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This chapter introduces women's football in a global, professional era. Key in this is an acknowledgement of the male-dominated roots of the sport in many contexts, which has historically served to restrict women's participation. However, we identify the significant growth of women's involvement in football, which has resulted in professional opportunities for women playing and working in the sport. Football organisations are increasingly taking the development of the women's game more seriously and football can be considered a legitimate career opportunity for women. The chapter then identifies the scope of the book, which includes contributions on the lived experience of professionalisation, the processes of professionalisation and the role of commercialisation and media.

One of the most visible discussion points around international level, professional women's football in recent years has been that of gender equitable payment of players. This chapter presents some of the cornerstones of the equal pay debates at play in women's football. First, the emergence of international women's football as a major force in the global sport nexus is highlighted, which has enabled women to be paid to play football as a profession. Second, the historical roots of equal pay debates are presented, before turning to the most public and high-profile remuneration dispute in the sport of football, that of the USWNT versus the United States Soccer Federation (USSF). In this chapter, we outline how the drawn-out legal process has undoubtedly contributed to greater pay parity on the international stage for many professional women footballers and conclude the chapter by offering our thoughts as to the significance, and future, of gendered pay debates in football.

Launched in 2011, the Women's Super League (WSL) has raised the media profile of women's football in England, benefitted from greater sponsorship investment and signalled, for the first time, a more co-ordinated effort by the Football Association (FA) to develop the game from grassroots to international level. However, whilst the FA's insistence that the WSL's future is best secured by clubs aligning themselves with male ‘parent’ clubs has led to more buy-in from English Premier League (EPL) clubs, some historically established women's clubs have been excluded from the highest echelons of the sport or even folded. Clubs' heavy reliance of volunteerism has been retained and salaries, even for internationally capped players, remain modest. There have been criticisms of player welfare (Taylor, 2018b), inadequate support for players' facing racist and sexist abuse (Gornall & Magowan, 2019), poor support for competition structuring (Wrack, 2018a) and a marketing strategy that is centred on heteronormative notions of family (Fielding-Lloyd, Woodhouse, & Sequerra, 2018). Popular discourses have heralded the professionalisation of women's football as evidence of significant progress in gender equality in the sport and as signposting an unequivocally positive future for the game. This chapter will critically assess the FA's conceptualisations of WSL as a neo-liberal project that has not consistently worked in the best interests of all players, clubs and fans and examine the FA's commitment to, and responsibility for, the development of the female game at elite club level.

This chapter provides insight into the professionalisation of women football in the Arab region. In a traditionally conservative geographic area where men's football has only recently turned professional or remains semi-professional, the chances for the professionalisation of women football appear dim; yet some countries are already taking progressive strides. This chapter explores the practical and cultural barriers to women football professionalisation and provides examples of success stories, current efforts in the wake of global trends and the resilience of female footballers in the region. In doing so, the chapter challenges misconceptions and critically examines assumptions around what professionalisation ‘looks like’ within the context presented. The research takes a multi-sited approach, presenting evidence of the women footballing environment from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It utilises an intersectional and transnational lens for analysing women football experiences as shaped by a culmination of the athletes' gender, religion and cultural expectations and as situated within the international women footballing context. The author uses her professional field experience with over 18 years of involvement in elite Arab women football, connecting personal experiences to the study and providing richer interpretive opportunities to the data provided. Her professional participation as a local expert and researcher uniquely positions this study for engagement on the field and sense-making reflective practices and analysis. The study aims to further understandings on women football experiences from an area where there is a great dearth of scholarship on the matter and even less so from local researchers.

This chapter examines the interconnected social, political and economic forces that are shaping and reshaping contemporary football. It identifies drivers but, critically, attributes commercialisation to structural (and not solely) economic differentiation, including the greater interdependence of the sexes in the game. First is a brief overview of the growing significance of women's football within the global sport system. Two zones of prestige exist currently for the professional game, in the United States and England. Questions are raised concerning the uneven effects of commercialisation and the contested values that underpin changes in the women's game. The chapter concludes with some reflections on future developments and research avenues that might be explored.

