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When it comes to sport, boys ‘play like a girl’

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Girls in primary school are just as physically capable as their male classmates, our research shows.

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The New Normal: Mixed Gender Teams In Sports

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"I liked playing with girls and boys together because it showed there was no difference between us."

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"In contests involving strength, speed and reactive ability, women are nowhere near as good as men." - Rod Liddle, "So, Kuper baited me: 'The top women can't take on the top men'. He continued by making assertions like: women are slower than men; women are weaker than men."- Jennifer Doyle (speaking with sports writer Simon Kuper), reported on her blog TheSportSpectacle, 2014 writing in The Spectator, 2012
This is the most common argument against gender integration in sports; integrated sports teams shouldn't exist because men are stronger than women.

But is that actually true? And even if it is true, does it mean that a woman shouldn't play on the same team as a man?

We accept, and expect, gender integration almost everywhere else - at work, in social spaces, and we're even coming around to the idea of non-gender specific bathrooms. Yet sports remain segregated, and it's worth examining what the social cost of that separation is.

But first, the science. A 2010 study in The Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, which examined the year-by-year improvement in world records and top 10 performances across 82 different sports since 1896 (the beginning of the modern Olympic era), found that women are not as fast, nor as strong, as men. Genetic and hormonal factors between men and women affect "height, weight, body fat, muscle mass, aerobic capacity or anaerobic threshold," the authors note.

The data that they collected and examined showed that, on average, men outperform women by a 10 percent gap. That's an average, so the differences can be more or less pronounced depending on the sport - the lowest differences are in 800-meter freestyle swimming, for example (5.5 percent), and the highest in weightlifting (36.8 percent). Women typically do best relative to men in events based around aerobic stamina, like long-distance running. Andy Lane, a sports psychologist at the University of Wolverhampton, confirmed this to me when I spoke with him. "There are physical differences between males and females, typically around strength," he explained.

That general point obscures a more interesting one, though, in that the historical data shows that, for a while, women seemed to be catching up. Over the last century, women's times have improved more than men's. This is mainly because women have increasingly had more access to the things that athletes need to better themselves - like more invitations to major events, and better equipment, training, and coaching. Social politics has influenced sports performances, going right back to when women were enfranchised in the early 20th century, through periods of increasing personal freedom and income that have made it more and more possible for women to become professional athletes.

That said, the data also shows that this constant progress slowed in more recent decades - from 1983 onwards, the gender gap stabilized, and women's records started to consistently come to roughly 90 percent of the men's records. The best men and the best women have been getting better at the same rate ever since.

Could that change? Could women start catching up with men again? After all, people used to say women were unable to handle political office. Even the slowest-converging lines eventually do merge; the truth is nobody knows for sure if that's the case here. The history of women in sports is a history of being gradually allowed access to social privileges which have made them better athletes, and there could yet be undiscovered factors at play that could make the gap smaller.

Here's how the gender gap might start closing again, if it's ever going to.

For a start, history tells us that improvements in sports science and technology are more likely to close the gap, not widen it. Right now, top-level training is becoming more and more specific, for example - not just to the sport, not just to the general gender of an athlete, but tailored to each individual person.

Lane said: "Effective training is specific. There is a great deal of individual difference and so gender is of less importance. An individualized training program is the most effective and, as such, gender differences will blur."

David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, makes a similar point - he argues that, as more and more has been discovered about the human genome, training programs can be tailored to specific types of genes related to athletic ability. "We're finding genes that make some people more trainable to particular training programs than others," he writes. "Not only genes, but actually direct physiology - whether it's properties of muscle fibers or things like that - that can help you figure out what the best training plan is for an individual."

Of course, these advances are going to aid all genders in terms of better training. But almost all major sports - particularly team sports like football, basketball, baseball, and soccer - have been historically dominated by men, and I warrant that tailored training is much more likely to help women. Scientific studies in general focus more on men as subjects instead of women, and this includes medicine, health, and sports science. Much sports research and training was specifically designed with men in mind - women should have more to gain from training specificity.

The second big advancement in the next few decades, particularly in team sports, will be augmentation - that is, using technology to physically alter and improve the human body. This is going to take many forms, and will be controversial, but some degree of it is inevitable - as will be the changes of our current ideas of what sports are.

We're going to start seeing new ways for athletes to be fed information while they're on the field or the track-think Google Glass-style data displays in contact lenses or goggles, or discreet earpieces, broadcasting everything from play formations to projections about where a ball will land. Even bio-augmentation might end up permitted, where athletes can physically upgrade their bodies, from better limbs to better brains for tactical decisions. (Doping, arguably, is already a crude form of this.) Gene editing may produce humans with every gene for athletic performance emphasized. Many of the newest sports -  like e-sports  - don't require any physicality at all, where mental strength is most important.

In this world, differences in gender end up a minor irrelevance compared to all of the other factors which will determine sporting prowess.

"When girls like football, I think it's OK. But I think that the level of women's football is too low to take it seriously." - Andrey Arshavin, professional soccer player "Women should be in the discotheque, the boutique, and the kitchen, but not in football." - Ron Atkinson, former soccer player and manager

This all assumes something else, of course - that physical attributes are the most important thing when it comes to sports. Yet for team sports, that's just not true.

It's certainly not just strength and speed that make a good player, and it doesn't necessarily follow that team sports should be segregated, even now, because of those specific attributes. There are variations of speed and strength among male players in all team sports; there are positions where strength is much less important; and others where speed is not so integral. If it was all about physicality, then players would be judged and recruited around edge case statistics like the fractions of seconds to reaching a ball - in reality, those are just one of myriad such stats that coaches look at.

Sure, it helps if you can make it to that ball quicker, but other skills are equally if not more important. In soccer, say, controlling the ball, tactical understanding, off-the-ball movement, teamwork, and cooperation - these are all vital parts of the game. What's more, women are already good, yet underrated, at endurance and stamina in events that last longer than two hours, the one area where there is evidence that they actually are able to outperform men - thanks to smaller bodies radiating heat more efficiently, and more efficient conversion of body fat into energy.

It's funny, isn't it, that even though women have some advantageous biology, and are stereotypically thought of as being better than men in the key skills for team sports - think cooperation, multi-tasking - you'll never hear, "the thing is men just aren't as good at soccer, they can't play as part of a team like women can."

Social politics have hugely affected women's sporting performance over the last century - but what if sports could affect change in social politics?

All-male sports teams exist largely within a system run by men who went through the system themselves - men who end up as coaches, officials, and members of boards. It's a system that teaches men that a version of masculinity, that is both toxic and hierarchical, is among the most important traits to have. Eric Anderson, professor of sports, masculinities, and sexualities at the University of Winchester, defines this as "orthodox masculinity" in a 2008 study. He argues that it's responsible for men's team sports cultivating a culture of misogynistic and homophobic attitudes.

"It is a resilient system that reproduces a more conservative form of gender expression among men, helping make sport a more powerful gender regime," he explains. Ultimately, an athlete's own choices matter less and less, as they're encouraged to see everyone else through the lens of orthodox masculinity. More often than not, men who play to a high level in an all-male sports team also socialize mainly with their teammates, meaning that the bonds they form with people outside of that sporting universe - and especially women - are colored by the masculinity they have to live every day.

This means there is a higher chance of men having negative attitudes about women - objectifying them, for example. Anderson explains: "Male athletes (in general) and team sport athletes (in particular) have been shown to objectify women - often viewing them as sexual objects to be conquered." The statistics on campus rape in America are pretty terrifying; a three-year study by researchers Jeff Benedict and Todd Crosset in the mid-1990s showed that while male student-athletes comprise 3.3 percent of student populations in the United States., they made up 19 percent of sexual assault perpetrators and 35 percent of domestic violence perpetrators.

Integrating team sports could do a significant amount to change this. In his study, Anderson followed heterosexual male university cheerleaders, who had all previously played high school football. Before they started cheerleading almost all of them reported that they viewed the world through the prism of orthodox masculinity - they held misogynistic views, both about women as athletes, and also in a more general sense.

Overwhelmingly, the men who participated in sports with women had their minds changed. They perceived women as good athletes; strong, capable and skillful. David, one participant in Anderson's study, said: "I used to think women were weak, but now I know that's not true. I never thought women were so athletic before. I hated women's sports. But these women are athletes. They do stuff I'd never be able to do and I bet there are a lot of sports women can do better in."

Two tweets in response to news that Jen Welter had been appointed a coach for the Arizona Cardinals in July 2015, making her the NFL's first woman coach.

It didn't stop there. "All but a handful reported that they had learned to see women as more than sex objects," Anderson explains. "All the athletes reported having learned to respect and value women as friends, teammates, and competent leaders. Thus in the sex-integrated sport of collegiate cheerleading, once sexist and misogynistic men were able to witness the athleticism of women, befriend them in ways that they were previously unable to, and to learn of their gendered narratives, it humanized them in the process."

Segregation in sports, it turns out, is harmful to gender relations and society. We worry that women might twist an ankle or break a leg if they were to play mixed sports, when in fact, the consequences of segregation are much, much more costly to women.

I hope that one day Marta will play on the same team as Messi; that gender segregation in team sports will end, and humanity will be better for it.

This post is part of How We Get To Next's Read more from How We Get To Next on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, or sign up for our newsletter. Playing The Field month, looking at the future of sports throughout July 2016. If you liked this story, please click on the heart below to recommend it to your friends.

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Is Gender Segregation in Sports Necessary? - How We Get To Next

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"In contests involving strength, speed and reactive ability, women are nowhere near as good as men." - Rod Liddle, "So, Kuper baited me: 'The top women can't take on the top men'.

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A small piece of history was made last week on the hallowed pitch at Lord's Cricket Ground, as 18-year-old Rugby School pupil Maia Bouchier became the first girl to play there as a member of a school's first XI, writes Charlotte Phillips

Although Rugby lost (by 30 runs to Marlborough College) Maia, whose bowling and batting averages put her in the top three players at the school, is clearly a rising star.

She is also one of a growing number of girls whose talents are being harnessed in mixed sports teams. Take Alleyn's School in Dulwich, south London, which has been celebrating the achievements of its Under 12 cricketers. The combined talents of the team's boys and girls resulted in victory in the London Cup after a thrilling finale when Alleyn's beat Emanuel School to take the title.

Alleyn's has a long tradition of mixed teams in sports, ranging from water polo to football. But it's cricket that has really taken off at the school. While the headline-hitting world cup victory by the England women's cricket team has undoubtedly helped, the sport also lends itself to mixed teams, in part because success is about subtlety rather than brute strength.

"It's not all about power," confirms Stuart Turner, Head of Lower School. "That said, the most successful girls are actually the fastest bowlers as well, so they are on a physical footing with the boys."

Alleyn's is far from alone. Schools' associations confirm that mixed teams are on the rise and that interest is growing. "We're getting more and more enquiries," confirms Fran Hide, Sport Events Coordinator at IAPS.

So keen are some schools on mixed teams, she says, that it's not unknown for them to scan the fine print to find ways of adding boys, or girls, to single sex events. "We have seen a couple of schools finding loopholes in our rules in order to put mixed teams in."

Over at the Independent Schools Association, meanwhile, they're busily opening up more sports to mixed gender teams and introducing new events like an Under 10 rugby festival that includes a mixed gender touch-rugby competition.

A lot, inevitably, is down to logistics. For some co-ed schools, gender blind team selection is the obvious way of ensuring that they can compete, quite literally, on a level playing field with single-sex schools.

Oakhyrst Grange in Surrey is a case in point. A Prep School with 160 pupils whose one form entry remains a big selling point with parents, it fields mixed teams in everything from hockey to netball, football and swimming. Without them, some fixtures just wouldn't happen. "There are occasions when it's necessary to have a mixed team in order to have a team [at all]," says Headmaster Alex Gear.

At Sancton Wood, a co-ed school in Cambridge, mixed teams, in a range of sports, have been a feature for close to a decade, says head Richard Settle. "They've been going for as long as I remember and I've been head for seven years."

If you're not allowing mixed gender sports, for example, when the results are being read out on a Monday morning, are [boys and girls] equally represented?

- Neil Roskilly, CEO, Independent Schools Association

While mixed teams are often a logistical necessity, they offer additional, compelling benefits. Girls who access sport on equal terms with boys can achieve stellar success. Take England rugby international Danielle Waterman, who started to play at Minehead Barbarians with her brother and has gone on to win more than 50 caps, or former women's cricket skipper Charlotte Edwards, who said in a recent interview that she found it completely "normal and brilliant" to hone her skills as captain of a boys' team at the age of 11.

