from playing sport is unimaginable.
Undoubtedly women’s football could have been in a much better place than it is currently without the ban but it has managed to build itself back, and now more and more people are starting to see the potential of where the sport can be once again.
In London alone there are four FAWSL clubs and four FA Women’s Championship teams too. As the game continues to grow at the rate in which it is, fans and players alike are hoping that they can experience the same ‘golden era’ in which the trailblazers of women’s football once did.
