The Post War Development of Football for Females in England

360 Pages·2014·1.62 MB·English

The Post War Development of Football for Females in England: A
Cross Cultural and Comparative Study with the United States of
America and Norway

Donna Woodhouse

Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research
Department of Sociology
University of Leicester

Submitted for the degree of PhD, Faculty of Social Science, 2002
The Post War Development of Football for Females in England: A
Cross Cultural and Comparative Study with the United States of
America and Norway

Donna Woodhouse
Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research
Department of Sociology
University of Leicester

Submitted for the degree of PhD, Faculty of Social Science, 2002

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The Post War Development of Football for Females in England: A Cross
Cultural and Comparative Study with the United States of America and Norway

Donna Woodhouse

Abstract
This thesis charts, for the first time in any detail, the post Second World War history
of football for females in England, examining the causes of the uneven growth of the
female game. It also analyses the role of the media in gendering discourses around
sport, especially football, and sets its discoveries against the histories of the female
game in the USA and Norway.

A raft of methods was used to generate data, including interviews with people
involved in the female game from the 1940s, to the present day, and surveys of
players, administrators and fans, in order for the thesis to arrive at its conclusions.

The major finding of the thesis is that there is a lack of synergy between the national
policy for female football and its local implementation in England, which stands in
sharp contrast to the situations in the USA and Norway. Whilst the game has made
unprecedented progress over the past decade, its continued growth in England is by no
means guaranteed, as long as the structures of the governing body of the sport, the
Football Association, remain as they are currently. The research has also discovered
that press coverage of the sport operates within a framework of assumptions about
what audiences wish to see and of what constitutes ‘female appropriate’ behaviour. It
also demonstrates that the press invariably portrays the female sport in relation to the
male professional game.

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Acknowledgements
Thanks go to Katherine Knight and Mark Sudbury at the Football Association’s
Public Affairs Department, and Kelly Simmons, the FA’s Women’s Football Co-
ordinator and now Head of National Football Development, Women’s Football
Administrator Tessa Hayward, now Women’s League Co-ordinator and the then five
Regional Directors for Women’s and Girl’s Football who provided information,
advice and access. National Coach, Hope Powell, provided invitations to England
training camps, giving priceless access to international players. Thanks also to
innumerable clubs and individuals who completed questionnaires, gave interviews
and provided information vital to the research.

Brett Lashbrook was key to a successful trip to the Women’s World Cup in the USA
in 1999; his patience and generosity were astounding. Thanks also to journalists in
the USA and Norway and officers from their two national associations for assistance.

At the Centre, Dr. Sean Perkins’ technical expertise and willingness to help distribute
and collect questionnaires has been invaluable, as were his thoughts on football and
community. My office mate, Steve Bradbury, has been tolerant of my idiosyncrasies
and his work on racism and anti-racist strategies in football has constantly provoked
thought. Janet Tiernan, the Centre’s Administrator, kept me organised and stood in
the wind and rain handing out questionnaires.

In terms of fan surveys, we are grateful to Millwall, West Bromwich Albion and
Oldham Athletic Football Clubs who hosted the internationals where the surveys were
carried out, and thanks are due to Lisa Barnett, Matt Cunningham, Richard Higgins,
Sophie Howard, Adam Keay, Greg Lansdowne, Rhiannon Purdie-Sayce and Jon
Scopp for distributing and collecting questionnaires.

Thanks to Iain Lawrie who hates football and thinks sociology is nonsense, but has
kept me entertained royally throughout the writing of this thesis and before.

Many thanks and much love to my family in Barnsley.

This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the
Football Association.

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Table of Contents

Page

Abstract 2

Acknowledgements 3

Chapter One Background, Methods, 5
Issues, Ethics, Aims and
Ethos

Chapter Two History and Theory: 22
Opposition to Female
Participation in Sport

Chapter Three A Brief History of 51
Organised Football for
Females in England, Until
1969

Chapter Four The Women’s Football 71
Association

Chapter Five The Football Association 101
Years

Chapter Six Active Supporters, Players 132
and Administrators of
Football for Females in
England

Chapter Seven Female Athletes and the 192
Media

Chapter Eight International 217
Comparisons: Football for
Females in The United
States and Norway

Chapter Nine Conclusion 268

Appendices
Appendix I List of Interviewees 281
Appendix II Questionnaires 286

Bibliography 309

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Chapter One
Background, Methods, Issues, Ethics, Aims and Ethos

This chapter will look at the reasons why this research project was undertaken. The
methods used for the collection of data and the formulation of theories will be
examined, as will issues problematic within the research. The ethos and aims of the
research will also be discussed.

