Women’s football didn’t just appear randomly it took lots of set backs before it started to create growth and popularity around the world, the readings looked into how women’s football started with key milestones throughout the early 20th century. The readings look into both Europe and the US growth of the sport.
The readings both use similar ways to say that the main start to women’s football’s popularity is through moments where society temporarily allowed women more roles in the public eye, like world war 1 when the men went to fight, as well as it evolving alongside immigration. After this women’s football wasn’t just ignored the men actively sought to get in the way and put a stop to the games, for example they ended up being banned by the FA in 1921 due to men trying to push them out after returning from the war.
Even when the women were allowed to play they faced other issues due to their gender, the readings emphasize issues like their clothing, bodies and negotiating social boundaries, these are all things not found in the male game and are only due to femininity. As well as these issues women faced issues with how they played, typically most games were internal or semi organised, showing their growth and how they navigated their way to be able to play organised football.
The main differences in these readings is showing how one focused more on how football grew in the US vs the other emphasising it on a more global scale. Over in America women’s football was mainly played in colleges and informally which is how it gained its popularity as over in England there were leagues just facing challenges of their own. Either way they both showed similar patterns in the growth showing that it grew big during the war times, and began with a strong early interest, which then followed by pushback after the men returned, all showing that they were treated as if they were insignificant
I think these are both really cool and informative pieces and both look at different areas of the world but almost tell the same story. I also think that more recently women’s soccer has become even more popular and more widely accepted in recent times, but there was clearly always an interest and it would have been interesting to see its development if it wasn’t scrutinised in its early development.
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