
- The National Association of Chilean Women Footballers (ANJUFF) has presented a report reflecting the inequality women footballers suffer compared to male players in Chile
- The report showed that only 10% of Chilean women players are full-time footballers and that more than half stated that they had been victims of acts of gender discrimination in their careers
- Fernanda Pinilla, an acclaimed player and ex-president of ANJUFF hopes that from now on the Chilean football authorities will take a different approach to the problem
“Now that we have hard facts, figures and numbers, providing empirical proof of what is happening to women players in Chile, we have changed the picture. Before this, they laughed at our claims and accused us of caricaturing women’s football. Now they’ve seen that we were not joking at all.”
These are the words of Fernanda Pinilla, a 28-year-old player and perhaps one of the most iconic figures in the Chilean women’s national team. She welcomed the fact that after decades of complaints and requests for investigation, it has been possible to capture the reality of women’s football in this South American country in an objective report.
In October, ANJUFF, together with the University of Chile, presented an ambitious report entitled “An In-Depth Study of Women’s Football in Chile”. Through surveys, interviews and comparative figures, this document traces the reality of what women footballers have to go through to be able to practise their sport.
In doing so, it also highlighted the enormous disparity that still exists between women’s and men’s football and laid bare the huge number of obstacles that women have to overcome in order to play football professionally.