Background: The Football Association
Before discussing methodologies and theory, and discussing current debates around
sport and gender, it is important to look at why the Football Association (FA) agreed
to fund research around females and football. The proposal to research the female
game in England, the USA and Norway certainly fitted nicely with the fact that the
FA had recently taken over the running of the women’s game in England. The FA
has always been a rather introspective, conservative organisation; ‘The FA might best
be described as “Reithian” in spirit,’ (Russell 1997:91) only ending the distinction
between amateur and professional play in 1974. Recently, the English game has
found itself falling behind internationally, both on and off the field, as external
organisations, such as the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA),
the international governing body of the game, the Union des Associations Europeenne
de Football (UEFA), the governing body of the game in Europe, and the European
Union via the Bosman Ruling, which allows players to be released on free transfers
from their clubs at the end of their contracts, began to have a greater influence on the
game. The formation of the powerful English Premier League in 1992/93 also forced
the FA to be more reflexive, in terms of its structures, ethos and aims.

The FA is currently undergoing some of the most significant changes in its history.
During 1998/99, the FA’s internal structure was the topic of public debate, when its
two most senior officers were forced to resign over a cash for votes scandal; in
responding to this crisis, and subsequent ones, the 92 person FA Council was shown
to be cumbersome and its composition unreflective of the modern game. The
enforced resignation of Glenn Hoddle, from the post of England men’s coach, and a
floodlight failure/betting ring debacle were also national news at this time, and the FA
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found itself on the back and front page of national newspapers with regularity. These
pressures forced the FA to rethink its relations with ‘the outside world.’

An example of the ‘modernising’ of the FA’s dealing with the game can be seen in its
decision to use academic institutions to research aspects of football, both in terms of
sports science and sociology. Liverpool John Moores University carried out work
analysing play at the men’s World Cup in France 1998, and the late 1998/99 season
playing performance of Manchester United, and Loughborough University is working
in the area of sports science with the England international women’s squads to
support the FA’s Talent Development Plan. Academic research, sponsored by
organisations such as the FA, could then been seen as a further part of the
‘feminisation’ of football, the opening up of the game to non-traditional ways of
thinking and developing; the use of diet and fitness training to prolong player careers,
the celebration of the skill and finesse of overseas players, the redevelopment of
stadia and the widening of the spectator appeal of the game. This is a massive shift
from the earlier FA years where, as well as adopting a strong anti-commercial stance,
the governing body was insular, withdrawing from FIFA in 1920 and 1928.

As a discrete, historical piece of research, the FA wanted, for the first time, to see the
post-Second War history of the female game mapped. They wanted statistics,
powerful weaponry in the current climate for attracting corporate sponsorship, media
coverage and funding from other bodies, particularly the National Lottery. They also
wanted to examine what they had done, and not done, in the past which had stifled the
female game, and they also wished to know if their current plans were guiding the
game in a way perceived as positive by those outside the FA who are involved in the
sport.

Methods
The research has employed a raft of methods to generate data. The Sir Norman
Chester Centre for Football Research (SNCCFR) carries out numerous, large scale,
national surveys of football fans for the Premier League (1994, 1995, 1996, 1997,
1999a) and also for the Nationwide Divisions (1999b). As we wanted to gauge the
views of a large number of fans, players and administrators, it was decided to utilise
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this survey design, distribution and analysis expertise to ascertain the views of
samples of those groups. The data generated from previous SNCCFR surveys was
invaluable to the FA Premier League and Football League in terms of assessing fan
needs, opinion at the grassroots club level about its development measures and
measuring whether its initiatives had addressed old and emerging issues for players
and organisers.

However, questionnaire produced data often lacks the richness of its more qualitative
companion and, so, a number of interviews were carried out to gain a feel for the
views of people involved in the game. This use of multiple methods may loosely be
described as ‘bricolage,’ a pieced together, close knit set of practices which provide
solutions to problems in concrete situations (Denzin and Lincoln 1994:2). Drawing
on the cultural studies tradition, the approach used was pragmatic, strategic, reflexive
and multi-method, in order to try to produce breadth and rigour in the investigation.
With this type of work, the bricoleur carrying out the research should have a
knowledge of debates around their field of study, but should also be aware of their
personal history and how this may influence their research and approaches.

