The History of Women's Football

A complete history of womens football, from its Victorian games beginning in 1881, to the plans for England to host the Euro Finals in England 2022, this book demonstrates how womens football began as a professional sport, and has only recently returned to these professional roots in the UK. This is because there was a fifty-year Football Association ban on women playing on pitches affiliated to the governing body in England. The other British associations followed suit. Why was womens football banned in 1921? Why did it take until 1969 for a Womens Football Association to form? Why did it take until 1995 for England to qualify for a Womens World Cup? Answers to these key questions are supplemented across the chapters by personal accounts of the players who defied the ban, at home and abroad, along with the personal costs, and rewards, of being footballing pioneers.