We are encouraged to believe these are unprecedented times for women’s football, days of financial plenitude, corporate sponsorship and unparalleled fandom. This year’s World Cup in France, running until 7th July, is seen as a pivotal moment. The first time England’s lionesses have attracted such attention—all of their matches will be broadcast on BBC One—and the team’s first time competing in such a well-attended, prestigious tournament.
Football’s governing body, Fifa, wants us to believe that women’s football has never had it so good. But history tells a different story—and it’s one that those who run football would rather was forgotten.
In August 1971, Harry Batt boarded an Aerovías de México flight from London with his wife, June, and 14 young women whom he had picked to represent England in a World Cup. The teammates eyed each other nervously as the aircraft thundered down the runway. Several players had never been abroad, let alone so far afield. But, as the team’s centre-forward Jan Emms (née Barton) recalls, trepidation soon gave way to excitement. “We were like, ‘Yeah! We’re on our way to Mexico, we’re gonna play in the World Cup! It doesn’t get any better than this.’”
Batt, who was secretary of the Chiltern Valley women’s team, believed in women’s football. He assembled his England squad in spite of repeated warnings from the Football Association, which was still enforcing a decades-long, nationwide ban on the women’s game, ensuring it retained its amateur status. Fifa, meanwhile, refused to sanction a women’s tournament.
The 1971 World Cup was organised by a rival women’s football federation and funded by the beverage brand Martini & Rossi. Mexico had hosted the men’s Fifa World Cup in 1970 so the stadiums were impressive and the crowds primed. Thanks to Martini & Rossi, no expense was spared. England and the five other teams, Denmark, Argentina, Italy, France and Mexico, were afforded everything the male players had enjoyed the previous year: impressive kits, a tournament mascot, a golden trophy and five-star accommodation.
The opening ceremony took place in a packed Azteca Stadium. Emms, who was used to playing for Batt’s team at Chiltern Valley, was astounded. “Going from one man and his dog watching on a Sunday afternoon to standing in front of 100,000 people was just incredible,” she says. “We had to have a police escort wherever we went because people just followed us, cars just followed us. We had people outside the hotel wanting pictures, wanting autographs.”
The games themselves were fierce. Two England players suffered leg-breaking tackles in their opening game against Argentina—a huge blow to such a small squad. “It deflated us a bit,” says Emms. “Then there was the heat and the altitude. It took everything out of us. Val—our captain—ended up in hospital on a drip.”
After two defeats, England was out of the tournament. Batt returned to London with his broken-limbed side, who were, despite everything, still on a high from the whole experience.
But the comedown was immediate. Batt was hauled in front of the FA and the whole Chiltern Valley team was banned from playing as punishment. “We were hoping at least we’d have some publicity,” says Emms. “But the publicity we got was negative. We ended up with a ban. We ended up with poor old Harry being hauled over the coals and given the biggest ticking off when he should have been praised.”
Several months later, Chiltern Valley was permitted to play again. “We were back in Luton on an old pitch with mud and ruts,” says Emms. “We looked round and wondered what happened to the Azteca Stadium with all the fireworks going off and all the parades and everybody shouting and chanting. But that was how it was, so we just got on with it. We had the memories and no one could ever take those away.”
In that brief moment, women’s football had independence and parity—but it didn’t last. “What made [1971] special was that it was not sold by Fifa,” says Jean Williams of Wolverhampton University, whose extensive research helped bring this long-buried story to light. “But ever since Fifa took control of women’s football, they’ve assumed that it’s a sub-brand to the men’s game.”
Despite insisting otherwise, Fifa’s disdain for women’s football is still all too evident. The prize money for the 2019 World Cup is $4m, twice the 2015 sum, but only a fraction more than the salary of Fifa president Gianni Infantino. Nothing is allowed to interfere with the men’s World Cup, but the final of the women’s will have to compete for attention, on the same day as the finals of the biggest men’s tournaments in South America and North and Central America. To underline this persisting inequality, there is significant protest: Norway’s Ada Hegerberg is refusing to play for her federation; the US national team is suing theirs for equal pay.
Watershed moments of the past should remind us that progress is hard won and easily halted. The 1971 World Cup was organised and supported by men who were confident there was a business model for women’s football. Williams wonders, “The tantalising question is, where would women’s football be now if we’d had the Martini & Rossi approach, rather than the Fifa approach?”