As the scandal over the pay gap between men and women at the BBC demonstrates only too clearly, there are still many areas where women are treated as second class citizens. It doesn't take a genius to start wondering whether the messages on the pitch as well as in the classroom might filter through into later life.

It's something co-ed schools that maintain a culture of single sex teams would do well to bear in mind, says Neil Roskilly Chief Executive Officer at ISA. "If you're not allowing mixed gender sports, for example, when the results are being read out on a Monday morning, are [boys and girls] equally represented?"

Mixed teams, in contrast, send out the signal - to spectators as well as players - that equality of opportunity, reward and kudos is a given. Richard Settle at Sancton Wood is in no doubt about why it matters for girls to feel they've got just as much right as the boys to play cricket, football and rugby. "It's about understanding their own self worth and being prepared to go for it, taking risks, being resilient and being confident enough to know what it is you want to do and not letting anything stop you."

For Alex Gear at Oakhyrst, it's all about fielding the strongest possible team.
"We're about the opportunity to represent the school and compete at the highest level, so I am trying to tick all those boxes," he says.

The world is multi-gendered and we want to reflect that in everything we do at school

Take a step back and it might seem ludicrous that in this day and age, the existence of mixed sports teams should even be questioned. But when academic magazines host blogs with the title Why Mixed-Sex Sports Never Took Off, (published in 2012), it clearly remains a touchy subject.

That's likely to change. At the IAPS, Fran Hide foresees a time when mixed teams for a range of sports and age groups will increasingly become the norm. It can only be a good thing, she says. "Boys have a different range of skills and personality traits that they can pass on to girls and vice versa. They can learn a lot off each other."

And at Alleyn's, with gender increasingly an irrelevance - as far as sport is concerned - the future is already here. The school's attitude is simple. Gender doesn't matter. What counts is the player's interest and enthusiasm. "The philosophy we're working towards is if a girl or boy wants to access a sport we offer and can demonstrate the right sort of attitudes, attributes, physicality, technical ability and tactical awareness, they play," says Gavin English, director of sport. "The world is multi-gendered and we want to reflect that in everything we do at school."

If their approach takes off, the result could be a change in attitude that goes far beyond the boundary line. And nothing else, it might prompt the author of Why Mixed-Sex Sports Never Took Off to change the title to Why (at least in the UK) they did....
Read more: Girls Playing Boys' Sports

Whether you need advice or comfort on your choice of school, pastoral care, the best way to tackle exams, or how best to confront teenage problems, Independent School Parent provides all the answers. Our expert writers include some of the top names in teaching, ensuring that Independent School Parent always supplies impartial advice that you can trust.

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Mixed-team Sports in Schools: Why Gender Doesn't Matter

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Although Rugby lost (by 30 runs to Marlborough College) Maia, whose bowling and batting averages put her in the top three players at the school, is clearly a rising star. She is also one of a growing number of girls whose talents are being harnessed in mixed sports teams. Take Alleyn's School in Dulwich, south London, which has been celebrating the achievements of its Under 12 cricketers.

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Women's football in The Gambia lacks money and infrastructure. Girls play on sandy pitches, often their goals have no nets.

With a majority Muslim population and a strong tribal society, girls in The Gambia face many cultural barriers. Female genital mutilation and child marriage remain widespread, despite bans that came into place in 2015 and 2016 respectively. The UN children's agency UNICEF says that three in four girls are cut, one in three are married before the age of 18, and one in ten before the age of 15.

But despite this challenging background, there is a women's football league, and the sport is growing among girls.

Fatim's story serves as a cautionary tale for her team mates, who say they would never attempt such a journey.

'She had no opportunity as a girl to excel, to achieve her dream of being maybe a football star in The Gambia,' says Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang, The Gambia's vice-president and minister responsible for women's affairs. 'Looking at Fatim's background, with the opportunities in Europe which she was driving at, she would have succeeded to be a shining star. I really want to champion her cause for her not to be forgotten, to become a symbol of hope for the youths.'

DENMARK - Still Fighting For Equal Rights

Nadia Nadim may have never discovered her talent, had she not arrived in Denmark under dramatic circumstances.

Her father, Rabani, was a general in the Afghan army, and he was killed by the Taliban when Nadia was 10. Nadia's mother Hamida decided to summon her five daughters and escape to Europe.

The six women drove to Pakistan, paying a smuggler to help them. With fake passports, they flew to Italy. Then they hid in a truck and ended up in Denmark.

It was in a Danish asylum centre that Nadia started playing football.

'I never knew girls can play football or any sport in general,' she says. 'I knew what football was because my dad was so into the game, and I had a football at home, but we used to play other games with it.'

Nadia went on to becoming the first nationalised Dane to play in the women's national football team. She was named the best player of the year by the Danish football association in 2016 and 2017 and one of the country's biggest newspapers gave her an award as the Dane of the Year.

'If I had stayed in Afghanistan, I would probably be married and have some kids, and be home. I can't really imagine actually being alive,' she says.

Denmark is considered one of the most equal countries in Europe and worldwide. It comes only after Sweden on the European Gender Equality Index, scoring well above the EU average.

Yet, women footballers fight for more recognition by sponsors, and for equal pay.

'Coming to a country like Denmark, where equality should be a priority, I was surprised that it wasn't. I was actually disappointed to see how unfair it was,' says Nadia.

In 2017, the women's national team came second in the Euro Cup, drawing more spectators than ever. The national team players tried to negotiate better salary and working conditions for their contracts, and even went on strike, missing a World Cup qualifying match. In November 2017, the pay gap dispute ended up with a deal: the women's side negotiated a four-year contract that improves health insurance cover as well as monthly allowances for female players, bridging the gap with the men's national team.

'As a football player you have an obligation to fight for rights, and equality is basically a human right. Why is it so different? And why are we still thinking like we are in Stone Age in a country like Denmark?', says Nadim.

'In Denmark football is still like a boys' game, because we don't have equal rights for national team players and for the girls,' says Jette Andersen, president of Fortuna Hjørring, an all-women's football club in northern Denmark.

In 2017, the team opened up Denmark's first elite football academy for girls in order to foster a new generation of young female players.

'I think the possibilities for the girls should be much better. Our club is 100% for girls and I think it makes a big difference. They don't have to compete with the boys' side,' says Andersen.

The New Feminist Struggle?

Extraordinary stories like Marta's and Nadia Nadim's may inspire young girls, just like Fatim Jawara's tragedy may prevent future generations from risking their lives.

Equal pay battles in countries such as Denmark suggest that there is an effort to achieve greater equality. Also in Brazil, where national players resigned over sexism in their football federation, there seems to be greater awareness surrounding gender inequality.

But ultimately, changing the way the game is perceived and giving more young girls access to it goes beyond an individual struggle.

'If you want to make a real change, you should go higher up,' says Nadia Nadim.

In The Gambia, football became a way for Aminata Camara to avoid early marriage, and it was possible only thanks to the support of her coaches and team mates.

'Just to say that girls need to be more persistent, that they need to lean in, that can't be the solution, it can't be an individual-level solution to a social, structural problem,' says Rachel Allison of Mississippi State University.

'This is a feminist struggle.'
This report is part of A Girls' Game, a multimedia project that was funded by Innovation in Development Reporting Grant granted by the European Journalism Centre.

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Irene Caselli, Claudia Jardim and Mariangela Maturi

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'She Is Not Normal' - The Unlevel Playing Field Of Women's Football

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30 million girls and women play football worldwide, but in some countries, they're also questioned, are accused of being manly and banned from the pitch. With the World Cup starting in June,​ ELLE spoke to three female players, across three continents, about their experiences of stereotypes, equal pay and cultural barriers.

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The Active People Survey (APS) was the survey we used to measure the number of adults taking part in sport across England

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Kathryn has developed, trialled and evaluated two lesson plans on the theme of Gender and Sport: Gender and Sport: Philosophy for Children Gender and Sport: Art Clive has developed, trialled and evaluated a lesson plan on Thinking about gender roles Ivonne has developed a series of lessons that explore gender roles and stereotyping in a...

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Football is just football! Whether you support the men's or women's team, or both, we are all Man City. Today we have launched Same City, Same Passion, a club wide campaign focused on promoting women's football by demonstrating that the same skills, same excitement and same passion exist wherever a ball is kicked.

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In the ranking of the 100 highest-paid athletes, there is just one woman - tennis star Serena Williams.

She's in position 51 and has an income that is $66m (£50m) lower than Cristiano Ronaldo's, the world's top earning sportsman according to Forbes.

For the US women's football team, their win in the 2015 World Cup got them a $2m (£1.5m) reward.

Meanwhile in the male version of the tournament, the winners were handed $35m (£26.5m) just a year earlier.

These are just a few examples of a massive gender pay gap in the world of global sports that has been the standard for decades.

Recent research, however, suggests that income disparity between female and male athletes has narrowed vastly over the past few years.

A total of 83% of sports now reward men and women equal prize money, according to a study of 68 different disciplines published by BBC Sport, last June.

Women's remunerations have been on the rise over the past three years, and 35 out of 44 sports that award prize money are paying equally.

It seems like good news, especially compared to previous years - in 2014 only 70% of sports had closed the gender prize gap, and as recently as 1973 not one sport rewarded both genders equally.

"Women are far more visible in sports today than at any previous point in history," says UN Women in a statement.

Yet the pace of change is so slow that it will take "a long journey" to reach pay parity at the top level, experts say.

"We are making progress, but it is happening at a glacial pace," says Fiona Hathorn, managing director of advocacy group Women on Boards.

"The sport world is very, very male dominated still and the disparities in some sports are shocking."

Cricket, golf and football are among the worst offenders, as well as darts, snooker and squash.

The global sport business - worth $145.3bn (£110bn), according to a PwC estimate- is far from a level playing field for both genders.

"I cannot think of any other industry that has such a wage gap, really. Depending on country context and sport, a man can be billionaire and a woman [in the same discipline] cannot even get a minimum salary," says Beatrice Frey, sport partnership manager at UN Women.

Worst offenders

Differences are striking at every level of the multi-billion industry of professional football.

A recent study by Women on Boards highlighted that not only did the US women's team received prize money that is a fraction of the amount the men's game gets, female US footballers also received four times less than their fellow nationals in the male version of the tournament, even though the men lost in their first knockout match.

The gap becomes even bigger if the total payout is considered. The prize money in both tournaments is determined by a single body, Fifa, that handed out $15m (£11m) for the women's World Cup and $576m (£437m) for the men's - an amount almost 40 times larger.

And while former England captain Wayne Rooney took home a massive $400,000 a week (£300,000), the wages of his female counterpart, Steph Houghton, were meagre in comparison - around $1,600 (£1,200) a week, according to Ladbrokes Sports.

Similar pay gaps can be observed across other professional sports. In golf, men in the US Open compete for a chance to take home almost $1.5m (£1.1m), twice as much the prize money for the female champion.

Take the case of Lydia Ko, from New Zealand, who in 2015 became the youngest player of either gender ever to be ranked number one in professional golf.

That year, she pocketed less money than the golfer in position 25th in the male ranking of the PGA Tour, estimates by Newsweek reveal.

Meanwhile, in cricket a victorious male team at the World Cup can make almost seven times more than the women's side.

And the pay gap is replicated also in the world's most prestigious male and female basketball leagues - the NBA and WNBA.

"The highest-paid player in the WNBA (the Women's National Basketball Association) makes roughly one-fifth that of the lowest-paid player," in the super-rich NBA, calculates Newsweek.

'A boys' club'

To achieve equality, experts say, it is not enough that the governing bodies of each sport establish gender-blind prizes - sponsorship and endorsements, as well as contractual conditions, have become some of the main forces perpetuating the imbalance.

In tennis, for instance, the Grand Slams - the four most important events in the global calendar- have already introduced equal pay for men and women from 2007, yet the top male players consistently earn more yearly due to better sponsorship deals.

That is why Serena Williams is alone in the Forbes' list of the 100 richest.

"The top 100 athletes are a boys' club more than ever", wrote Forbes' sports reporter Kurt Badenhausen when the list was released, in June.

"Mainstay Maria Sharapova failed to make the grade after reductions in her endorsement contracts."

Those extras make up 29% of the total pie for the top 100 athletes, according to Forbes.

Ronaldo earned $58m (£44m) in salary and bonuses, but topped that up with some $35m (£26.5m) from sponsors, endorsements and appearance fees.

For golfer Tigers Woods and track star Usain Bolt, sponsorship account for over 90% of their earnings.

"Sexism is widespread from grassroots level to elite level in the sport industry," says Frey.

