Professionalism in women's association football
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Sam_Kerr%2C_29_February_2020_%2802%29_%28cropped%29.jpg/220px-Sam_Kerr%2C_29_February_2020_%2802%29_%28cropped%29.jpg)
Like men's association football, women's football had amateur origins, but faced bans in several nations that slowed its growth and professionalization compared to professionalism in the men's sport. Growth in the women's league game intensified since the end of the 20th century alongside the profile of the FIFA Women's World Cup introduced in 1991.[3]
History
Early fundraising successes
Dick, Kerr Ladies F.C., an early women's football club in Preston, Lancashire, England, were closely associated with charitable causes during World War I and the interwar period.[4] As demand for coal dropped after the war, coal-mining communities in England faced disputes with increasingly privatized mining companies that led to miners organizing their labour. During a wage dispute between miners and mine owners, the owners locked miners out in Wigan and Leigh on 1 April 1921, and the charitable success of Dick, Kerr Ladies inspired the formation of women's football clubs that began playing matches in May 1921 to raise funds for distress relief. This included matches to fund soup kitchens for locked-out miners, leading to some of these matches being named "pea soup" matches. Fundraising games for distress funds continued after the end of the miners' dispute in June 1921.[5][6]
Despite being more popular than some men's football events — one match saw a 53,000 strong crowd[7] — The Football Association (The FA) prohibited women's football from association members' pitches in December 1921, with the FA stating that "the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged"[8] and citing in part complaints about "the appropriation of the receipts to other than charitable objects" in its rationale.[9][10][11]
Players and football writers have argued that this ban was due to envy of the large crowds that women's matches attracted,[12] and because the FA had no control over the money made from the women's game.[11] Dick, Kerr Ladies player Alice Barlow said, "we could only put it down to jealousy. We were more popular than the men and our bigger gates were for charity".[12]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Irene_Gonz%C3%A1lez%2C_en_una_de_las_pocas_im%C3%A1genes_que_se_conservan_de_ella.jpg/220px-Irene_Gonz%C3%A1lez%2C_en_una_de_las_pocas_im%C3%A1genes_que_se_conservan_de_ella.jpg)
In 1925, Spanish footballer Irene González of A Coruña founded her own club and charged money to play matches during tours of Galicia and in tournaments that she organized. While González was the only woman on her team, she has been credited as the first woman to professionally play football.[13]
Era of bans
The FA's ban, which lasted from 1921 to around 1971, inspired or coincided with other bans of women's football in Europe over a similar span, some of which did not end until UEFA required European national associations to incorporate the women's sport.[14] Bans sometimes also coincided with political change, such as bans in Francoist Spain beginning in 1936[15] and ending after the Spanish transition to democracy in the late 1970s.[16]
Bans were not limited to Europe, with nations under the British Empire, including Australia[17] and Canada,[18] following the FA's ban, and nations such as Brazil[19] and Nigeria[20] also banning the sport for decades during the 20th century.
Simon Kuper and economist Stefan Szymanski, authors of Soccernomics, have argued women's football wasn't just "some potential untapped market, but a business sector that was regularly selling tens of thousands of match tickets. These revenues would surely have grown over time, as men's revenues did."[21] Even after bans were lifted, investment in women's football was reduced to levels relatively lower than before them.[22] Such factors have contributed to the relatively slow professionalization of the sport, with full professionalization coming to England's Women's Super League in 2018,[23] more than 110 years after the men's game initially professionalized.[24][25]
Post-ban era
Most bans of the sport were lifted by the 1970s. During the 1970s, Italy became the first country to have professional women's football players on a part-time basis. Italy was also the first country to import foreign footballers from other European countries, which raised the profile of the league. Players during that era included Susanne Augustesen (Denmark), Rose Reilly and Edna Neillis (Scotland), Anne O'Brien (Ireland) and Concepcion Sánchez Freire (Spain).[26]
In 1970, the Torino-based Federation of Independent European Female Football (FIEFF) ran the 1970 Women's World Cup in Italy without the involvement of FIFA.[27] In the finals of the 1971 Women's World Cup, hosted by Mexico and played at Estadio Azteca in front of an estimated 110,000 or 112,500 attendees, the Mexican team protested their lack of pay in the face of the tournament's profits from ticket sales, television revenues, and merchandising, and threatened to boycott the match. After the 1971 cup, FIFA forbade the Mexican Football Federation from organizing further women's tournaments.[28][29] In 1975, Jamaican forward Beverly Ranger received enough sponsorship while playing in Germany to make a living off the sport, a first for a woman in Germany.[30]
The first professional league for women's football would not start until Sweden's semi-professional Damallsvenskan in 1988, three years prior to the first FIFA-sanctioned Women's World Cup.[31][32] The first fully professional league, the United States' Women's United Soccer Association, launched in 2001 after the United States women's national soccer team's victory over China in the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup raised unprecedented levels of interest in the sport.[33][34]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Macarena_Sanchez_Jeanney_-_Jugadora_de_F%C3%BAtbol.jpg/150px-Macarena_Sanchez_Jeanney_-_Jugadora_de_F%C3%BAtbol.jpg)
Labor disputes
Professionalization of women's football has at times been the subject of organized labor action or legal intervention. For example, Argentinian player-activist Macarena Sánchez led efforts to professionalize the nation's club league Primera División A, but was released by her team UAI Urquiza in January 2019 under terms that prevented her from signing with a new team. She in turn sued UAI Urquiza and the Argentine Football Association (AFA), alleging discrimination where professional women's players were wrongly treated as amateurs.[35][36] The AFA announced in March that it had agreed with the footballers' union Futbolistas Argentinos Agremiados to support professionalizing the women's league.[37] Three months after her lawsuit, Sánchez was one of fifteen players who joined San Lorenzo on a professional contract, a historic first for Argentine women's football.[36]
Negotiations, and in some cases strikes, led to collective bargaining agreements between players and clubs toward professionalization in several nations, including Australia[38] and Spain,[39] and also among women's football referees in the United States[40] and Spain.[41] In some nations, legal reforms also helped facilitate professionalization, such as in Chile,[42] Denmark,[43][44][45] Italy,[46][47] and Spain.[48][49]
Timeline by nation
This table details the year in which professionalism was systematically introduced to women's football, by nation. Some nations might have had individual professional women's footballers before these dates but lacked professionalization organized at the club level or higher.