On 2 February 2020, 99.9 million viewers learnt about the Women's Football Alliance (WFA), the largest women's American football league in the United States, when former player Katie Sowers became the first woman to coach in the Super Bowl. In the same month, the WFA announced several corporate partnerships and a new television deal with statements that connected the support for women's American football to advancing gender equity.

This chapter examines the professionalisation of women's American football in the United States through the lens of mediated visibilities. We use the term mediated visibilities, rather than media coverage, to move beyond how journalists are writing about sport (or ‘covering’ sport) and account for the complex ways in which content about women's sport circulates across producers and platforms in the digital media environment. In particular, our analysis examines the opportunities and limitations of digital media in the process of (semi-)professionalisation of women's American football.

The WFA joined the broader ‘momentum’ of women's sport in the United States as both the league's social media platforms and the sponsors aligned their messages with cultural narratives around women's sport to invoke gender equity in promoting women's American football. Moreover, the league positioned the strategy to enhance mediated visibility the sport as an integral step in the process of (semi-)professionalisation. However, the role of the WFA's digital media platforms alone appears to be limited without substantial structural change.

The Women's Empowerment League, or WE League, was officially launched in September of 2021 as Japan's ‘first professional women's league’. While the WE League was indeed new and categorically different from previous semi-professional leagues in Japan, the declaration that it was the first professional league belied the fact that women's football in Japan had witnessed various forms and degrees of professionalisation over the course of more than 30 years. While full professionalisation is a logical and important goal as women seek equity with men on football pitches and in other sports, I propose that revisiting the history of Japan's women's League provides useful material for contemplating the diverse factors that have motivated support for women's football, driven and derailed international success, and prompted increased professionalisation. Additionally, I argue here that although commercial and advertising interests in women's football have grown in recent years in Japan, the WE League's platform of social welfare and ‘women's empowerment’ is simply the newest iteration of a discourse packaging women's football as emblematic of progressive politics and ‘first-world’ gender norms, which has motivated much of the financial backing – from both the Japan Football Association (JFA) and corporate ranks – of teams and women professionals for the last three decades. Numerous stakeholders have sincere desires to improve not only the status of women's football but also of women in their country; however, the marketing and promotional messaging aimed at furthering those goals commodify critical issues such as women's empowerment and equal opportunity, and thus run the risk of depoliticising them.

Association Football (football) is currently recognised as the world's most popular women's sport (Andersson & Barker-Ruchti, 2019; Dunn & Welford, 2017). In this chapter, we build upon a Foucauldian-informed feminist body of work (e.g. Barker-Ruchti & Tinning, 2010; Liao & Markula, 2009; Markula, 2003) to analyse the impact of the ‘shift in approach and purpose’ in the women's game (Rosso, 2010). And, in doing so, seek to explore how the relations of power operating in the context of women's elite and professional football have changed over the last 20 years. Moreover, we consider the implications of these changes for both elite female players and those responsible for their development and welfare. To achieve our aim, we compare the experiences of two players (Christine and Maria, pseudonyms) from opposite ends of the last 20 years, all the while recognising that the partial and situated insights we provide in relation to these shifts are inevitably tied to the intersections of marginalised (female) and privileged (white, able-bodied, heterosexual, middle-class) subject positions.

The term ‘obrigatoriedade’ is a colloquial shorthand in Brazil for the policy incentivising South American clubs to open a women's division by making it a prerequisite for entry in the ever more lucrative male Copa Libertadores. The focus of this chapter is a balance of how the South American football federation CONMEBOL's flagship policy has impacted upon the gradual professionalisation of women's football in Brazil. On one hand, the policy has already caused a domino effect as a critical mass of clubs seek to imitate the few clubs who have already provided year-round contracts and conditions that could credibly be described as professional. However, there is a strong feeling that the delivery of the policy has left much to be desired. There are no contractual stipulations requiring clubs to offer professional conditions and from an early stage the practice of outsourcing women's football to another entity or club has sent out a clear message that certain clubs have begun by only paid lip-service to the policy rather than truly embracing the women's game. This chapter considers the future possibilities for the professionalisation of women's football in Brazil. Moreover, the plight of long-standing amateur clubs, who have tirelessly championed the women's game prior to the arrival of the larger clubs, is considered.