"At grassroots level it may mean that girls are not able to participate in a sport that is not traditionally considered to be for girls, creating bias at an early age which then follows them through youth and on to elite sport practice."

Then, she says, it translates into uneven opportunities in sponsorships and personal marketing, to the extent that most female athletes around the world are "unable to secure a livelihood from their athletic practice".

And the trend persists after retirement.

"For retired sportswomen it is particularly problematic. Not only have they not ever earned very much money, they've probably got no pension, no house, no security," says Hathorn.

"And that's an issue for girls' aspirations: why would they want to become athletes if that's what the future holds?"

Understanding the gap

The roots of this discrepancy could perhaps be traced back to the origins of modern sport itself.

Different societies viewed physical training as an activity intrinsically linked to the "muscular male", defined against an idea of softer and more physically vulnerable femininity.

The father of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, described women's sport as an "unaesthetic sight" for the human eye and considered their participation would make the competition "impractical, uninteresting" and "improper" (although a few female athletes were allowed to take part after 1900).

Women were only competing in races up to 1,500 metres, because they were deemed physically unprepared to cope with the demands of longer events.

In terms of representation, it took until the 2012 London Games to have at least one female athlete in every country's delegation.

So the sport pay gap may well be linked to a wider imbalance - that of female participation in sport, perpetually lower than that of males.

"The participation is a problem that goes back to the school years: that's when it starts," says Ruth Holdaway, chief executive officer at advocacy group Women in Sport.

It has to do with their awareness of the body, with how they are perceived and the gender stereotypes they encounter, says Holdaway.

UN Women statistics show that a striking 49% of girls drop out of sport by the time they reach puberty, and this has ramifications in professional and elite training later in life, research shows.

Turn on the TV

There is a general acceptance that the breadth of the gender pay gap is also a by-product of the increasingly commercial nature of sport, where media rights play a big part.

According to a study by the University of Minnesota's Tucker Centre for Research on Girls and Women in Sport in 2014, only up to 4% of sports media coverage went to female sports, despite the fact that 40% of all participants were female.

And within the small amount of airtime received, the coverage of women's athletics is also more likely to be sexualised, portraying athletes off court and out of uniform, with an emphasis "on their physical attractiveness rather than their athletic competence", says Tucker Centre's director Mary Jo Kane.

Hence, many would argue that women earn less because the market dictates so, as female sports are "less popular" and "not as good to watch", and as a result they generate less media revenue.

What is 100 Women?

BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. In 2017, we're challenging them to tackle four of the biggest problems facing women today - the glass ceiling, female illiteracy, harassment in public spaces and sexism in sport.

With your help, they'll be coming up with real-life solutions and we want you to get involved with your ideas. Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and use #100Women

It is a self-perpetuating, "chicken and egg" cycle, equity advocators argue - audiences will not get excited about women's sport as it gets minimal exposure in the media, and the media would justify the lack of coverage by saying that female athletics do not generate enough audience engagement.

"That is not a fair argument, you have to invest first at many levels, including marketing and promotion, to get the general public more involved, and then the return of the investment will be better," says Frey.

"Had our culture been used to seeing women rather than men playing rugby or football for generations, we would find the idea of men playing sports rather novel," adds Hathorn.

Sport gaps are in fact a manifestation of wider gender inequality, says the expert, that also translates into other more subtle forms of sexism.

For example, women footballers in international tournaments were required until recently to play on artificial turf, which is often regarded as of lesser quality than the natural grass on which male teams play.

And then there's the language: "the World Cup is assumed to be for men, while women require the qualifying 'Women's' to describe their event", says a UN document on women in sport.

Good record

Despite the "glacial" pace, change is nonetheless advancing and indicates that the gap is getting narrower.

Tennis is usually celebrated as a shining example of this, after all four Grand Slam tournaments established equal prize money to the men and the women in 2007.

In fact, the process started in 1973 at the US Open, thanks to world champion Billie Jean King and other female players, who founded the Women's Tennis Association to fight for gender equality.

Athletics have also become a case study for good practices, particularly over the past five years, with the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) World Championships and annual Diamond series offering gender-blind rewards.

Other sports that have reportedly been paying equivalent prizes include skating, shooting, volleyball, diving, sailing, windsurfing and taekwondo, as well as some cycling events.

The appetite for televised female sports is also growing, evidence suggests, with social media playing a part to increase the global popularity of athletes regardless of gender.

And sportswomen themselves have repeatedly stood up against sexism.

Last year, for instance, five of the biggest names in the very popular US women's football league filed a complaint against their employer, the US Soccer Federation, for gender pay discrimination, while the hockey team attempted a boycott in search for fair wages.

But a lot more work needs to be done, advocacy groups say.

To begin with, more women are needed in decision-making positions.

A Women on Boards report found a widespread problem across disciplines, with fewer than 30% of board seats held by women in many governing bodies.

Women are just 18% of all board members across the 28 International Sports Federations assessed. In the 129 National Olympic Committees, the figure is even lower and has actually fallen - women are 16.6% of the board, down from 17.6% in 2014.

The root of the problem lies with how women engage with sport at an early age, experts say, and any attempt to tackle gender disparity in earnings and participation should seek improvements at school level.

Gender-neutral and non-segregated sport practice in school may have a positive impact on the way girls embrace physical activity in the long term and go on to consider a career as professional athletes.

"I would promote that boys and girls play the same sports from primary school, because at that stage there are no major physical differences between them. If within the education system children start to play sports together, it would make a real difference in society," says Hathorn.

"If we are closing the gap in the long term, we should really be working with young girls to help them change their behaviour, understand that sport is fun and it's something they are entitled to just as much as the boys," says Ruth Holdaway.

A change in the model of commercial endorsements and sponsorships is also an important step in the path to pay parity.

There is an untapped market for the promotion of women's events and experts believe it is actually not just fair in principle, but also a good investment.

"It is not a matter of charity, it is a matter of smart business decisions," says Frey.

"Corporations are now very interested in gender equality, if I were a company sponsoring for example the Premier League I would be asking myself 'is this the right image for my company?', 'is being too bloke-y dangerous for my brand?'", says Hathorn.

"'We have 50% of our clients who are women but we spend 99% of our money on sponsoring men's sports, is that right?' It clearly isn't".

Ultimately, experts agree, a cultural shift is needed - in which women are not seen as "second class athletes" as much as they should not be considered second class citizens in society.

"Even with Billie Jean King pushing for equality more than 40 years ago, we still do not have real equality in sport," says Hathorn.

"We are moving, but we are still not there."

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In the ranking of the 100 highest-paid athletes, there is just one woman - tennis star Serena Williams. She's in position 51 and has an income that is $66m (£50m) lower than Cristiano Ronaldo's, the world's top earning sportsman according to Forbes.

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According to Mel Watman's book All-Time Greats of British Athletics, Leather was a 21-year-old chemist who ran for the Birchfield Harriers track club when she ran a 4:59.6 mile at the Midland County Championships in Birmingham, England. While being the first to break 5:00 was a significant achievement, Leather wasn't necessarily surprised to have done so, given that she had run 5:00.2 three days before her 4:59.

In an article published in the Sunday Mercury in 2004, Leather said breaking the record was "exhilarating" and that she wasn't mad about the lack of publicity surrounding her mile.

Leather, who had started running to get in shape for field hockey, continued competing and got much faster after her initial sub-5:00. In May 1955, she ran 4:50.8, and lowered her world best to 4:45.0 in September 1955. That time lasted for seven years as the mile record before New Zealand's Marise Chamberlain ran 4:41.4 in December 1962.

During the past six decades, much has changed for Leather and women's running.

Leather married Peter Charles in 1959. The following year, she ran in an 800 meters preliminary heat at the 1960 Olympics. At the time, 800 meters was the longest distance for women in the Olympics. Leather retired from competitive running in 1960.

The IAAF, the sport's international governing body, didn't recognize the women's mile as a world record event until 1967. The first official women's mile record holder was Anne Rosemary Smith of the United Kingdom, who ran 4:37.0 in June 1967. The current record is 4:12.56, set by Russian Svetlana Masterkova in 1996. One reason the record has lasted so long is that "milers" more often run 1500 meters, which is 109 meters shorter than a mile and the distance contested in the Olympics and world championships.

Leather's record mile time is now a mark that many high school girls run. As of this writing, the fastest U.S. high school girl of the year is Alexa Efraimson, with a time of 4:32.15. The 10th fastest U.S. prep girl in 2014 is Taylor Werner, at 4:48.25. Last year, Mary Cain ran the fastest mile ever by a U.S. high school runner, 4:32.28, at an indoor meet. (Cain ran 4:24.11 at an indoor meet in January 2014, but the time doesn't count for high school purposes because Cain is now a professional runner.)

Leather, 81, lives in England and was inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame in October 2013.

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First Women's Sub-5:00 Mile was 60 Years Ago Today

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May 29 marks the 60th anniversary of a great moment in miling.No, it's not the 60th anniversary of the first sub-4:00 mile. That was May 6. But 23 days after Roger Bannister's 3:59.4 mile made headlines around the world, another British runner quietly broke another barrier.

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The Active People Survey (APS) was the survey we used to measure the number of adults taking part in sport across England

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India captain Mithali Raj was speaking ahead of the ICC Women's World Cup opener against England at Derby on Saturday.

cricket Updated: Jun 23, 2017 11:56 IST

Indian women's cricket team skipper Mithali Raj feels they should not be compared to their male counterparts and laments the lack of recognition despite representing a country where the sport reigns supreme.

The veteran player came up with a snappy response when asked who her favourite men's cricketer was between India and Pakistan.

"Do you ask the same question to a male cricketer? Do you ask them who their favourite female cricketer is?" she said to the scribe in question.
READ | Women's World Cup: Mithali Raj stars as India win warm-up game vs Sri Lanka
"I have always been asked who's your favourite cricketer but you should ask them who their favourite female cricketer is."

Who run the 🌏? 👩!#WWC17 https://t.co/hz2KAFgx9R
- Cricket World Cup (@cricketworldcup) June 22, 2017

Raj was attending the opening dinner and media roundtable event on the eve of the ICC Women's World Cup.

Raj pointed out that the Indian women do not receive the same amount of publicity as the men.

"There's a lot of difference because we are not a regular on television. Now the BCCI has made an effort that the last two home series have been televised and social media has improved a lot of it but there is a still a lot of catch-up to do in terms of recognition," she said.
READ | Mithali Raj stars in Indian women's cricket team's warm-up win vs Sri Lanka
Raj said the team has benefitted under the guidance of coach Tushar Arothe.

"Men's cricket sets the bar. We are always trying to reach where they set the standard. All of us follow men's cricket because we want at some point that women's cricket would be up there," she said.

Lots of media about for the start of the #WWC17 opening dinner! 🎥👍 pic.twitter.com/Hv6Mydj9Lk
- Cricket World Cup (@cricketworldcup) June 22, 2017

"All of us at some point have been coached by a male cricketer. I strongly believe that they get a lot of intensity into the training sessions. They are very hard taskmasters.
READ | Mithali Raj sets semis target for Team India in ICC Women's World Cup 2017
"I believe that if you are representing your country, your country should get the best of the best. It's nothing to do with women coaches (who) don't have the ability."

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Mithali Raj gives this smart reply when asked about her favourite male cricketer

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cricket Updated: Jun 23, 2017 11:56 IST Indian women's cricket team skipper Mithali Raj feels they should not be compared to their male counterparts and laments the lack of recognition despite representing a country where the sport reigns supreme. The veteran player came up with a snappy response when asked who her favourite men's cricketer was between India and Pakistan.

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We examine how a root and branch review of England Netball's participation and coaching development models has sparked an across-the-board participation boom. Development Director Fran Connolly guides us through the whole journey, from inception to fruition.

Boom! There has been an explosion in the number of people playing netball over the last decade.

Rather like its cosmological cousin, an explanation for this 'big bang' can be traced back to a single point in time - 2008 to be precise, when England Netball's expansion model was first formed.

A wise owl once said, if opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. England Netball were astute and brave enough to realise that if they didn't change, they wouldn't grow.

So in shutting the door on their existing participation strategy, they began a major rethink of how to meet the demands of both new, and older generations.

Fran takes up the story: 'We set ourselves on a journey around the time of the second Active People Survey [in 2007-08]. It told us there were 118,000 women playing regularly in this country, with a membership base of around 50,000.

'We challenged ourselves into answering the questions: do we know who these people are, and, do we really understand our netball customers, and potential customers? The answer to both questions was "no" we didn't.

