Despite deeply-entrenched abuse, misogyny and inequality, women’s football hopes to score big at World Cup

A million tickets have been sold for the Women’s World Cup that would roll out from July 20, spread across Australia and New Zealand for exactly a month.It’s the most expensive instalment of the still nascent tournament — FIFA allocated $435 million for organising the tournament. The total prize money is an all-time high too — $150 million, five times the sum two-time defending champions USA bagged in the previous edition—although it’s just a third of the bounty Lionel Messi and Co pocketed in the men’s World Cup. FIFA believes it could be the single largest standalone sporting event for women ever.It’s a moment of victory — though abuse, misogyny and inequality clutch the sport across the globe, though it is still treading the elementary stage in its cycle of evolution, though there is still an underlying assumption that this is more of a token event, FIFA conducting it for the fear of being labelled regressive in a progressive society (best exemplified the governing body dispensing the broadcast rights as a bonus package of sorts to the winners of the men’s World Cup).

🇺🇸 @AlexMorgan13’s mission: To win her third #FIFAWWC! 🫡@USWNT | #BeyondGreatness
— FIFA Women’s World Cup (@FIFAWWC) July 15, 2023
It still lives under the shadow of the most powerful and popular sporting empire in the world — men’s football— but at least it need not be played clandestinely, away from the public gaze, in the dark, as it was for most of the last century.
Women’s football, its incongruous version, exed as early as the seventeenth century. The first recorded women’s match happened in 1881, when Scotland and England encountered, dressed in corsets, heeled boots and bonnets, so that they conformed to Victorian standards or morality.
The rise ran parallel to the Femin and Suffragette movements in Europe and Great Britain. The contempt was reflected in an article in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine entitled Modern Mannish Maidens: “We heard the other day in a certain locality of that eminently boyish and manlike game of hockey being played promiscuously ladies and gentlemen, we confess we were fairly aghast! After this, we need not be surprised if, as rumour tells us, there has been contemplation to start a ladies’ football club.”
Still, they thrived and drew spectators to the ground, but Britain suspended it from 1915 to 1919 under the pretext of the war, though the real reason football horians believed was that they feared the money gathered from packed stadiums would be funded communs and Suffragette movements before it was outlawed for 50 years from 1921 to 1971, as the FA deemed “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged.”

2017 EURO champion.2019 World Cup final. 2022 EURO champion. 2023 World Cup _______?
Will Sarina Wiegman lead the @Lionesses to #FIFAWWC glory? 🤔
— FIFA Women’s World Cup (@FIFAWWC) July 15, 2023
So did France in 1932, West Germany in 1955, Norway in 1931 and Brazil in 1941. Most outrageous was the rationale of the German football association’s defence: “This aggressive sport is essentially alien to the nature of woman. In the fight for the ball, the feminine grace vanishes, body and soul will inevitably suffer harm … The display of the woman’s body offends decency and modesty.”
Italy, an exception
Italy was an exception and in 1970 Federation of Independent European Female Football (FIEFF) based in Turin staged an unofficial women’s World Cup. It was the first of what was called Mundialitos, or little World Cups, an invitational tournament where a few countries would vie for the trophy.
It would continue to the mid-1980s, even as football associations began to gradually lift the ban, though not yet seized a drive to uplift the sport. A law passed in the US in 1972 too would go a long way in spreading the sport in the US, Known as Title IX, it insed: “ No person in the United States shall, based on sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assance.”

