"Complaints having been made as to football being played by women…"

July 18, 2024 11:45 AM

Dick, Kerr Ladies is a website by Gail Newsham about the legendary women's soccer team of munitions factory workers who started playing in 1917 and who routinely played against other women's teams for tens of thousands of paying spectators, until a combination of misogyny, fear of competition, and assholery, led the English Football Association to ban women's football from professional grounds. John Simkin has written short biographies of Alice Kell, Lily Parr and many other pioneering female footballers. On a recent episode of their football history podcast It Was What It Was, Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper tell the story of Dick, Kerr Ladies and place them in historical context.
posted by Kattullus (7 comments total)

(this post inspired by running into a female footballer working in a café who, if she'd had the exact same career but been male, would be a multimillionaire in any currency… things have improved wildly from even ten years ago, but there's still a long way to go)
posted by Kattullus at 11:52 AM on July 18 [4 favorites]

I only found out this week that women's football was banned in the UK in the post war era. Disappointed but not surprised. I've also been enjoying describing the Euro tournament as 'the men's football'.
posted by terretu at 11:53 AM on July 18 [5 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. I'd heard Newsham talk on R4 a while ago, but didn't know she had put a site up. Some of the action pictures are amazing.
posted by paduasoy at 12:21 PM on July 18 [2 favorites]

Think how many times England could have won the World Cup if out forebears had achieved any kind of enlightenment. It would be like Real Madrid hoovering up all those European Cups before anyone else got interested. You would never hear the end of it.
posted by biffa at 1:03 PM on July 18 [3 favorites]

This just reminded me, off to see Brazil v Japan next weekend in Paris. Exciting!
posted by biffa at 2:29 PM on July 18 [2 favorites]

And there is still this: 'It wouldn’t happen to the men': Wakefield AFC women’s team dropped.
posted by paduasoy at 12:45 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]

Tifo football also has a trio of videos about early women's football:
When Women's Football Was Banned
Lily Parr: The Greatest Female Footballer Of All Time
How Suffragettes Formed The First Women's Football Team
posted by juv3nal at 2:27 PM on July 19 [1 favorite]