'So we went on a journey of a good couple of years, and lots and lots of insight gathering, to really understand the people who were involved in netball; people who weren't involved; why they weren't involved; the barriers at play, and started to segment those types of women and girls.'

Rebirth and a long period of growth

The insight phase needed to be exhaustive in view of the governing body's ambitious objective of nationwide behaviour change across every demographic.

It involved intelligence gathering on a mass scale, followed by an equally methodical period of data dissemination that would ultimately be used to formulate revitalised coach and participation development models.

'The next step was drilling down into the players' and potential players' motivations, aspirations and needs and to develop with them products and programmes to meet them,' says Fran.

'That was where the journey started really, and we pulled in lots of partner organisations to help us to do that, one of which was UK Coaching (sports coach UK at the time).'

To give you an indication of the scale of the initial research phase; it involved digesting 150,000 reported conversations of netballers and potential netballers and accessing more than a million different data quotes collected from a huge variety of sources.

'So, for example, with the Active People Survey we went back to them and asked for the coded data that sat behind it,' says Fran. 'And we requested all the raw data that sat behind published surveys, and then spent a year analysing it all.'

The governing body discovered from their two years of research that there were in fact 10 different kinds of netballers or potential netballers that may want to be involved in the sport.

The last eight years have been spent designing and implementing products and programmes to meet the diverse needs of each of these ten categories.

Climbing the league table

England Netball have, for some time now, been seeing the fruits of their labour. The numbers don't lie.

According to Sport England's Active Lives Survey (May 2016 to May 2017), over a quarter of a million adults in England (286,200) take part in netball at least twice a month.

This makes netball the fourth biggest team sport behind football, cricket and basketball, and by far the biggest team sport for women - 3.4% of the female population in England have played in the last year, compared to 2.8% who have played football and 1.2% who choose hockey.

On a typical weekend, there are more women playing netball than men playing rugby union.

While the figures collated clearly show netball is on the rise across England, some of the percentages reported in the media have been skewed by inadvertently comparing Active People Survey data with Active Lives data - Sport England's new way of measuring sport and physical activity, which evaluates different participation frequencies.

So while England Netball have distanced themselves from the '44% increase in participation at grass-roots level in the last year' soundbite that has been widely reproduced in the press, they are keen to promote these other stand-out statistics (updated in January):

* Approximately 1.4 million women and girls play netball at some point during a typical season.

* England Netball membership has grown year on year for the last ten years, and in the 2015-16 season smashed the 100,000 barrier for its number of affiliated members.

* By last season, England Netball had grown to 103,000 members, a 3.42% increase on the previous year.

* The sport has seen over 30% growth in weekly adult participation in the last 5 years.

Rolling back the years

The governing body's current portfolio of participation initiatives (detailed below) has been instrumental in enticing people back to the sport. Credit should also be attributed to an evolving domestic Superleague competition, the success of the national team (England Roses are ranked third in the world) and the welcome increase in television coverage?

'It is really important to us to have netball available to anyone to watch and we are hugely grateful to the television companies,' says Fran. 'Our official broadcast partner is Sky but the BBC have been showing a lot more interest since they televised netball at the Commonwealth Games [including live coverage from the recent Quad Series with New Zealand, Australia and South Africa].

'The success of the national team, the growth of Superleague and the profile of the game itself across the world in the last couple of years has definitely supported what we have been trying to do as well but I don't think we would have seen the level of growth in participation if we hadn't have changed our approach to participation programmes within the organisation.'

So while all of the above are inextricably linked to the rising popularity of the sport, there is no escaping the huge impact the proliferation of participation schemes have had, and are having.

Together they form an extensive 'menu' of opportunities that cater for every sphere of society.

The Back to Netball initiative, for example, has proved particularly persuasive in attracting more women of different ages and abilities back into the game.

This was the first product that England Netball put onto the market under their new framework, and has been their most successful to date.

This year will see the tenth anniversary of the award-winning programme, which has seen women return to the sport in their tens of thousands - more than half of them mums.

Around 15,500 participants went through the programme in the 2016-17 season, and if England Netball can emulate that again this season, which they are on course to do, it will see them surpass the magic 100,000 milestone.

As well as being delighted with the sheer scale of the numbers, England Netball are immensely proud of the impact the scheme has had on women's physical and mental health.

Research from England Netball has shown:

* 98% of participants would recommend the programme to others.

* Nine in ten participants go on to be more active after the programme, with 37% going on to play more netball - such as joining a club or playing competitively.

* 51% reported improved confidence.

* 76% said Back to Netball helped them feel good about themselves.

* 67% said participating in the scheme had helped them to relax.

Offering something for everyone

The Back to Netball programme has proved a great way of attracting women back into the sport who may have left to start a family and former league players who want to recapture the bug. And it has paved the way for a rash of other initiatives.

But Back to Netball didn't suit everybody. Some women, explains Fran, could not come regularly to sessions and wanted something they could dip in and dip out of - a kind of pay-and-play model that wasn't available through the conventional club and league format.

'So we created a product called Netball Now,' she adds, 'which we rolled out across the country, and most recently walking netball, which is our fastest-growing product and which we expect to become our most successful yet.

'We wanted to create a range of opportunities for people aged five right through to 95. We want people to stay in the game in whatever shape or form works for them throughout their lifetime, and to do this we have to make netball as flexible, comfortable and appealing to every audience.'

Walking netball was launched in September 2016, with 8,000 people having gone through the programme so far.

'It is a really good way of keeping people from all ages and fitness levels involved in the sport. Even if they've had serious injuries, and are no longer able to play the traditional form of the game, it keeps them active. It supports physical, mental and social wellbeing across the whole netball family.'

England Netball are certainly not resting on their laurels. They realise that, due to significant cuts in government funding, the challenge in the future will be to continue this growth with less outside finance coming into the organisation.

Hence they are engaging in more partnership work.

'We are going to be taking the sport to the audience a lot more, rather than expecting people to come to us,' says Fran.

'So partnering with organisations like the Women's Institute (WI) and Age UK, who have ready access to audiences and mass followings nationally, we can work with them to tweak and tailor our products to work for their audience, instead of spending lots of time chasing individuals locally.'

The partnership with the WI only launched in January but already 250 local WI groups have expressed an interest. Initially, England Netball-trained 'hosts' (as the coaches are referred to) will deliver the sessions but members will then be trained to become hosts themselves to ensure an abiding legacy.

Gimme Five, fast!

No opportunity has been allowed to slip through the net. Following a merger with the Indoor Netball Association, the indoor version of the game was rebranded as Nets - which is popular with men and women, with mixed teams also featuring in tournaments that are held worldwide.

England women and England Under-18s are the reigning world champions in this format, which is described on the England Netball website as 'fast, non-stop and very tactical', as the ball never goes out of play due to being played in an 'enclosed high tension cage'.

Fast5, meanwhile - which gets its name from the number of players on each side - is a shorter form of the game and has been described as netball's answer to Twenty20 cricket. Again, England are on top of the world, being crowned World Series champions.

'This is designed really as a televised product, being more appealing to TV and big competitions,' explains Fran. 'It is not so much a programme we use to get new people into the sport, as it has Fast 5 rules and is something club netballers might do as a one-off tournament, or as a bit of fun at the end of a season, for social or fundraising purposes.'

Coaching philosophy

Of course, it follows that any significant rise in participation demands a proportional rise in the number of coaches.

Fran accepts that before any new programmes are put on the market, an appropriately skilled workforce must be in place to support those programmes and keep up with the extra demand.

'Part of our coaching philosophy is we want to create environment-specific coach deliverers who are absolute experts in the programmes they are delivering, rather than a smaller coaching workforce that works across every domain. Because in our experience that just doesn't work.

'What makes a perfect walking netball host is very different to what makes a great academy or talent pathway coach; very different characteristics, different training required and just different people skills.'

While Fran accepts maintaining the coach to participant ratio is a challenge, it is a challenge they are absolutely thrilled to be facing and are eagerly responding to.

And with a home World Cup to look forward to in Liverpool next year, the hope is the year-on-year growth they have been enjoying will continue along the same steep gradient for many years to come yet.

The Coachwise awarding organisation, 1st4sport Qualifications, develops and awards the England Netball Level 1 assistant and Level 1 and 2 coaching qualifications. Find out more about how our Awarding Organisation Services can help you.

Coachwise are experts in enabling sports and physical activity programmes. We relish evolving operations that facilitate growth in participation and ensure community role models feel supported. Find out more about how we can help you

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The meticulous participation strategy behind netball's surge in popularity - Coachwise

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Boom! There has been an explosion in the number of people playing netball over the last decade. Rather like its cosmological cousin, an explanation for this 'big bang' can be traced back to a single point in time - 2008 to be precise, when England Netball's expansion model was first formed.

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When female gymnasts hit the floor at the Olympics, they're typically grooving to some tunes that reflect the tone of their routine. Male gymnasts, on the other hand, compete in the floor competition in complete silence.

According to Business Insider, there's a reason for that, and it's kind of sexist. When female gymnasts were first allowed to compete in the Olympic games in 1928, 32 years after their male counterparts, the powers-that-be decided women gymnasts should display grace and agility on the floor, while men should show off their strength. As Business Insider says, women had to not only possess the strength and power necessary to launch your twisting body into the air, but also mask it behind graceful leaps and and dainty flips of the arms. Men just had to show brute force.

Basically, female gymnasts have to turn their floor routine into a sort of dance - hence the music. Unlike your basic prom moves, that dance also has to include hugely powerful flips and twists.

Female gymnasts are challenged with combining their crazy strength with "feminine" grace, and yes, the results are very pretty. But, let's level the playing field here. Luckily, it seems Olympic judges don't hold female gymnasts to the strictly sexist origins of the rule. Watching female gymnasts compete, it's very evident how much power they have behind them, and the dance moves on the floor are just an added bonus.

American gymnasts are so successful because they are so strong. Business Insider reports female gymnasts are performing harder routines that require tons of power - like Simone Biles' signature move "The Biles." They certainly aren't getting points deducted for this tone shift.

We kind of like the music and the dance moves that complement the particular beauty of muscles performing at their best. We're not asking anyone to take away the music for female competitors, but simply to add it into the mix for the men.

Related: August Cover Star Gabby Douglas Is Determined to Make Olympic History Again

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The Sexist Reason Male Gymnasts Aren't Allowed to Use Music in Their Floor Routines

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When female gymnasts hit the floor at the Olympics, they're typically grooving to some tunes that reflect the tone of their routine. Male gymnasts, on the other hand, compete in the floor competition in complete silence. According to Business Insider, there's a reason for that, and it's kind of sexist.

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Members of Preston Ladies' Football Club (formerly Dick, Kerr's Ladies) pose while carrying out leg exercises during practice, March 1937. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Women's football in Britain has deeper roots than might be expected. In 18th-century Inverness, Scotland, single women played an annual match against their married counterparts, though the motives behind the contest were not purely sporting. Some accounts say that the games were watched by a crowd of single men, who hoped to pick out a potential bride based on her footballing ability. It represents the sport's earliest - and by far the strangest - form of scouting.

This curious courtship ritual took place in the century before the modern sport was codified. When women took up football as we know it today, they did so against the backdrop of the suffrage movement and calls for greater gender equality.

Women's first steps in the modern game

By the late 19th century, with the men's game spreading across Britain like wildfire, women also began to take up association football. Early pioneers included Nettie J Honeyball, who founded the British Ladies' Football Club (BLFC) in 1895. Honeyball was an alias: like many of the middle- and upper-class women who played in the late 19th century, she was not overly keen to publicise her involvement with a contact sport played on muddy fields. We know more about Lady Florence Dixie, who was appointed president of the BLFC in 1895. The daughter of the Marquess of Queensberry, Dixie was an ardent believer in equality between the sexes, and worked as a field correspondent for the Morning Post during the First Boer War.

The BLFC arranged games between teams representing the north and the south of England, where money would be raised for charitable concerns. The matches attracted healthy crowds, with thousands of people often on hand to see their encounters. Early newspaper reports were not particularly generous, however, with a Manchester Guardian reporter suggesting "when the novelty has worn off, I do not think women's football will attract the crowds".

While these games were more than mere novelty acts, crowds did drop off as the growing popularity of the men's game came to dominate public interest. In a world where women were not yet allowed to vote, it would take extraordinary circumstances for their efforts on the football pitch to attract widespread attention; those circumstances arose in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War.

Dick, Kerr's Ladies and the munitions teams

The Football League was able to complete its 1914-15 campaign as planned, but suspended competition at the season's end as the nation's men signed up to the war effort.