Sam Kerr 🤝 Scoring hat-tricks!
One last rehearsal for the Matildas, then the party begins 🥳 #BeautifulMoments with @Xero pic.twitter.com/dRa1O3Gu0q
— FIFA Women’s World Cup (@FIFAWWC) July 14, 2023
Most significantly, it guaranteed equal rights to federal financial assance. It’s perhaps the foremost reason the USA is the most successful women’s footballing nation, four-time champions and in pursuit of a hat-trick this time.
FIFA’s experiment
Finally, in 1988, FIFA warmed up to the concept of a World Cup for women. As an experiment, they hatched a women’s invitational in China in 1988. It turned out to be a success, attended thousands, and three years, and 61 years after the inaugural men’s World Cup, the first Women’s World Cup was staged in China. But with trepidation.
It was called the World Championship for Women’s Football for the M&M’s Cup — the governing body cleverly avoiding FIFA-prefix, lest it turns out to be a failure. It was not, on the contrary, it was a massive success with 75,000 attending the final when the USA beat Norway in the final before a crowd of 65,000 at the Tianhe Stadium in Guangzhou. Then-president João Havelange wrote, “Women’s football is now well and truly established.”

Hege Riise: A Norway legend 🇳🇴
– Score in a #FIFAWWC final ✅– Win the Women’s World Cup ✅– Manage the national team ✅@nff_landslag | #BeyondGreatness
— FIFA Women’s World Cup (@FIFAWWC) July 13, 2023
However, the environment was amateurish. There was no prize money (they did not have it until 2007), players were entitled to an allowance of $15 a day, and the jerseys were surplus ones of the men’s team and were outlandishly oversized.
Players from different countries were stacked into an aircraft — for instance, the US team stopped over at Oslo and Stockholm so that they could pick up the Swedish and Norwegian teams as well. Some of them travelled in trains and boats.
Half a dozen players shared a dorm at a bed-and-breakfast. Teams shared the kitchen, bonded over dinner and made impromptu parties. Even the officials did not wear FIFA badges or stickers. But what hurt them the most was the duration of the games, 80 minutes instead of 90. US captain April Heinrichs sarcastically commented: “The organisers are afraid that our ovaries were going to fall out if we played 90.” Duly, from the next edition, they began to play a full 90 minutes.
The most iconic moment
But the most iconic moment came in 1999 when America’s Brandi Chastain converted the final penalty of a tense shootout against China to win the World Cup. She celebrated taking off her shirt to reveal a black sports bra, with 90,000-odd watching at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl. It was arguably among the most iconic photographs ever taken of a female athlete; a metaphorical moment of liberation for women’s football.

Camaraderie on and off the pitch. 👊
Denmark’s journey to the #FIFAWWC. 🇩🇰
— FIFA Women’s World Cup (@FIFAWWC) July 13, 2023
Years passed on, stars like Marta, dubbed the Pele in Skirts, burst forth, money poured in and women’s football began to emerge from the shadow of men, albeit without its glamour or hype. Games are less physical, but smoother and without too many interruptions. Fewer cards are brandished, a sign of discipline and the spirit of the game.
Subsequently, financial investment, professionalisation of the game in 2018 after the Women’s Super League makeover and increased media attention all contributed to its steady growth.
Still, it’s far from a fully-fledged entity. There is a disparity in the wages for men and women — English players had threatened to boycott the tournament lest there is a semblance of pay parity. There is a dearth of opportunities and exposure.
Among the 32 teams, only half the teams have professional players among them. Some countries like Canada have suspended the professional league.

Some of the nations have only played friendly games in the last four years. Zambia had as many as 23 consecutive friendlies. In South America, Brazil featured in 18 friendlies in a row, while Colombia and Argentina both had 16.
But a more clutching cause for alarm is the prevalent allegation of harassment, often sexual, around the world in recent times. Cases have been reported in Haiti, Venezuela, Zambia, Argentina, and Colombia in the last two years alone. Last year, an investigation into abuse and sexual misconduct in women’s football in the US delivered a damning verdict.
“Our investigation has revealed a league in which abuse and misconduct-verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct-had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches, and victims,” the report read.
The concerns of women footballers are several but every instance of success on the global stage is a victory, a beacon of hope towards an equal world that glimmers in the dance and another step to burn the deeply-entrenched patriarchal narratives and perspectives.