Women versus men
FSL emphasises that its feminism is not about women versus men. Following American author bell hooks, we believe that everyone stands to gain from the adoption of feminist values: feminism is for everybody. Nevertheless, there is a historical instance of women versus men in sport that is rather intriguing and leads us to question something that is usually assumed to be natural and permanent.
Jean Williams is author of a number of books on women’s football. In her excellent History of Women’s Football (Pen and Sword, 2023) she mentions several instances of women versus men football matches. These were mainly in the early days of women’s football. Following World War I, women would sometimes play against recovering soldiers. Portsmouth Ladies FC would play men’s teams for want of other opponents and there were many women v men charity games reported in and around 1917. There is mention of women playing men even as recently as the 1970s.
It is striking, reading this history, how the development of the game challenges an assumption that now seems so necessary and obvious. This is the assumption that sport must always, and will always have been, sex divided. The sex division of sport seems unchallengeable now, almost giving the impression that it would have been a foundational postulate of sport itself, from its very inception. Williams’s history shows that this is not the case. In football, as in other sports, sex-division was introduced only gradually. Women would play with and against men until they were stopped from doing so.
Indeed, in 1902, the Football Association first tried to ban women playing against men. The FA had already been around since 1863 when such games in theory were permitted or, perhaps just as likely, the FA could not even conceive of such a game occurring. And still ways were found to circumvent the ban. As quickly as 1903, the women beat the men 3-1 in a match in Biggleswade, despite the women being two players short.
Women playing with men was perhaps even more common. There have been many stories, like that of Therese Bennett, who played with the boys until she was 12, but then was not allowed to continue. Only in 2015 was this age limit for mixed games raised to 18 by the FA. Current Lionesses star Lauren Hemp has spoken of how she feels her game benefitted from playing with a boys’ team, until it was no longer allowed.
Sex division in sport is neither inevitable nor natural. It came about through human choice, albeit the same choice in a number of different sports. Was it the right choice and are there ways in which women athletes suffer from it? In football, there is an obvious disadvantage. Unable to play with men’s teams beyond the age limit, lots of young women give up the sport because there is no women’s team close enough to join. And even if a women’s team can be found, it will have far less access to funding and facilities than the men’s team would. Taking it a step further, might there be ways in which men suffer from sports being divided too, in being part of a single-sex environment? The division by sex is now the most striking feature of sport, with the most significant impact on access. It’s in our hands to think whether there is another way – and possibly a better way – to organise sport.