Women across Britain did the same. Though they undertook a wide range of roles during the conflict, the most enduring image is that of the munitions girl. An estimated 700,000 women took up work as "munitionettes", producing the bulk of the weaponry used by the British army during the war.

Workers in a munitions factory, 1915. From The Manchester Guardian History of the War Vol. III - 1915. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)
Just as men had done before them, women working in factories began to play informal games of football during their lunch breaks. After some initial trepidation, their superiors came to see these games as a means to boost morale and thus increase productivity. Teams soon formed and friendly matches were arranged.

At Dick, Kerr & Co, a Preston-based locomotive and tramcar manufacturer that had converted to munitions production at the outbreak of war, the female workers showed a particular aptitude for the game. Watching from a window above the yard where they played, office worker Alfred Frankland spotted their talent and set about forming a team.

Dick Kerr's ladies' football team (in white) from Preston take on the French Ladies International team at Herne Hill, London. (Photo by MacGregor/Topical Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Led on the pitch by founding player Grace Sibbert and under Frankland's management, they soon drew significant crowds to see their games. Known as Dick, Kerr's Ladies, they beat rival factory Arundel Coulthard 4-0 on Christmas Day 1917, with 10,000 watching at Preston North End's Deepdale stadium.

The team's popularity grew rapidly and they enjoyed sufficient longevity to dispel any suggestions of being a novelty. Over the following years, Dick, Kerr's Ladies played numerous friendly matches to raise money for the National Association of Discharged and Disabled Soldiers and Sailors, winning the majority of their encounters.

Though the war had ended in 1918 the Dick, Kerr's side and other women's teams continued to draw large crowds. By 1920 there were around 150 women's sides in England, with more still in Wales and Scotland. That year Dick, Kerr's Ladies packed 53,000 into Everton's Goodison Park; incredibly, an estimated 14,000 were left outside the ground unable to get in.

They later played what is considered to be the first women's international, against a French side led by the pioneering Alice Milliat, and toured the country with stops in Paris, Roubaix, Le Havre and Rouen.

May 1925: The French women's football team, complete with berets, line up before their match against Dick, Kerr's Ladies at Herne Hill, London. (Photo by MacGregor/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The remarkable Lily Parr

The team had always fielded gifted players, but by 1920 they had unearthed their one true genius: Lily Parr.

Parr grew up playing football with her brothers in St Helens, north-west England, and began her career with the local ladies' team at the age of 14. When they played against the Dick, Kerr's side, she caught Frankland's eye and was offered a job at the factory - as well as a spot on the team. No money changed hands, but this could be called the first meaningful transfer in the women's game.

Parr was the exceptional player of her time and a remarkable character to boot. Openly gay, close to six-feet tall and with jet-black hair, she was a chain-smoker with a ferocious appetite and a fierce left foot. The National Football Museum credit her with 43 goals during her first season playing for Dick, Kerr's Ladies and around 1,000 in total. At Parr's request, her payment was supplemented by packets of Woodbine cigarettes.

By 1921 the popularity of Dick, Kerr's Ladies was at its peak. Headlined by goal-scoring phenomenon Parr, they regularly attracted crowds in the tens of thousands and contested more than 60 games over the course of the year. Women's football more broadly seemed in robust health. Having grown up alongside the suffrage movement, it seemed appropriate that the sport was booming at a time when around 8.4 million women had recently gained the vote.

But 1921 ended in catastrophe for the women's game. The Football Association (FA) - ostensibly the governing body for the sport as a whole, but really only concerned with men's competitions - had always taken a dim view of female participation. Women's football was tolerated during the war, with the men's game largely shut down and money being raised for servicemen. But in the years that followed the conflict, the FA sought to assert itself. With crowds for Dick, Kerr's Ladies and others remaining healthy, there was a genuine fear that the women's game could affect Football League attendances. The FA felt compelled to act.

A decisive ban

Their solution was decisive and brutal. On 5 December 1921, the FA moved to ban its members from allowing women's football to be played at their grounds, effectively killing the women's game overnight. While they could still play the sport, women were reduced to doing so at a recreational level. The FA also forbade its members from acting as referee or linesman at women's games, creating another major hurdle. To all intents and purposes, the edict outlawed women's football in England.

Explaining their decision, the FA released a statement in which it concluded that football was "quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged". Several doctors agreed that the sport posed a serious physical risk to women. Not for the last time, a group of men were legislating on what a woman was allowed to do with her body.

The FA also suggested that "an excessive proportion of the [gate] receipts are absorbed in expenses and an inadequate percentage devoted to charitable objects". No such obligation to donate profits to charity existed for men's clubs and no proof of financial impropriety was presented, but there was little the women's clubs could do in response.

There was outrage from players, with the captain of Plymouth Ladies remarking that the FA were "a hundred years behind the times" and calling their decision "purely sex prejudice".

If any club could survive the ban it was Dick, Kerr's Ladies, and in 1922 they set sail for a tour of North America. Under instruction from the English FA, Canada's Football Association prevented the team from playing, but they were able to take to the pitch in the United States. Dick, Kerr's Ladies played nine men's teams in the US, where women's football had yet to gain a foothold, and drew crowds of up to 10,000 spectators.

May 1939: Members of the Preston Ladies Football Club listen to their captain as she discusses tactics with the aid of a cloth pitch diagram. Following the FA ban, the football club drew strong crowds, but couldn't emulate what they had achieved before the ban. (Photo by Harry Shepherd/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The Dick, Kerr's side continued to play at non-FA grounds, becoming Preston Ladies FC in 1926 after Frankland fell out with the factory owners; Parr remained with them until her retirement in 1951, aged 46. They drew good crowds given the circumstances, but could not hope to emulate what they had done before the FA's ban. They were among the fortunate few: many clubs did not have the profile to continue and simply ceased to exist.

It was not until England's men won the World Cup in 1966 that serious efforts to revive the women's game began. The Women's Football Association was founded in 1969, but progress remained painfully slow as the FA still refused to lift their ban. It took pressure from the governing body of European football, UEFA, to finally force the FA to end restrictions on women playing at its grounds in 1971. By this time, half a century of progress had been lost.

It is difficult to quantify the effect that the FA's 1921 ban had on women's football, but it is clear that it significantly restricted the sport's development in England and, by association, throughout Britain. Women's football might not have rivalled the men's game, but it would have been considerably closer without an enforced 50-year exodus from FA grounds.

It is worth recalling that when the Dick, Kerr's Ladies side visited the US in 1922 they played men's teams. Women's football simply hadn't caught on across the Atlantic. When it did, and without the restrictions imposed in England, the United States emerged as the benchmark for women's football during the second half of the 20th century. The US team has since won three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals; England have no major honours in the women's game.

In 2002, Lily Parr was inaugurated into the Hall of Fame at the National Football Museum. (Gordon Marino / Alamy Stock Photo)
In 2002 the great Lily Parr was the only woman named among the inaugural inductees to the National Football Museum Hall of Fame, joining the likes of Stanley Matthews and Bobby Moore. Finally, in 2008, the FA issued an apology for the 1921 ban. Without it, perhaps she would not have been the sole female representative among some two-dozen men.
Jim Weeks is a writer and editor with a particular interest in the historical and cultural dimensions of sport. Though currently based in south London, his heart resides in his native west Wales.

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1921: the year when football banned women

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In the early 20th century, women's football grew almost as quickly as the men's game, and reached new heights when the nation's men left for the First World War. However, in 1921 the FA took the decision to ban women's football, essentially outlawing the game in England.

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"The successful delivery of the Women's Rugby World Cup is of huge importance for the future growth of the game in Ireland." - Kevin Potts, head of Ireland's 2023 bid, last July.

Solutions are needed from the ground up because the problem stems from the top down.

During John F Kennedy's speech about secret societies to the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961 the US president noted that "an error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it".

This week the IRFU admitted its error, or what they perceived it to be ("causing unintentional concern and confusion"), and promised to embark upon a programme to "help shape the future direction" of women's rugby in Ireland.

Their solution, when it came at the end of a messy eight days, was obvious: create a lasting strategic plan for women designed by women. So long as the lads accept the recommendations.

Stay tuned for an introduction to the administrative careers of Mary Quinn and Su Carty.

But first. Crisis 101: form a "focused steering committee" with a wide ranging yet vague brief. "Recommendations" may be adopted, or not. And to remove any doubt about the sincerity of it all, put not one but two women in charge. Co-chairs. Finish the "future strategies" paragraph with "from the ground up".

It may sound like a marketing slogan, a PR smoke-screen, but it should take the focus away from the "recommendations" part.

This is not the IRFU's first player dispute.

"Remember," wrote Gordon D'Arcy, "we were them once, before professionalism, through the 1980s and well past the 1995 World Cup. The problems aren't dissimilar; amateur players straining to be the best they can be, but in need of the necessary support from those charged with safeguarding the game."

It is, however, the first serious examination of Simon Keogh's credentials as chief executive of Rugby Players Ireland (RPI).

On October 19th 33 internationals (all females) sent Keogh a letter stating their concerns with the IRFU's "apparent lack of long-term strategic planning for the Irish women's programme both domestically and internationally".

"As a squad we feel this uncertainty and instability is detrimental not only in terms of our ability to perform but also from a player welfare perspective" with the lack of long-term planning "affecting the squad on and off the pitch".

They finished by requesting "representation to act on our behalf in dealing with our governing body".

Collective discussion

Keogh removed the signatures before passing the letter to IRFU chief executive Philip Browne and then suggested a "collective discussion" begins with RPI representing the women (the remit heretofore was only professional male rugby players).

The IRFU help finance RPI. Not unlike the GAA funding the Gaelic Players Association. This assistance helps them look after players with career advice and other issues.

"It will be part of our job now to make sure [the women] are looked after in the best way possible," said Johnny Sexton, an RPI board member, when asked about this situation by TV3's Sinead Kissane on Tuesday.

Lets' deal with the start, middle and end of this as far as the IRFU is concerned. It's all there in three @IrishRugby tweets.

Ireland players dejected after a try for Wales during the Women's Rugby World Cup 7th place play-off at the Kingspan Stadium in Belfast. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho

The Ad (October 17th): "JOB TITLE: National Women's XVs Head Coach (part-time/casual 6 months)."

This was the equivalent of a man blindfolding himself with a red rag before leaping into a bull ring.

The Clarification (October 20th): "The IRFU regrets any upset that it has caused." So, almost an apology, followed by: "The IRFU has not downgraded the coaching role in relation to the Ireland Women's team."

It was part-time all along. They doubled down by noting Tom Tierney "was not exclusively employed as a full-time Ireland Women's XVs coach".

The clarification added: "It is important that, on conclusion of the ongoing review, the IRFU is in a position to appoint staff, including a head coach, full-time if necessary, who can deliver to the long-term strategy identified."

"If necessary" stood out.

That was Friday. The uproar continued with recently retired players talking to any media outlet that would listen (the Sunday sports sections all but ignored it).

Finally sensing the zeitgeist, the IRFU rolled out Browne.

The Statement (October 24th): " Irish Rugby Football Union CEO Philip Browne wishes to acknowledge the Union's role in causing unintentional concern and confusion around the future of the women's game in Ireland."

We are "fully committed to developing and growing the women's game in Ireland." Key words. High performance. Grassroots. From. The. Ground. Up.

Lasting seeds

Quinn and Carty were presented as a short-term solution to the longest-term problem of them all.

The 2013 Grand Slam was not enough to inspire sustainable change. Beating the Black Ferns at the 2014 World Cup didn't prompt anyone to plant lasting seeds.

Instead, they set the 15-aside game on this island back years with a focus on a Sevens programme, and a sponsor-rich Olympic dream, in the calamitous three years since those sunny Marcoussis days. Not even the disastrously mismanaged build up to ( as outlined by Ruth O'Reilly in The Irish Times), and utter failure of the 2017 World Cup on home soil provided a harsh enough lesson.

Just another "blip".

Ireland captain Dr Claire Molloy felt the need to criticise the IRFU on Twitter. "Six Month part time is such a disappointment to hear when our Six Nations opposition excluding Italy have full time coaches. #leftbehind."

Open revolt followed with the women's #legacy campaign across club matches last Sunday leading to the IRFU forming a steering committee for women led by women.

Su Carty is an encouraging appointment as co-chair. The IRFU deserve credit for this. Carty will work alongside Mary Quinn, the first and only female on the IRFU committee. But what their remit is, and who will be help them achieve it, and how much scope they truly possess remains unclear.

We've been promised answers in due course. Carty knows exactly what needs doing. A former player and current referee she played a key role integrating the IWRFU under the IRFU umbrella in 2008.

