Women’s National Teams on the Rise Before Pandemic
Employment Market WomenNews
07 May 2020
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Women’s National Teams on the Rise Before Pandemic
07 May 2020
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The number of active women’s national teams rose sharply in the three years prior to the coronavirus pandemic, thanks to player activism, according to research in FIFPRO’s Raising Our Game.
Seventy-three percent of federations fund an active women’s national team, up from 55% in 2017, the report says, citing March 2019 data. FIFA qualifies active national teams as having played at least five matches in the previous 18 months.
In comparison, 100 percent of the federations organized a men’s national team.
All national team football is currently suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic. FIFPRO is working with other football stakeholders to continue the development of the women's game, and mitigate the effects of the pandemic.
From Raising Our Game: womens football report (click on the image to download the report)
The data shows that, before the pandemic, more than one in four FIFA-affiliated federations still did not organize regular football matches for a women’s national team.
Africa had the highest amount of inactive women’s national teams at 28, followed by Asia (15), Central America (8), and Europe (5).
The improved participation data between 2017 and 2019 is partly down to activism by South American women players, who have successfully campaigned for more support from their national federation.
By the end of 2016, six of the ten women’s national teams in the region – Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay – were removed from the women’s FIFA rankings as a result of inactivity of more than 730 days.
South America Women Football Forum in Santiago de Chile, 2018
Federations in some of these countries stopped funding their national teams because there were no financial incentives available to them outside the Olympics or FIFA World Cup.
Women players in many of these countries fought back, campaigning for better treatment. Some set up their own unions or staged public protests. In 2018, FIFPRO helped mobilize them by organizing the first FIFPRO South American Forum in Santiago de Chile.
According to Raising Our Game, South America and Oceania were the only regions in the world with a full quota of women’s national teams last year.
Top photo: Argentina's national team appeared at the 2019 Women World Cup in France (Photo Hollandse Hoogte)
