Fair play

Voices from the future of women's football

When you saw players’ fashion endorsements and millions gathered in pubs and back gardens across the country to watch the final, it became clear: the 2023 World Cup was *a moment* in the women’s game. And yet… from headlinestealing abuses of power and pay disputes to an injury epidemic and England’s overwhelmingly white starting 11, great strides clearly still need to be made. Here, insiders pull back the curtain and share their tactics for levelling the playing field

As told to:

IZZY ARON

Sixty-nine miles per hour. That’s the speed at which Lioness star striker Chloe Kelly’s penalty whooshed into the net during England’s World Cup knockout game against Nigeria. As well as securing the team a place in the quarter-finals, Kelly’s penalty smashed records: it was more powerful than any Premier League goal in the 2022-23 season.

While the Lionesses didn’t bring home the trophy, they still felt like winners. (That the victors – Spain – had their moment marred by that kiss from now-ex Spanish football president Luis Rubiales, is a whole other story.) Their 2022 Euros performance created unprecedented levels of excitement around women’s football – upon which they capitalised to get the government to pledge to provide girls and boys with equal access to all sports in PE.

According to the Football Association, 2.4 million more women and girls in England participated in football in 2022-23, compared with the previous season. Attendance at Women’s Super League (WSL) games continues to grow, too – in the 2022-23 season, it was up 170% and the attendance record for a WSL game was broken on the first day of the 2023-24 season, when Arsenal played Liverpool at the Emirates Stadium in front of a crowd of over 54,000 people.

Alongside the wins, though, there’s still much more to be done. According to Sport England, from November 2021 to November 2022, 2,012,900 boys played the game, compared with 777,400 girls. And, at the pro and semi-pro levels, pay disparity is a huge issue. According to Fifa, the average salary across all clubs is $16,825 (around £13,850), while in 2022, BBC analysis suggested the average WSL player earned £47,000 a year. In comparison, Premier League players earn an average of over £3m per year. Fifpro, the international players’ union, looked into the conditions for players when qualifying for the 2023 Women’s World Cup and found that 29% of those surveyed received no payment from their national team, and 66% of players had to take unpaid leave or vacation time from another form of employment to participate.

Pair that with the reality that 25 players weren’t able to represent their team because of the same physiological problem – injuries to the anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL – and it’s clear that while we rightly celebrate the achievements of women’s f