Women’s Football

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Once again, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) for her excellent and detailed speech and for securing this important debate. I also thank all those who continue to make women’s and girls’ football the fastest growing sport in the United Kingdom. Over the past decade, we have seen more and more clubs take on a women’s squad on a full-time basis, and grassroots football has made huge progress in ensuring that more women’s teams are able to thrive.

I grew up playing football, and as a teenager I absolutely loved the game. Many of my fellow female MPs are keen followers of the game, as we have heard today, and I am sure they will agree that it offers so much more than purely health-related benefits. Football taught me about communication, teamwork and competition. Had I not been given the opportunity to train at an academy, I doubt I would have had equal access to football and its many benefits. I am so grateful to have this opportunity to speak today on behalf of all the women and girls who simply do not have the same access to our national game as their male counterparts.

Progress in increasing participation has been made largely by the unsung heroes of the sport: the volunteer coaches, referees, administrators and community groups, without whose efforts women would not even have access to the game. Too many girls who love playing football constantly find themselves facing unnecessary barriers. For example, girls often cannot access teams because there are so few teams playing in organised leagues that it is not possible to get a proper fixture list together. That is why it is really important that we are here today looking at how we can best support new and existing women’s clubs so that women can have equal access to playing football, and that goes for all programmes, both amateur and professional.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central outlined, the professional women’s team in my own city of Coventry, Coventry United Ladies FC, was recently narrowly saved from liquidation. The club experienced significant financial pressures as a result of the pandemic, meaning it was forced to enter voluntary liquidation days before Christmas. Players and staff faced losing their job at the worst possible time. The club would have gone bankrupt, were it not for the 280 private donations from community members and an eleventh-hour takeover by a local midlands-based energy company that helped provide the necessary funds to keep the club afloat.

Even though the team has now survived this ordeal, the episode serves to highlight the systemic challenges still facing women’s football. The players were left in a precarious position after they were told that their contracts had been terminated. In a sport where women already have to contend with short contracts and low pay, these players also had to deal with the near collapse of their team with no safety net.

The barriers that women in professional football face are not only financial but cultural. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central about Durham University’s recently published report examining UK men’s football fans’ attitudes to women’s football. This study was, sadly but unsurprisingly, the first of its kind. Ridiculously, 68% of those polled thought women should not participate in sport at all, or if they did, that they would be better suited to more feminine pursuits than football. This attitude is appalling and is reflected in how unequally women’s football clubs are treated in this country.

The change in tone and in the perception of women’s football needs to be set from the top. If the Government truly want to create equality between men and women in football, they must do more to support women’s football clubs. As a proud sponsor of Coundon Court Ladies FC in my constituency, a former amateur player and a lover of the game, I urge the Government, mayors and local governments to do everything they can to support women’s football.