Is 2019 the year of women’s football?

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12th Jun 2019

Were Lily Parr alive today, certain strands of the media might have dubbed her a “girl boss”. Six feet tall and built like a tank, she smoked Woodbines, drank liquor, and worked in a munitions factory during the first World War, later retraining as a nurse. Remarkably for a woman living 100 years ago, she made no secret of her relationship with her female partner, Mary. She was also a fabulous football player.

In a career that spanned 32 years, Parr scored around 1,000 goals, according to her official biographer, Gail Newsham, whose 1994 book In A League Of Their Own details the dazzling exploits of Parr’s football team, the Dick, Kerr Ladies. Parr joined the team in 1920, having been poached from St Helens Ladies as a teenager. The Dick, Kerr Ladies had recently formed at a Lancashire munitions factory of the same name, with the aim of raising money for wounded soldiers who were being treated at a local hospital. Parr, a left-winger, made an instant impact, scoring 43 goals in her first season alone. Later, she broke the arm of one professional Football League goalkeeper with a shot from the edge of the area.

The Dick, Kerr Ladies regularly drew crowds of thousands at their games. On Boxing Day 1920, they peaked, with more than 53,000 supporters at Everton’s Goodison Park (and a further estimated 14,000 queueing outside, unable to get in). They raised thousands of pounds for the soldiers at the Western Front in the process – but just months later, the FA effectively killed the women’s game in the UK. Spooked by the success of the women’s football league, and claiming that they had received complaints, it banned women from playing on FA-affiliated pitches. Minutes from the meeting read: “The Council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.”

One wonders where England’s Lionesses might be today had the FA not made that call in 1921. It says a lot about this current crop of players that they go into the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which takes place between June 7 and July 7, in France, as third in the world rankings, behind Germany and current World Cup holders USA. As Alex Scott, a former Arsenal and England international, now a BBC pundit, tells Vogue, when asked if the Lionesses had a shot at glory this summer: “Absolutely, yes! The team we have, the mixture of experience and freshness, youth and energy – we have a really, really good chance.”

Whether or not the Lionesses win in France, 2019 will surely go down as a monumental year in women’s football. In March, Barclay’s unveiled a multimillion-pound sponsorship deal for the newly professional Women’s Super League – a record for women’s sport in the UK. In the same month, Adidas revealed that all of its athletes on the winning Women’s World Cup team will receive the same performance bonus pay-outs as their male counterparts. FIFA estimates it is on track to sell over one million tickets to the tournament, and television viewer figures are projected to reach one billion – which would be a record.

At Nike, which has sponsored a record 14 teams in the tournament, the focus on women’s sport is particularly sharp: in addition to an adrenaline-soaked women’s football advert, with the tagline: “Don’t change your dream, change the world” (current YouTube viewership: 732, 000), the company is significant investment in grass-roots football.

“There is incredible momentum in women’s sports right now,” Amy Montagne, Nike’s VP, GM of Global Categories, tells Vogue over the phone from Paris. “We are committed to using our brand as a catalyst to support and inspire the next generation. In the Dream Further campaign, we are invested in this idea that you need to see it, to be it. We have a responsibility to elevate and celebrate athletes at the elite levels, but in the last year we have also activated over 100,000 female coaches across the world.”

This is also the first year in which Nike’s kits have been entirely redesigned for the women’s teams, rather than merely adapting the men’s strip. Advancements have also been made in sports bra technology. “We flew athletes to our sports research lab in Portland and took their exact body specifications so they are fit to their bodies – right down to the stitch,” reports Montagne. “In the past, insights from male athletes indicate that they like the superhero fit, very close to the skin. We found that female athletes like the fit a little looser, to help them move, and to accommodate for the interaction of a sports bra.” There’s also the aesthetic element. “Each kit has an amazing story that connects to the roots of these teams. That’s important: we are interacting with our creative community through the cultural lens of football.” The England kit, for instance, dubbed “red crush”, is imprinted with a graphic floral pattern.

It’s not all rosy. The defending champions, USA, are suing their employer, the US Soccer Federation, on the grounds of gender discrimination. The Australian players’ union, among others, is campaigning for FIFA to close the prize money gap, which currently stands at a difference of £291m (AU$532,234,801) compared with the 2018 men’s World Cup. FIFA claims that the prize money has doubled since the last women’s tournament, to £23.4m (AU$42,800,940) – but when £315m (AU$576,166,500) was given to teams who merely participated in the 2018 men’s tournament, the inequality is stark. Furthermore, the world’s best player, Norway’s Ada Hegerberg, who won the inaugural Ballon d’Or Femenin in December 2018 (you may remember DJ present Martin Solveig, marring the occasion by asking Hegerberg if she knew “how to twerk” in celebration) is boycotting the tournament in protest at the amateurish set-up promoted by the Norwegian Football Federation.

But Alex Scott insists 2019 could still be a seminal moment for the women’s game. “Moving the dial is about visibility, and that’s what’s happening now. We need to get more bums on seats, higher viewing numbers, more people interested in the game. We’ll see that with the World Cup this summer – that’s when we can start pushing the game. We should be celebrating but at the same time, asking for more, pushing the game forward.”

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This article originally appeared on Vogue.co.uk.