Soccer

Remarkably, women’s football has been around since the inception of the sport in the late 19th century, and there is evidence of female involvement in all the forerunners of the game as well as medieval football. Although not as popular with spectators today, it was actually extremely popular during World War I, with women’s industry teams like Dick, Kerr’s Ladies from Preston, who also played the first international game with a team from Paris.

The sport was practically ended with the Football Association’s decision to ban women’s football in 1921 due to supposed bad taste. However, it was eventually revived following the formation of the English Women’s FA in 1969 and the lifting of the ban in 1971. On a global level too, the game expanded and, by 1992, Japan was home to the first semi-professional women’s league (the L. League). Today, there are major international competitions, most notably the Women’s World Cup and the European Championships. Furthermore, in the UK, statistics showed well over 100,000 registered women’s footballers at the end of 2005. This was almost a ten-fold increase from the 11,2000 registered in 1993, attesting both to the popularity of women’s football in itself and the cross-gender appeal of the sport generally.