When it comes to sport, England is often a pioneer. The glorious history is known: football was born in the posh gardens of private schools. However, certain aspects of the adventure, in particular when the English women wanted to follow the movement initiated by their peers, remain in the shadows.
Today, women’s football shines all over the world. He is preparing to be celebrated during the English Euro, from Wednesday July 6 to 31. But it must be remembered that this was only made possible thanks to the will of a few enthusiasts.
Welcome to England…
All roads lead to #WEURO2022
It’s not too late to purchase tickets
— UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 (@WEURO2022) June 29, 2022
It all started in 1881. Football was only a few years old at that time, but it was already meeting with great popular success across the Channel, where the phenomenon went beyond the hushed surroundings of the Oxford or Cambridge campuses, to spread across the UK. However, in this Victorian period, it seems inconceivable that women could lose themselves in activities considered masculine, such as football.
“In the English patriarchal society of the late 19th century, women had the right to engage in physical activity”, underlines the journalist Hubert Artus, author of the book Girl Power. “These activities could even take place in public but they had to necessarily pay homage to their grace. This is why they were enjoined to do dancing or horse riding in particular. In no case were they supposed to practice a sport which ‘damages’ them and which could endanger their function as a parent…”
Hubert Artus goes even further in analyzing the mentalities of the time: “Women should not do competitive sport because the disciplines where one measured oneself against others were exclusively reserved for men”. However, some brave “ladies“will shatter the opacity of these archaic traditions.
On May 9, 1981, a perfume of audacity and scandal surrounds a very particular event: the first football match between women. It is held in Edinburgh and opposes Scottish and English players. A thousand onlookers flocked to the edges of the Easter Road Stadium to discover these girls kicking a ball. But, far from triggering cheers and admiration, the match ended in chaos, with some male spectators invading the field at the end of the match to insult and even molest the players.
If no written trace remains of this event, the specialists agree that the men had been ulcerated to note that the women were able to play the same duration of match as them. “It completely challenged their beliefs about the supposed greater frailty of women”, confirms Hubert Artus. The latter also links these acts to a “moral opposition because the women showed their knees there”.
Doomed to public loathing, women’s football nevertheless experienced an unexpected new boom during the First World War. British women are requisitioned en masse to work in factories, mainly those that manufacture weapons, in order to support the war effort. “We were concerned about the physical health of these ‘munitions’ because it could have consequences on production”explains historian Xavier Breuil. “They were therefore offered to play sports but instead of dancing as was the norm at the time, these women chose to reproduce what their fathers or husbands did..
From then on, football was no longer just tolerated, but encouraged. “As with factory work, there was a patriotic dimension to the practice of this sport. Women played for charity and to support the country during the war”, continues Xavier Breuil. There are Thus “about fifty clubs during the war, and 150 in 1920”.
However, shortly after the end of the conflict, everything stopped again. In December 1921, the English Football Federation suddenly decided to stop the practice of football by women. In practice, this translates into the ban on professional clubs masculine to support women materially and financially. This decision will not be officially lifted until 1971.
“The reason given by the Federation was that the proceeds of these matches were not donated to charity, some players receiving a small salary, but the real motivation is that the leaders did not want women’s football “, decrypts Xavier Breuil. “They had authorized it in 14-18 to support the war effort but now these gentlemen wanted a ‘return to order'”.
These same gentlemen do not see favorably the emergence of a discipline that overshadows male practice. Xavier Breuil recalls that “vsome women’s matches have been played in front of more than 50,000 people, notably at Everton’s Goodison Park. IThere was real competition with men’s football”.
It is therefore in confidentiality, almost in hiding, that the English will have to continue to make their way. After the Second World War, meetings took place through classified advertisements plastered on the streets.
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Once again, ostracism lurks. “Women had to practice other sports. In Great Britain more than in France, there was a very strong political dimension”, supports Xavier Breuil. “Football was seen as a way to integrate into the British nation and when men could, it was out of the question for women to do the same. Women were again excluded from the public sphere”.
By dint of perseverance, British women will continue their integration efforts, even though the male patrons who financed them were moved by obscure motivations. “Lhe teams were often supported by businessmen who saw in women’s football an iconoclastic side which attracted people and which could allow them to get rich. A bit like women’s wrestling a few years later…” deplores Xavier Breuil.
In the end, these pioneers “simply claimed the right to play footballconcludes the historian. They were feminists because they campaigned for equality between men and women in the practice of a sport. Euro 2022 is thus a way of celebrating them.