Qualitative research, in this project in the form of interviews and focus-group work,
has been labelled ‘soft science’, too personal, or journalistic, and has been criticised
for its lack of theory. This more naturalistic, qualitative approach has been viewed by
some as an assault on the pure science of positivism which seeks to measure
responses, claiming that positivist methods of analysis avoid the value laden data
produced by the qualitative approach. However, whilst qualitative methods are open
to researcher bias and can be difficult to replicate, they have been used in this research
to document the experiences of those involved in the game. Partly, this is because the
history of the game has never been fully documented, and as the former and current
governing bodies have few records, clubs have been poor record keepers and media
coverage is scant, the most sensible way of accessing the game’s history appeared to
be through those who had been, and still were, part of it. However, practicalities
aside, qualitative methods would have been utilised even if the game’s development
had been well documented, as interviewing, face-to-face interaction with agents, is a
method of becoming part of the network of people who need to be accessed to gain
information and, unlike questionnaires, interviewing allows for the gathering of
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names of other likely subjects (snowballing) and allows researchers to ask questions
there and then in response to what the interviewees are saying. The fact that Holt, for
example (1989:8) reports the history of sport as being the history of men in sport,
should also encourage us to think of women as excluded, as not having been given a
voice before, so opportunities to allow females to speak should be taken. The choice
of the qualitative as a research method then came about as a response to practicalities
and because of a personal belief that participants voices should be heard.

Quantitative methods were used in the research, in the form of questionnaires, simply
because they were the most practical way of reaching a cross-section of people
involved in the playing, spectating and administration of the women’s game. Room
was left on questionnaires for respondents to leave contact details and to write
additional comments so that they were not completely bound to closed response
questions and, if they had mentioned topics which might be usefully explored, or had
indicated that they knew of people who might prove to be useful contacts, they could
be contacted. The responses from the questionnaires also helped to inform some of
the topics addressed in later interviews. The use of such quantitative methods was
useful to the FA who lacked any detailed picture of who was playing and
administering the game at a local level and required this type of information for its
monitoring of equal opportunities, to gain feed back on its running of the game and to
present to potential funders and the media in order to try and gain additional exposure
and support for the game. It also allowed the FA to build up a database of fans and to
identify geographical areas and issues where more work needed to be focussed, or
from which best practice could be drawn. Quantitative work, obviously, has
weaknesses. It is inflexible for the respondents, who are tied, mainly, to a set of
options from which they may not deviate. Whilst this approach’s proponents may
claim it is unbiased, questionnaires are designed by researchers who are carrying
ideas with them to their projects, ideas which my taint the design of surveys and,
therefore, the results they produce. For this reason, this quantitative method was used
in tandem with qualitative ones, so that the weaknesses of each was counter-acted by
the strengths of the other.

Denzin and Lincoln (1994:5-6) claim that qualitative and quantitative research differs
in five ways. Firstly, both approaches were originally shaped by positivism, which
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claims that knowledge is obtained from scientific observation and testing, and can be
used to predict social behaviour via pre-established laws, just as prediction is possible
by definite laws in the physical sciences. However, qualitative researchers place far
less emphasis on statistical measures and may use methods which generate statistics
as a way of identifying small groups to involve in qualitative research. The second
difference is that contemporary qualitative researchers see positivist approaches as
just one way of viewing the social world, no more or less valid than other ways of
seeing, a position rather more generous than some standpoints, such as critical theory
and post-modern schools of thought, who thoroughly reject positivistic approaches.
Thirdly, whilst both qualitative and quantitative methods are concerned with the
individual’s point of view, qualitative researchers would view quantitative methods as
too distant for capturing this view-point, just as data generated by, say, the extremely
focussed qualitative life history method, would be regarded by positivist researchers
as too impressionistic. The fourth difference is that the qualitative researcher is more
likely to examine the constraints the social world applies to individuals, whereas they
would view quantitative research as divorced from this everyday experience. Finally,
quantitative researchers are simply not as interested in detailed description as
qualitative ones, who value the rich texts produced with subjects. One does not have
to chose to ‘be’ one or the other, or to tie oneself exclusively to one set of methods,
but one’s theoretical standpoint, one’s epistemological or ontological beliefs, may
lead to a valuing by the researcher of qualitative over quantitative approaches or vice
versa.

Obviously, the reading of literature relevant to the project took place and, as the
research was sponsored by the FA, via their Public Affairs Department, an
examination of the portrayal of footballing females by the media was carried out, with
an examination of Times coverage of the Women’s FA Cup Final throughout the 30
year history of the competition. Whilst England was the focus of this particular
analysis, the media’s relationship with the game in the USA and Norway was also
examined, particularly during a research trip to the Women’s World Cup in June/July
of 1999. Our good relationship with the FA meant that we had early and easy access
to their documentation and were also privy to internal documentation relating to the
development of the game and challenges to the FA’s orthodoxy on football for
females. We were able to talk with employees of the FA, to get their feelings for the
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