Women’s football: a brief history and why it matters now

TL;DR: The recent rise in women’s football is a rise in visibility, not a beginning. This article looks at what came before mainstream coverage: early crowds, the FA’s effective ban on access, and the ways women continued to play outside official structures. The game didn’t appear overnight, it endured. And that history still shapes today’s opportunities, pressures, and inequalities.

Despite the fact that women’s football seems to have exploded onto the sporting landscape in the past few years, the game has, in fact, been around for over a century.

It’s easy to assume that women’s football is new. After all, UK broadcasters have only shown it consistently for the last five or six years.

Why women’s football feels new

Although the BBC broadcast some games from the FIFA Women’s World Cup from 1999 onwards, it didn’t show the entire tournament until 2015. Full terrestrial coverage the UEFA Women’s Euros didn’t occur until 2022. 

Even when England hosted the 2005 UEFA Women’s Euros, terrestrial broadcasters limited coverage to England matches and the final, whilst Eurosport showed the full tournament on the satellite television.

Over the last 10 years, terrestrial viewing figures of major tournaments  in the UK have skyrocketed, reaching a 17.4 million peak for the 2022 Euros final. 

Attendances for England games, particularly at Wembley, have remained consistently high since 2019. In November 2019, the Lionesses attracted a record crowd of 77 768. The 2022 Euros final smashed that attendance record (87,192). Earlier still, the Olympics also brought huge crowds to Wembley in 2012.

This is the women’s football landscape we see now.

Visibility isn’t the same as a beginning

And “see” is the key word here. As coverage increased, audiences grew.

But visibility doesn’t equal existence. And mainstream coverage certainly doesn’t equal the beginning. For that, we need to go back. Way back. Back into time.

Before the cameras arrived

The truth is, women’s football isn’t new, it was hidden.

Actually, women have actually played football for as long as men. The first recorded men’s international was in 1872. The first recorded international women’s football match was in 1881, only nine years later. A team of Victorian women drew crowds of 10,000 spectators as they travelled around the British Isles. Wartime women’s factory teams regularly drew crowds in the tens of thousands and the Dick, Kerr Ladies, alongside St Helens Ladies, drew a crowd of 53,000 to the iconic Goodison Park Stadium in 1920.

In 1921, women’s football was attracting crowds on a scale comparable to the men’s game.

The ban that denied access

And then The FA effectively banned women from playing. They didn’t actually ban women from playing in England, it wasn’t illegal to play (like it was for a period in Brazil). But they effectively banned them by stopping them from using FA pitches, referees, and facilities. This made it difficult for teams to find anywhere for matches because The FA controlled most pitches.

The message was: women shouldn’t play football.

This didn’t stop women. And it didn’t stop the men who helped organise the sport. It meant women’s football played outside of official structures, in the shadows, and with no organisational support.

Women’s football didn’t falter because of a lack of interest or ability, it declined because women were denied access.

Playing without Permission

The ban spread across Europe and the world. Women everywhere were told football was a sport for men.

Women continued to play. The Dick, Kerr Ladies were lucky: they had their own pitch and continued to play as normal. In France, the Dick, Kerr Ladies’ equivalent team, Fémina Sport also had their own pitch, so carried on.

The teams with pitches to play on thrived. Those without had to rely on the kindness of people outside The FA’s boundaries — rugby clubs, landowners, public parks, scraps of land. In Belgium, an international match was even played inside a velodrome.

The ban may have pushed women to the outskirts of football, but the game remained the same.

Young women across the world started their own teams — although most didn’t last long in the face of prejudice. 

The unofficial tournaments that proved demand for women’s football

Unwilling to wait for permission from the English FA, Harry Batt organised an unofficial England team.

In 1969, he took them to Italy to play in an unofficial European Championships — a precursor to the UEFA Women’s Euros.  Italy, France, and Denmark also took part. Wary of upsetting the FA before the ban had been lifted, the Women’s Football Association (an independent body founded in 1969 to organise women’s football and push for official recognition) declined the invitation.

In 1970, the same Italian organisers staged the Coppa del Mondo — an unofficial World Cup. Batt’s team, labelled the “British Independents”, competed alongside six other nations.

In 1971, the tournament moved to Mexico and women’s football reached dizzying heights. The Azteca stadium hosted the matches. The event mirrored the spectacle of the men’s 1970 World Cup — although without the media attention.

Batt’s team played in front of 80,000 people. The final between Mexico and Denmark was watched by 110,000 fans. This wasn’t marginal interest in women playing football; this was interest on a scale the same as when men played.

In Mexico, the players were treated as superstars. When returned to England, The FA banned them from playing for several months and barred Batt from altogether. Batt was devastated. The players felt shamed. All for playing the “beautiful game”.

What we get wrong by assuming women’s football is ‘new’

By the early 1970s, women’s football had proved — repeatedly and publicly — that interest existed. It had drawn mass crowds, crossed borders, and survived decades of exclusion. But what it still lacked was permission.

The decades that followed would see women’s football slowly pulled back under official control: recognised but constrained in new ways. Progress would come, but slowly and unevenly.

When women’s football is described as having “suddenly appeared”, it’s usually a comment on visibility, not reality. The game didn’t emerge overnight, it endured for decades without support, recognition, or protection. Hidden in the shadows.

Understanding that history matters because the challenges facing women’s football today aren’t new. They are the legacy of a game that was forced to survive without permission or support.

Progress, then, is not simply about increasing numbers (players and spectators). It’s about recognising what already existed and deciding what kind of future we’re going to build from it.

Present: Growth isn’t the same as progress in women’s football