Ireland captain Dr Claire Molloy criticised the IRFU on Twitter. "Six Month part time is such a disappointment to hear when our Six Nations opposition excluding Italy have full time coaches. #leftbehind." Photograph: Dan Sheridan/Inpho

"I've spent the last seven years helping to elevate the position of women and girls in rugby around the world," she says on her website about being appointed as the first World Rugby women's development manager in 2009.

"This is traditionally a sport dominated by men, but working together we made significant breakthroughs, helping women unleash their potential."

Now, with all that squared away for the time being, the main problem could easily be forgotten - ie finding a new coach just three months out from the Six Nations opener in Toulouse.

What they really need is a proven expert with some time on his hands. Eddie O'Sullivan said a few months ago, when overlooked for even an interview to coach Connacht, that there is no issue with the IRFU despite the fallout when both parties severed his four-year contract two years early in 2008.

The part-time casual role is intended to entice a top coach who can double job. O'Sullivan, a highly decorated career coach, remains exiled from the professional game with Old Belvedere men's 1st XV.

The IRFU's "vision 2020" document states: "Does Irish Rugby want to compete with the GAA or soccer or does it want to position itself as a leader that can show other sports how to behave and lead?"

Lynne Cantwell - Ireland's most capped woman - posted a picture of her new born daughter, Scarlett, on Sunday wearing a "legacy" wristband.

This is a watershed moment for women's sport in Ireland. The strongest message this past week came from Lynne Cantwell - Ireland's most capped woman - when she posted a picture of her new born daughter, Scarlett, on Sunday wearing a "legacy" wristband.

"I want my daughter to grow up and be treated with respect whatever sport she plays."

If this is the IRFU enacting lasting change, a genuine legacy for the women's game in Ireland, just imagine what their daughters and granddaughters will think of them.

Imagine that legacy.

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Moment of truth beckons for future of Irish women's rugby

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"The successful delivery of the Women's Rugby World Cup is of huge importance for the future growth of the game in Ireland." - Kevin Potts, head of Ireland's 2023 bid, last July. Solutions are needed from the ground up because the problem stems from the top down.

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DISNEY PRINCESS | Meet the Lionesses, the England Women's Football Team | Official Disney UK

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We asked the England women's football team what it means to be a modern Princess, their advice for ambitious youngsters and the barriers they've had to overcome to realise their dreams. The Lionesses were photographed by Scarlet Page as part of our #DreamBigPrincess campaign with the FA, which aims to get more girls into football and inspire them to fulfil their potential Are you inspired by the Disney Princesses?

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This week Disney have announced a three-year partnership with the Football Association, with the promoted goal of encouraging greater participation of girls within the sport. Using the hashtag #DreamBigPrincess, the campaign is asking for people to share their "motivational" images of girls.

But using Disney princesses in a weak attempt to get girls to play football is perverse; it's the very notion that they should aspire to be more princess-like that stops girls from playing sports in the first place.

If the FA had more than one woman on their board perhaps they would know this. The FA has a shameful history of subjugating women's football, as explored last week by Clare Balding, in the Channel 4 documentary When Football Banned Women. In 1921, just after the women's football team pulled in record crowds, the FA banned them from playing in their member grounds due to the sports unsuitability for "a woman's physical frame". The ban wasn't lifted for another 50 years, and it changed the course of women's football forever. Today the women's team is fifth in the world, the men's thirteenth. Despite their success Casey Stoney, the former women's captain, earned just £25k a year, compared to the eye-popping £13m her male counterpart rakes in. This disparity is obscene, and as long as it exists the FA, and its attempts to encourage girls to play have zero credibility.

There is a particular mix of social and material barriers which hinder girls participation in sports: pervasive stereotypes, lack of role models, and lack of access are major contributing factors. With the meagre coverage given to women's sport, girls have no concept of football being anything other than a men's game. More girls would play football with the promise that they too could one day have successful sporting careers and be treated with the same esteem afforded to their male counterparts, who incidentally are not expected to go into schools dressed up as princes, since being an athlete is achievement enough. They do not have anywhere close to equal access to training and competitions, rendering it impossible for them to develop their skills to the same standard as men. The social demand for them to be "ladylike" is already so overwhelming, which makes competing in a traditionally male-dominated arena an enormous challenge. Does the FA conceivably believe that further demanding girls align themselves with a stereotypical icon of femininity is going to do anything other than make this situation worse?

Being an athlete, in a sport like football, is not pretty. Leaving it all on the pitch, pushing your body to its limits, and fighting aggressively to win are a far-cry from the characteristics of the composed, aloof and unbearably feminine figure of a princess. Pretending that it is, or could be, is to do girls and the sport a major disservice. Girls know the score; the word and concept of being a princess is regularly used as an insult to put them down, no matter how much you use terms "smashing the stereotype" and "empower".

We don't need elaborate campaigns and incentives to encourage girls into sport, girls are quietly making progress on their own, despite the huge barriers they face; my daughter is one of them. She stuns me on a regular basis with her quiet determination to keep playing despite being the only girl on the team, despite vicious pushback from the boys, despite ignorant comments from adults labelling her a "tomboy" or lamenting the fact she's not a "girlie girl". Her coaches tell me she's a talented player, but they do so with trepidation because, by virtue of her female biology, in a few years' time, she won't be allowed to play on the teams anymore.

I don't believe she is the only girl in the UK with this problem. Tiaras and gowns, and empty rhetoric about "strong" characteristics aren't going to help her. If the FA truly wants to nurture my daughters talent, and all the other girls out there in the same position, then there are a myriad of things it could do that don't involve princesses. They could sponsor local girls teams, desegregate the sport, close the gender pay gap, enforce equal sponsorship rules, ensure television rights are sold with an equal representation clause. The inequality in the sport is huge and the list of things that would move towards rectifying it is just as long, without a princess in sight.

One could be forgiven for thinking that this coalition, patronising girls to "dream big princess", is just another cynical attempt to deny women a seat at the sports table, just when women's sport is beginning to get the recognition it deserves. Being able to play football shouldn't be a dream for girls, it should be a reality, and they should be able to play it without the sexist tropes and stereotypes that plague their everyday lives stopping them. Girls don't need the barriers they face to be decorated with jewels, they need us to lift them.

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The FA's Disney princess campaign will keep girls out of football

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This week Disney have announced a three-year partnership with the Football Association, with the promoted goal of encouraging greater participation of girls within the sport. Using the hashtag #DreamBigPrincess, the campaign is asking for people to share their "motivational" images of girls.

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A slim figure, housework skills, and the need to be rescued by a man are some of the attributes often associated with Disney princesses.

But behind the clichés, the characters can also demonstrate determination, compassion, ambition - and fearlessness.

The England women's football team believes the traits of Disney princesses are exactly what you need to be come a successful player.

The Football Association (FA) has joined with Disney on a campaign that focuses on the character's strong attributes - to encourage more young females into football.

Striker Nikita Parris said: "My favourite Disney princess is Ariel from The Little Mermaid because she was fearless.

"I was the same when it came to playing football with the boys in my home town. I had to be determined in order to make it."

Captain Steph Houghton added: "Being brave, being strong and being kind are all important attributes when it comes to building a successful team.

"They are all qualities that girls can learn from Disney princesses."

But can modern girls pick up anything from the likes of Disney's 80-year-old Snow White - who cleans up after a bunch of men and needs a prince to save her?

Current Miss England Stephanie Hill, 22, thinks they can.

She dresses up as Disney princesses for children at Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice near Sheffield.

She believes Disney princesses, both old and modern, can be positive role models for young women.

"I think the more vintage Disney princesses that are scrutinised, like Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, who people depict as waiting for success to come to them, can be inspirational.

"In the end they had similar drive. They wanted a better life and it just so happened male figures came into that.

"The famous quote is Cinderella didn't ask for a prince, she asked for a night off and a dress.

"Every single Disney princess has had to go through trouble to get where they want to be.

"They show the struggle and that you can get through the other side with enough work and support and a positive can-do attitude."

Over the years, Disney has moved away from depicting its princesses as delicate and demure.

The late 1980s saw an ambitious mermaid Ariel defy her dad to achieve her dream of becoming a human - even if she did sacrifice her voice for a man.

Belle in Beauty and the Beast and Jasmine in Aladdin had an independent streak, while Mulan showed women could fight just as well as men - if not better.

In 2009, Tiana became Disney's first black princess and 2012's Merida from Brave showed off an adventurous spirit and a love of archery.

Despite not being official Disney princesses, Frozen's Elsa and Anna have been praised for putting sisterhood at the heart of their happiness.

And Disney's newest female heroine Moana was depicted with an average body type and without a love interest.

Suzie Longstaff, headteacher of the all-girls Putney High School in south-west London, has done assemblies about empowering girls through Disney princesses.

She says: "Disney have come a long away, and my two children have grown up with Elsa and Anna and Moana and Ariel. They are all so much better female role models.

"They have traits that the FA is extolling, and any way we can empower girls to believe in themselves through role modelling they recognise and enjoy is fantastic.

"My five-year-old is permanently dressed as Moana at the moment. I think she is a great strong girl who can stand up for herself."

However, Mrs Longstaff thinks some of the older Disney princesses do not portray strong female characteristics.

"I said to the girls at school that the one role model I wish my girls wouldn't dress up as is Cinderella.

"She sits around for years for her prince to come along and in this day and age we can't encourage girls to do that. They must go out and stand up for themselves.

"Disney and the FA are on the road but there is a long way to go to completely equalise the perception of female and male role models as well as diversity."

Disney appears to be keen to move away from focusing on the stereotypes of what makes a princess.

Last year it launched a ten-point checklist of what it takes to be a Disney princess - and it didn't include the need to wear a tiara or a ball gown.

Instead, they included being honest, trying your best and never giving up.

Siobhan Corria, head of inclusion for charity Action for Children, says there is a role for the more modern Disney princesses in inspiring young women.

However, she believes there are more contemporary role models girls can aspire to.

"I think that more recent Disney characters that don't fit gender stereotypes are inspirational for young girls in terms of achieving things," she says.

"It's good to see Disney keep up with the changing times.

"But I'd prefer organisations like Disney to really be shattering the gender stereotypes as much as possible and give both genders non-traditional roles as a way of inspiring people."

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What can modern girls learn from Disney princesses?

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A slim figure, housework skills, and the need to be rescued by a man are some of the attributes often associated with Disney princesses. But behind the clichés, the characters can also demonstrate determination, compassion, ambition - and fearlessness. The England women's football team believes the traits of Disney princesses are exactly what you need to be come a successful player.

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The Football Association (FA) rolled out the second phase of its 'For All' campaign to promote equality within the sport.

As part of the campaign, FA TV has rolled out a video conceptualised by VCCP and director Courtney Phillips. The spot shows five young girls performing a hip-hop style dance which turns out to be a goal celebration at a football match, showing that 'there is more to football than football.'

The campaign focuses on The FA's 'Gameplan for Growth' strategy which aims to double the player base and fans of women and girls' football by 2020. The campaign targets 11 to 16-year-old females and aims to inspire them to participate in the game, driving interest in initiatives such as FA girls' Football Week, SSE Wildcats and girls' football clubs as well as promoting the friendships that can be created from playing the game.

The video appeared on ITV's The X Factor on Saturday evening (18 November) and was supported by activity across Sky Adsmart. Social versions of the video will run across Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Media planning for the campaign was handled by Manning Gottlieb OMD.

Georgina Lewis, head of marketing at The FA said: " The focus now is to help us inspire a change of behaviours - associated with our strategic objectives - bringing to life the wide ranging benefits that football offers. This is an exciting, dynamic campaign which we hope will inspire a new generation to have a long-lasting relationship with the game."

Jim Thornton, deputy executive creative director at VCCP said: "We want more girls to discover the joys of playing football. And most importantly, that playing football has never been just about the playing - it's always been as much about the fun, about being part of a squad or a gang. That's what we wanted to show in the ad - the camaraderie and the confidence that goes hand-in-hand with being part of a team."

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Young girls pull off slick dance moves to show 'there's more to football than football' in FA's latest film

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The Football Association (FA) rolled out the second phase of its 'For All' campaign to promote equality within the sport. As part of the campaign, FA TV has rolled out a video conceptualised by VCCP and director Courtney Phillips.

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Rachel Ignotofsky is a Kansas City based designer and illustrator with a passion for making information accessible and fun. Her work is inspired by history and science. She believes that illustration is a powerful tool that can make learning exciting. Rachel hopes to use her work to spread her message about scientific literacy.

