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Question -
What do the Football Associations of, England, Holland and Germany have in
common with China's Qing Dynasty (founded 1644)?
Answer - All four governing bodies at some stage banned women's football.
Surprising though it may seem in the light of the boom in women's soccer
during the last decade of the 20th Century - and with the fourth Women's
World Cup finals set for 2003 - the game was cripplingly held back in
earlier times through the prejudice of male-dominated organisations.
The first known records of the game are frescoes of women playing football
at the time of the Donghan Dynasty (AD 25-220). How far women's football
had progressed before the Qing Dynasty came to power is not known, but it
quite obviously never became the Sport of Qings.
Following the draconian ban it was not until the 1920's that football
began creeping into China's school curriculum for girls. Fittingly in the
context of the game's history, the first Women's World Cup was destined to
be held in China in 1991 - and won by America, whose national team had
played its first competitive match only six years earlier.
The old and new worlds of women's soccer were thus symbolically brought
together - though not before further massive hurdles had been cleared
during half a century of the game being played almost as an 'underground'
sport.
As Chinese girls were beginning to play the game in the 1920's, so their
English counterparts were being told that football was "quite unsuitable
for females" in a pompously worded Football Association edict which at a
stroke halted the rapid progress being made.
Perhaps feeling threatened at seeing an attendance of 53,000 for a women's
match played at the ground of Everton FC, the FA Council decreed in
December, 1921: "…. the Council feel impelled to express their strong
opinion that the game of football is unsuitable for females and ought not
to be encouraged….the Council request clubs belonging to the Association
to refuse the use of their grounds for such matches."
It was 34 years later that both Holland's KNVB and Germany's DFB imposed
similar bans, but the effect was similarly devastating and it was not
until the 1970's that the game was released from its shackles.
When women's football at last began to grow on a universal scale the
pioneers were Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The Swedes won the first
European Championships, in 1984, but it was Germany who came to dominate
the competition - they have now won it five times, most recently on home
soil in the summer of 2001.
America, comparative newcomers to the women's game, have won the World Cup
twice and also took the Olympic gold when women's football was introduced
to the competition in 1996. Other 'new' women's soccer nations which have
prospered on the world stage include Brazil, Nigeria and Japan.
The players of the American national team were the first women to be paid
on a full-time professional basis, though in Italy a number of players had
part-time contracts in club football from the 1970's and in 1992 a
professional league was set up in Japan.
A pro league is scheduled to begin in England in 2003, though the rewards
will not compare to those on offer in America's WUSA League. In its
inaugural season of 2001 salaries up to $85,000 were on offer, while top
players can also land six-figure sponsorship contracts.
This is perhaps a reflection of the way that women's football has over the
years been perceived in different countries - as a low-grade, even
unwanted sport where the men's game is embedded deep in a nation's psyche
or as an equal and integral part of a country's sporting culture. What
would those Qings have made of it?
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