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (May 2023) |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg/23px-Flag_of_Italy.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/22px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Flag_of_Sweden.svg/23px-Flag_of_Sweden.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg/23px-Flag_of_Germany.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Flag_of_Nigeria.svg/23px-Flag_of_Nigeria.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Flag_of_Denmark.svg/20px-Flag_of_Denmark.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/be/Flag_of_England.svg/23px-Flag_of_England.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9e/Flag_of_Japan.svg/23px-Flag_of_Japan.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Flag_of_Australia_%28converted%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Australia_%28converted%29.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/23px-Flag_of_France.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Flag_of_South_Africa.svg/23px-Flag_of_South_Africa.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/23px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_India.svg/23px-Flag_of_India.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Flag_of_Mexico.svg/23px-Flag_of_Mexico.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Flag_of_Argentina.svg/23px-Flag_of_Argentina.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Flag_of_Costa_Rica.svg/23px-Flag_of_Costa_Rica.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Flag_of_Greece.svg/23px-Flag_of_Greece.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Flag_of_Chile.svg/23px-Flag_of_Chile.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Flag_of_Scotland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Scotland.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Flag_of_Ireland.svg/23px-Flag_of_Ireland.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Flag_of_Wales.svg/23px-Flag_of_Wales.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg/23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png)
Glossary:
- Professionalized
- Clubs, leagues, or legal reforms introduce professional contracts for players.
- Semi-professional
- Players are financially compensated for play, but are employed only part-time.
- Professional
- At least some players in a club or league are financially compensated, full-time footballers.
- Fully professional
- All players in a club or league are full-time professional footballers.
See also
- List of most expensive women's association football transfers
- Labour relations in women's association football
References
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The FA and the political establishment were not blind to the growing popularity and success of women's football. The huge sums of money being raised were outside their jurisdiction and control. Worse still, that money was no longer being raised to support the war wounded but was being channelled into political and working-class causes – causes antithetical to the establishment.
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- ^ Bardow, Dominik (13 July 2011). "Fußballerin Beverly Ranger "Schau dir das Negerlein an"". Der Tagesspiegel (in German). Retrieved 26 March 2013.
- ^ "Damallsvenskan – Swedish Women's Soccer League". 13 April 2015. Archived from the original on 14 July 2022. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
- ^ Lichtenstein, Hannah (12 April 2019). "The history of the Damallsvenskan, and the challenges ahead for Sweden". The Equalizer. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
- ^ Pel, Jenna (18 March 2011). "For W.P.S. Franchise: New Home, New Name, Same Team?". Goal. The New York Times. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ Miller, Gretchen; Scheyer, Jonathan; Sherrard, Emily; Malliris, Christina (13 December 2009). The Aftermath of the 1999 Success. Soccer Politics: The Politics of Football (Report). Duke University. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
- ^ Elsey, Brenda (20 May 2019). "World Cup return adds momentum to Argentina's women's movement". The Equalizer.
- ^ a b Navas, Francisco (12 April 2019). "First professional women's football contracts signed in Argentina". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 April 2019.
- ^ "La conquista del fútbol femenino: consiguió la profesionalización" [The conquest of women's football: it achieved professionalization]. infobae (in Spanish). 19 March 2019. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
- ^ "Australia's women soccer players to get same base pay as men". Reuters. 6 June 2019. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
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- ^ Yang, Steph (29 September 2021). "What it's like to be an NWSL referee: Low pay, little support and constant criticism". The Athletic. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
- ^ a b "Liga F: Spain's women's professional league begins after referee strike resolved". BBC Sport. 15 September 2022. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ a b Fernandez, Daniela Carreño; Rakwal, Randeep (9 March 2023). "Sport and democracy: Looking at women's soccer in Chile". sportanddev. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
- ^ a b "Kontraktfodboldudvalget; Stillinger Dame DM; Danmarksserien for damer 1997". DBU Årsberetning 1997 (in Danish). Dansk Boldspil-Union. January 1998. pp. 37, 76–77.