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With her 51st cap for England just under her belt; as captain of a team that's seeded second in the world; with a body of steel, a training schedule from hell and a sense of commitment to make grown men weep, Catherine Spencer is probably the most successful sportsperson that you've never heard of. But watch this space, because by the end of the year Spencer ought to be a legend. She will at least, if she can help it, have won the Six Nations and then taken the England women's rugby team to World Cup victory.

Before you turn to the "real" sport, consider for a moment the women's team's achievements. And experience, just for a little while, the strange thrill of being proud of a British team. The women's may be rated number two, but in November they beat the champions, New Zealand, in a game at Twickenham that had 12,500 jaded rugby fans who had been shivering in the rain shifting to the edge of their seats. (The men's team had just lost rather miserably, 19-6, but let's not hold it against them that their female equivalents are so much more successful.) The match had power, precision and, mercifully, a lot less hoofing than the modern men's game. Internationally, the England women are known as virtually unbeatable. "Quite often," says Spencer, "other countries we play will say, 'You know, you're all professionals.' Well actually, we're not professionals, but I quite like it that people think we are. We play with a professional outlook. We're just not paid."

I meet Spencer, therefore, at the South Gloucestershire leisure centre where she has worked full time for the past four years. Like all of her England colleagues, she has never been paid to play rugby. "My Bristol and England teammate Sophie Hemming works as a vet and does crazy hours," she tells me. "We've got a doctor who until recently worked in A&E. There's a couple of PE teachers, quite a few police officers... I don't know what training the men do, but we just fit it around our work." She adds, with a laugh and an admirable lack of envy: "I should think that they just get more rest time."

Training, for the women's team, starts for most players at about 6am. An average week will squeeze in about two weights sessions at about an hour and a half each, speed training, endurance, plus club training on top of that which is usually twice a week. Weekends are for club or international matches, or occasionally international training camps. And then they go to work. Spencer tries to find one day off a week, but in the run-up to the World Cup this summer that isn't likely to happen.

It is not the relentless training that gets Spencer down, but just occasionally, when she has to miss another birthday or a close friend's wedding, there is sometimes an instant of wondering whether it is all really worth it. "Yes, it's pretty much every day of my life," she admits. "It's a big commitment, but we all do it because we love it. Obviously we're not doing it for the money because there isn't anything there. But it's all worthwhile when you can run out on a pitch and you've got the England shirt and the red rose on your chest and you're representing your country." She adds, in a quiet voice: "It's pretty special."

To hear this engaging, 30-year-old philosophy graduate talk so eloquently and so passionately about her sport, it seems bizarre that a scrum of sponsors is not battling to emblazon a big brand name all over her face. Her admiration for her fellow sportswomen and her humility on and off the pitch certainly seem a far cry from the prima donnas, the squabblers and the world-class shaggers who dominate men's international sport. (If the PR men at Umbro are looking to replace John Terry's sponsorship deal with someone a little cooler, better looking and perfectly well qualified at winning matches, they should look no further.)

Like many of her teammates, Spencer has come from a sporty family, who fortunately supported her early passion for (gosh!) girls' rugby. Quite avant-garde, considering that the game was practically banned until quite late in the 20th century. Her elder brother and her twin brother both still play locally - at least one of them having even been known to wear cast-off England women's training kit into battle. But it wasn't always easy for the fledgling captain of England to get a game. "I started playing mini rugby at Folkestone when I was about seven or eight," she says. "And that was in a boys' team. I played until I was 12, and then girls weren't allowed to play in boys' teams above that age, so I had to stop. I was really disappointed, but I sort of just accepted that I wouldn't play rugby again until I went to university."

She picked her university - Cardiff - for the course and because it seemed a fun place to live. It was a happy coincidence that it happened to have a magnificent rugby team. But it wasn't until her year off, travelling (in New Zealand, as it happens), that she decided that she just couldn't not play the game any longer. "I thought, 'I need to do something about this and just see how far I can get,'" she says.

The rest, of course, is history - but not necessarily smooth sailing. And when Spencer talks about her most memorable matches, it is the rare defeats that seem to animate her more than the standard victories. "Last year, in the Six Nations, Wales beat us," she says, wincing. "It was gutting at the time, really devastating, but I think that it was a really important lesson. A lot of the girls playing in that game had never lost a game of rugby in an England shirt. I think you need to know what it feels like to lose in order to not want to do it again."

This weekend, in the Six Nations championship, England played Wales last night, just tantalisingly after this page went to press. The women's matches will be played just after the men's, but - this time - they won't be televised live. Anyone who wants to see the grace and the power of the England women's team, with Spencer at the helm, therefore, will have to wait for this summer's World Cup - and it will be worth waiting for.

Interest in the team has already surged since their triumph over New Zealand was screened by Sky in November, when fans of the men's game stuck around and saw that the women's game is just the same - only better. Spencer is gradually being asked fewer silly questions along the lines of: "Is the women's game a contact sport?" (Yes.) "Do you tackle?" (Of course.) "Why would a nice pretty girl like you want to get thrown around a pitch for 80 minutes?" (Because it's brilliant! And Spencer's the one that does most of the throwing.)

It is more frustrating when the questions are asked by people who are involved with men's rugby, she says, but fortunately she is a patient woman. She even takes it as a compliment when boys tell her, "Aw, you don't look like a rugby player." Following the Twickenham match, she was even recognised on a Kent park-and-ride bus by a rugby-supporting father and his young son. She doesn't get spotted much at work, though. She looks pretty different in a skirt and heels, with no mud in her hair.

Ask Spencer what is the highlight of her career - what motivates her at 6am on a winter morning - and she finds it hard to choose. Beating New Zealand at Twickenham was obviously a highlight, as was clear in her post-match interview when veteran sports commentators were flabbergasted that here was a brilliant rugby player who could string a sentence together too. "But there are so many moments," she says. "When I was playing mini rugby in Folkestone I earned Most Improved Rugby Player, when I was about 11, which was a massive thing back then, because I was a girl!"

Somewhere in the country, she knows, there is a mini rugby player who'll be watching highlights of the women's Six Nations tournament this week, and dreaming of lifting that trophy. Maybe, when she grows up, she'll do it - and maybe she'll even get paid for it too.

CV

Age 30

Position No 8

Born 25 May 1979 (shares a birthday with Jonny Wilkinson) in Ashford, Kent

Height 1.79m (5'10")

Weight 90kg (14st 2lb)

Caps 51

1987 Starts playing rugby with local youth team in Folkestone.

1998-2001 Played for the Cardiff University team.

2002-2005 Rejoins Folkestone to play second division rugby and wins first England cap.

2005-2007 Gets her first taste of Premiership rugby with Worcester. Later moves to Bath and is now with Bristol.

2006 World Cup finalist with England.

2007 Becomes captain. Led England to two victories in the RBS Six Nations and a Nations Cup title.

2010 Leads England into World Cup.

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Catherine Spencer: England's captain, and a fine role model

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With her 51st cap for England just under her belt; as captain of a team that's seeded second in the world; with a body of steel, a training schedule from hell and a sense of commitment to make grown men weep, Catherine Spencer is probably the most successful sportsperson that you've never heard of.

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Sport is going through a profound existential crisis. There have been allegations of sexism in the cycling and football world; there is rampant inequality (in November it was revealed that the combined pay of women footballers in the top seven football leagues in the world equals that of Brazilian forward Neymar's). Racism persists: in 2016, England footballer Eniola Aluko made a complaint that the national team's coach Mark Sampson had told her to make sure her Nigerian family did not bring ebola to Wembley.

Today, a group of athletes determined to change sport for the better - former javelin thrower Goldie Sayers, badminton player and silver medallist Gail Emms, Paralympic wheelchair racer Anne Wafula Strike, and Lewes FC footballers Jonté Smith and Faye Baker - meet at Lee Valley Athletics Centre in London to discuss the way forward (click on ' i ' on bottom right of photo).

Last August, Emms, who won silver at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, attracted headlines when she wrote a blog in which she admitted she had suffered depression since quitting sport; she said she was not prepared for life and at the age of 40 felt unemployable. She is now campaigning about mental health issues, and believes coaches rarely exercise their duty of care to athletes. "People have finally started questioning whether we are pushing people too far, to go to the extremes of losing their morals and their health."

Sayers agrees: she thinks they should use their experiences to encourage the next generation to study and develop passions outside sport. "I would only coach someone now if they were studying or working, because I think being a full-time athlete is probably the worst thing you can do for your career."

The problem is, Emms says, it was not in the interest of her coaches to do that. "Their funding was on the line if I didn't get a medal. They did not want me to think about another career."

In her sporting prime, Emms says, she was pressured into being a "Badminton Barbie". "My sponsor turned up and said, 'We've got some new kit for you. I laid it out and it looked like an eight-year-old girl's clothes. They said, 'We thought you could wear a crop top and some hot pants.' And I went, 'I'm not a 400m athlete - I lunge. And this is not good for lunging. I don't want to wear this. Can't I just wear a normal T-shirt?' And they said, 'But all the cameras are on you.' Then this guy said, 'I don't suppose you could have a couple of sunbeds because cellulite shows up on TV lighting.' My jaw just... broke."

When you do see female athletes in the newspapers, they are the prettier ones

Emms says many athletes end up with body dysmorphia. "I used to be constantly told I was fat. I got to the point where I said, if you go anywhere near me with those calipers [to measure fat] again I'm going to shove them where the sun don't shine. I was .5% over their limit. I was number one in the world. That's the only time I ever spoke out."

"Are you an athlete or a model?" Wafula Strike asks, appalled.

"As a woman in sport you're very aware that if you play the game you will get more media coverage," Emms says. "When you do see female athletes in the newspapers, they are the prettier ones."

"And if you are blond you get more work," says Wafula Strike.

"Yes!" says Emms. "Look at Sharapova, and her sponsorship money."

Wafula Strike laughs. "I'll go for plastic surgery. Then dye my hair. Then get myself a new nose." She says that there are still so many prejudices about how disabled athletes are supposed to look. "When you're disabled you're not supposed to look good. You meet people who say 'Oh God, you're pretty, and you're in a wheelchair.'"

Emms bursts out laughing.

"It's true," Wafula Strike says. "People don't understand you can have a disability and still be clever and put on lipstick. We have to keep fighting these prejudices."

Wafula Strike grew up in Kenya and contracted polio when she was two, paralysing her from the chest down. She came to the UK in 2000 and became a member of Team GB in 2006. As she tells her story, everybody listens in shocked silence. Wafula Strike raced in the same category as the then Paralympian record medallist Tanni Grey-Thompson. She quickly established herself as the main rival to Grey-Thompson, who was made a dame in 2005 and a baroness in 2010 for her contribution to Paralympic sport.

At the 2006 Paralympic World Championships, Wafula Strike's coach Ian Thompson (who also coached his wife Grey-Thompson), told officials he believed Wafula Strike had too much body movement for the category she was racing in. She was subsequently moved into a more able-bodied category, even though her medical records went missing before the test.

"When my reclassification happened, everybody expected that I would quit the following day. But I said no, get me races in my new class. The following day I was on the start line with tears in my eyes. I wanted to prove a point, that it's not all about medals or fame or money." But the reclassification destroyed her career.

Emms is almost in tears. "OK you have broken my heart, it's official," she says.

In written evidence to a parliamentary select committee last November, Peter Eriksson, a former head coach at UK Athletics' Paralympic programme, said that Ian Thompson had played an "unethical role" in the reclassification of Wafula Strike, adding that the reclassification "would give his personal athlete [Grey-Thompson] less competition". Grey-Thompson has stressed that neither she nor her husband had any part in the reclassification, and that she had "no personal or vested" interest.

Emms raises the subject of drugs cheats in badminton. "People take drugs for recovery. It doesn't necessarily make you play badminton better. But it makes you faster on the court, stronger, and it makes you recover better for the next game. You don't see people for a year, then they're back bigger and stronger, with a deeper voice, and you're thinking, 'Mmm, wonder what you've been doing.'"

Sayers is going to have a huge party when she finally receives her Olympic bronze medal, she says. "I got a call over 18 months ago, saying that a Russian athlete who had finished ahead of me in Beijing in 2008 had failed a doping test. Ten years is a long time, but I do feel grateful that testing has taken place."

I refuse to be bitter about it, because otherwise you'd never get over it

Sayers, 35, and now retired from athletics, always suspected her rivals were cheating. As soon as she received the news, she knew exactly who it was: Russian javelin thrower Mariya Abakumova.

"What was it that sent alarm bells ringing?" asks Emms.

"Google her," Sayers says.