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- ^ a b Giuffrida, Angela (27 April 2022). "Footballers in Italian women's top division finally turn professional". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
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- ^ Almeida, Caroline Soares de (26 July 2014). "O Clube da Rua Mascarenhas de Morais: Memórias do Futebol de Mulheres em Copacabana" [The Club of Mascarenhas de Morais Street: Memories of Women's Football in Copacabana]. Ponto Urbe (14). doi:10.4000/pontourbe.1433. ISSN 1981-3341.
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No Santos, o corte foi de 70% nos salários de todos no clube que recebem mais de R$6 mil, algo que atinge uma pequena parcela do elenco feminino. A maioria tem vencimentos concentrados abaixo desse valor e, portanto, não foi afetada.
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In L2, new teams caused a major stir. INAC Kobe Leonessa (Hyogo Prefecture), which had only just joined the league in 2005, was the runaway champions with a record of 16 wins, one draw and one defeat out of 18 games. Amassing 87 points and conceding only 16 goals, it won promotion to the topflight L1 in its first year. The team was inspired by the Brazilian international player Pretinha, who had signed a professional contract, and Miwa Yonetsu, who was selected as the L2 MVP for that season.
- ^ Grainey, Tim (14 April 2023). "A-League Women: End of regular season perspective and future of the league". The Equalizer. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ "'A significant step forward': A-League Women to expand by two teams". The Guardian. 28 June 2022. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ "Foot féminin, la lueur d'un statut professionnel" [Women's football, the glimmer of professional status]. FootAmat (in French). 12 March 2009. Archived from the original on 14 March 2009. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ Thomas, Camille (15 April 2023). "The French professional women's football league is coming!". Beyond90. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ Sibembe, Yanga (11 September 2022). "Time is now for SA women's soccer – league should be professional, with proper financial backing and pay for players". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
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- ^ Garcia, Adriana (21 March 2021). "Spanish government makes women's football professional, sorry for 'injustice'". ESPN. Retrieved 10 May 2022.
- ^ Xiaochen, Sun (8 April 2015). "Chinese Women's Super League launched to promote women's soccer". China Daily. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ Ruszkai, Ameé (16 August 2021). "Oshoala, Banda, huge salaries and record-fees: Inside the Chinese Women's Super League". Goal. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ "Indian Women's League". Times of India. Press Trust of India. 24 January 2017. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ Mancera, Diego (20 November 2017). "Pachuca vence 2-0 a las Chivas en la final de ida del fútbol femenino de México" [Pachuca beats Chivas 2-0 in the first leg of Mexico's women's soccer]. El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ "Con 18 equipos presentan la Liga Mexicana de Futbol Femenil" [With 18 teams they present the Mexican Women's Soccer League]. Mediotiempo. 19 September 2007. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
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- ^ "Se firmó el acuerdo para que el fútbol femenino sea profesional en Argentina" [The agreement was signed for women's football to be professional in Argentina]. infobae (in Spanish). 16 March 2019. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ Martin, Fanny Tayver (11 October 2019). "Shirley Cruz marca un antes y un después: en Alajuelense Codea todas tendrán contrato profesional" [Shirley Cruz marks a before and after: in Alajuelense Codea all will have a professional contract]. La Nación (in Spanish). Retrieved 8 June 2023.
- ^ Kujawa, Taylor (4 August 2021). "Aris FC to develop Greece's first professional women's football club". Her Football Hub. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
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- ^ Miller, Max (26 April 2023). "How the League of Ireland has scored growth in women's football". Broadcast. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ Feringa, Megan (9 February 2023). "Wrexham to become first semi-pro club in Welsh women's football pyramid in bid to become best team in Wales". WalesOnline. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
- ^ Dichter, Myles (26 April 2023). "Toronto named 3rd franchise in Canadian women's pro soccer league set to start in 2025". CBC. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
Further reading
- Elsey, Brenda; Nadel, Joshua (21 May 2019). Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America. University of Texas Press. doi:10.7560/310427-011. ISBN 978-1-477-31042-7.
- Williams, Jean (2019). "Women's Football, Europe and Professionalization 1971-2011" (PDF). International Centre for Sports History and Culture, De Montfort University – via UEFA Academy.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - Ando, Kozue; Sato, Takahiro; Richardson, Emma V.; Tomura, Takafumi; Furuta, Yu; Kasahara, Haruka; Nishijima, Takahiko (2022-10-01). "Japanese Female Professional Soccer Players' Views on Second Career Development". Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal. 30 (2): 151–160. doi:10.1123/wspaj.2022-0005. ISSN 1063-6161. S2CID 252030879.
- Knijnik, Jorge; Costa, Ana, eds. (2022). Women's Football in Latin America. New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07976-4. ISBN 978-3-031-07975-7.
- Culvin, Alex; Bowes, Ali, eds. (9 March 2023). Women's Football in a Global, Professional Era. Emerald Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-80071-053-5.
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