They look at a "before" picture, in which Abakumova looks strong but normal, and an "after" picture where she looks like the Incredible Hulk. "Oh. My. God!" Emms screams.

"I remember waiting in a dinner queue in the hotel, and hearing two blokes behind me. And I turned around and it was two tiny blond 400m runners. A lot of them have acne and deep voices at 30," Sayers says.

She paid a heavy price for finishing fourth at Beijing, in terms of sponsorship, advertising, status and her sense of self. "When you're given a medal and you stand on a rostrum, that makes a huge difference to your confidence. Because I was always a few centimetres off, I thought, 'What else do I need to do?' Then you push even harder. It wasn't a coincidence that I then had a whole spate of injuries."

When she retired last year, Sayers said she was angry and disenchanted. But times have moved on. "I refuse to be bitter about it, because otherwise you'd never get over it." "Goldie, I admire you for not being bitter," says Wafula Strike. "If I were you I would be furious. My class was changed with no proper grounds, with no medical evidence. I wasn't a happy person."

Centre-forward Smith and goalkeeper Baker have been listening attentively. They play for Lewes FC, a semi-professional football team that is the first in the country to pay its male and female teams equally. I ask them if they have suffered any discrimination.

Well, says Smith, diffidently, there was one episode. "I got an offer to play in Vietnam when I was 20, 21 for a ridiculous amount of money - £15,000 a month after tax. I left after four days. The very first day I went to warm up with the rest of the team, and I was told I had to warm up over there with two other African players."

"Oh my goodness!" Emms says.

"It gets worse," Smith says. "After the game, I pick up my food and sit down with them and they say no, you have to sit over there with the African players. I wouldn't have stayed for anything." This happened two years ago.

Now he is paid around £200 a week for Lewes FC. Both he and Baker are proud of the club's commitment to equality. "A lot of people still feel it's a man's sport," says Baker, who is also a lawyer. "It's just nice to be at a club where you're on an equal playing field, and for the men's team not to have their nose out of joint about it."

She accepts that it's easier to pay equally when the wages are low. "Look at a club like Man City. Will the women ever get paid the same as their male players? And if the men go all the way through the leagues, will our equality stick?"

Collectively, these athletes are doing their bit to make sport more honest. Emms is hoping to help prepare athletes for life after sport, Sayers will continue to campaign for clean sport, and Wafula Strike now sits on the UK Athletics Board. She does not believe what happened to her would occur today: "Last year was an eye-opener."

Smith says you can already see the impact of Lewes FC's equal pay initiative, announced last July. "There are now more young girls coming in to train. And that's how you start."

* Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine's letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).
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'I was number one. And they wanted me to wear a crop top': cleaning up UK sport

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Sport is going through a profound existential crisis. There have been allegations of sexism in the cycling and football world; there is rampant inequality (in November it was revealed that the combined pay of women footballers in the top seven football leagues in the world equals that of Brazilian forward Neymar's).

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With the England women's team set to play in tomorrow's Euro 2009 final, and on the verge of a double with the world champion England women's cricket team unlikely ever to be matched by their male counterparts, it is an apposite time to revisit the feats of the first great British women's football team.

(I am a slouch when it comes to hyperlinking, if that's the term, but people wishing to read more, or indeed check my sources, should visit the wonderful website www.dickkerrladies.com, where Gail Newsham has compiled an exhaustive biography of the most successful women's football team in the world, and there is an excellent article by Chris Hunt, from which I have drawn heavily, at www.chrishunt.biz.)

Let me tell you a story ...

Britain is at war against the Kaiser, morale is low in the factories, output is falling, something must be done. "Let's play soccer," suggests someone, who if he had been born a century later would surely have become a management consultant. This was a call which was doubly heeded at the Dick, Kerr and Co ammunitions factory in Preston. The men took up the challenge. The women took up the challenge.

The men played the women and lost. Little did they know that they were being watched from a window above by an office administrator and big ideas man, Alfred Frankland, who mused to himself, "I tell you what, this lot could fill Deepdale," (the women, that is).

He wasn't wrong. Dick, Kerr's beat Arundel Coulthard Factory 4-0 on Christmas Day 1917 in front of a crowd of 10,000. "Dick, Kerr's were not long in showing that they suffered less than their opponents from stage fright, and they had a better all-round understanding of the game," read a not at all patronising report in the Daily Post. "Their forward work, indeed, was often surprisingly good, one or two of the ladies showing quite admirable ball control."

A dream was born. Stars of the team included ...

Florrie Redford: She's blonde, she's glam, she's Dick, Kerr's No9. The conscience of the dressing room.

Lily Parr: Tricky left-winger. "A 15-year-old with a kick like a Division One back" - The Daily News. Later, playing at Chorley, she would demonstrate this to be true by breaking a professional goalkeeper's arm with a shot struck from the edge of the area with minimal back-lift. Would score more than 900 career goals.

Jennie Harris: Inside-left. A diminutive 4ft 10in, she was the munition factory side's "box of tricks". The wizardess of the dribble.

Alice Kell: Captain. Quality full-back but equally at home at centre-forward (see second-half hat-trick against St Helens Ladies at Goodison in 1920 in front of 53,000 baying spectators, with 14,000 locked out).

Jessie Walmsley: Centre-half with a big, infectious smile. A sort of female Jackie Charlton, if that is not too alarming.

This factory side was deftly improved by Frankland, who would tempt underage girls to Preston with cunning offers of employment topped up with paid-for leave. The policy worked. There was no one who could touch the Dick, Kerr's, who always took to the field in their trademark bubble hats. "Pop" Frankland and his girls needed a new challenge. "I tell you what," he mused to himself, "this lot couldn't half murder the French."

He invited them over. The press were there to greet them at Dover. "Tell me about the Lancashire girls," Madelaine Bracquemond said to them. "They are big, strong and powerful, n'est-ce pas?"

"Come again, Madelaine," replied the 1920s forerunner of Brian Woolnough.

Pop's predictions held up once again. The DK's beat the French 2-0 at Deepdale, 5-2 in Stockport and enjoyed the better of a 1-1 draw at Manchester's Hyde Road. But then, in the game that would make them stars of Pathe and beyond, they were required to play outside Lancashire. In London, of all places. At Stamford Bridge.

It was not just a clash of cultures but a clash of styles. Here's Barbara Jacobs: "The little French women were completely different from these big Lancastrian women. The French were petite and they walked on to the pitch to Le Marseillaise with their arms by their sides and swivelling their hips. They were all small but perfectly formed. This little French team walking on like mannequins, while the big Lancashire women came running out of the tunnel kicking in."

Confusingly, the mannequins packed quite a punch and Harris, all 4ft 10in of her, was knocked unconscious early on. Down to 10 women they lost 2-1. "Of course we didn't underestimate them," said Kell, speaking in the tunnel in front of a "Drink Absinthe" hoarding after the match. "Or allow them to win, but we didn't put in the 'last ounce' as you might say."

They recovered by beating the Rest of Britain 9-1 in the their next game. Not the least of the achievements of the DK's was that, in the days before premium phone lines, all of their money really did go to charity. They worked hard making munitions and then they played hard raising money for soldiers injured by munitions.

As is often the case, they turned out to be too good for their own good. On 5 December, 1921, the FA, conscious that its male players were less easy on the eye and less generous with the pocket, banned women's football on Football League grounds. The minutes of the meeting read: "Complaints have been made as to football being played by women, 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 ... blah, blah, blah." The ban would last 50 years.

"There's always America," mused Frankland and over the pond went the Dick, Kerr's. Playing largely against men, they lost only three matches out of nine. "I played against them in 1922," recalled top stopper of his day Pete Renzulli. "We were national champions and we had a hell of a job beating them."

Back in Blighty, times had changed. Dick, Kerr's had become English Electric and in 1926 they parted company with Frankland. A mistake, one would think, because Frankland's managerial record with the DK's (P 752, W 703, D 33, L 16) has only one 20th-century rival, and that is the Harlem Globetrotters.

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The forgotten story of ... the Dick, Kerr's Ladies football team | Will Buckley

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Will Buckley: As England's women prepare for the Euro 2009 final, it is worth revisiting the feats of the British history girls who took on the world and won

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Alice Woods picks up the ball in the centre of the park. She doesn't need to look up, she knows the run Lily Parr will be making on the left, spreads the ball out to her. Parr's on to it, like a greyhound chasing a hare down the flank. She looks up to make the cross, but no one has kept up with her lightning pace, so she cuts in, past one defender, past two, then she pulls the trigger, bam!

The poor keeper gets a hand to it, but there's no stopping that one, the heavy leather ball cannons into the net. Gooooaaaaaal! The crowd - all 60,000 of them - go mad. One-nil to the Dick, Kerr Ladies, one-nil to the Dick, Kerr Ladies ... Parr jogs over, takes the Woodbine from the mouth of the man at the front of the stands, has a couple of celebratory puffs ...

It might not have gone exactly like that, I'm imagining it. But it is true that during and shortly after the first world war, women's football was big news, and drew the big crowds. Dick, Kerr Ladies (that comma's awkward isn't it, no football team should have a comma), born out of a Preston factory that produced ammunition for the war effort, played the champagne football. Well, brown ale football really, that's what star player Lily Parr used to down a few jars of after a game, while sucking on one of her beloved Woodbines, before going home to her partner Mary.

Now, with Euro 2017 kicking off, and interest in the women's game growing healthily but still a way off those heady heights of a century ago, Clare Balding has made a documentary about it, When Football Banned Women (BBC4). About Lily and Alice and the Dick, Kerr ladies, and about the forgotten golden age of women's football.

Clare doesn't have an awful lot to work with. There's a bit of juddery old footage that speeds up and slows down as the camera operator's arm tires and finds life again. They had good kit, the Dick, Kerr Ladies - black and white, striped shirts, striped hats; I like a footballer in a hat.

Clare goes to Preston to visit Gail, a former player herself and the authority on the Dick, Kerr Ladies. Together they visit the very building that used to be the Dick, Kerr & Co locomotive factory, where, during the war, women packed explosives into shells to fire at the Germans, before taking to the pitch after work to fire those leather cannonballs into the opposition net. It still seems to be a factory of some sort, there are a few men in hi-vis wandering about, probably making feather dusters or something, nothing as dangerous as their female predecessors.

Gail has a scrapbook. And - more thrillingly - a pair of boots, Lily Parr's actual football boots. Gail wouldn't let just anyone try one on but she lets Clare, I think she's a fan. And it fits! Cinderella basically. What happens now? Does Clare get transported a hundred years into the past, to bicycle kick a Lily Parr cross into the top corner?

No, but she does visit a local girls' team, who say all the right things about wanting equality and respect. They all want to be professionals. So who are their heroes and heroines, asks Clare? Steven Gerrard, Phil Jagielka, Romelu Lukaku, Joe Hart ... Oi! Not many heroines in there.

So why did this golden age of women's football come to an end? It was stopped, by men of course - boo! Specifically by the FA, never known for its enlightenment but which demonstrated spectacular spitefulness in 1921 when it banned women from playing football on its grounds. The game wasn't suited to women, it said. And it was worried that not all the money raised from the massive gates was going to charity. How dare women get paid for playing football?

The ban lasted 50 years, but the effects are still being felt today. The back pages haven't exactly been bursting with Euro 2017 coverage. And the highest-paid female, Steph Houghton, probably earns about £60,000 a year, Clare reckons. Alexis Sánchez, who seems to want to follow Steph from Arsenal to Manchester City, wants about the same for a day's work.

It is an extraordinary story. Ripe to be made into a drama, I think, in order to fill in the gaps, and to flesh out the characters, add a bit more action on the pitch (less juddery, still hatted), in the factory, the pub, at home with Mary maybe. Who would play Lily though? Someone from the north of England ... Jodie Whittaker! Except she might be busy.
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When Football Banned Women review - Clare Balding recalls the beautiful game's ugliest decision

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Alice Woods picks up the ball in the centre of the park. She doesn't need to look up, she knows the run Lily Parr will be making on the left, spreads the ball out to her. Parr's on to it, like a greyhound chasing a hare down the flank.

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Equality FC - a level playing field for women

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Lewes Football Club announces today it has become the first professional or semi-professional football club to pay its women's team the same as its men's team, as part of its Equality FC campaign.

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The Women's Sport Trust is the leading UK charity focused on using the power of sport to accelerate gender equality. It was founded after London 2012 with the aim of raising the visibility and increasing the impact of women's sport in the UK.

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Women in Sport Website

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We are Women in Sport. We are transforming sport for the benefit of every woman and girl in the UK.

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Almost twice as many men take part in sport than women. We're working to narrow the gender gap.