- Raising Our Game Europe 2025 – known as ROGE25 – was in focus at FIFPRO’s Women’s Player Summit
- ROGE25 is co-funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ Programme and aims to develop tools and resources to support player associations for women’s footballers
- Initiative’s first findings were presented to hundreds of participants, including players, member unions and stakeholders at FIFPRO House in June 2023
Over 100 footballers, member unions and stakeholders gathered at the 2023 Women’s Football Summit in June at FIFPRO House in Hoofddorp, Netherlands to engage on industry topics. The 2023 edition showcased fruitful sessions on organising, working conditions and collective agreements in women’s football – as well as highlighting the work of Raising Our Game Europe 2025.
Co-funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ Programme and done in collaboration with the University of Bordeaux, ROGE25 is designed to develop tools and resources to support player associations with promoting equal opportunities, access, and inclusion for women’s players.
FIFPRO Europe are carrying out the project with seven partner unions (Cyprus, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia), and five affiliate unions (England, Greece, Scotland, Spain, Sweden).
"It was exciting to finally bring everyone together on the ROGE25 project at the Women’s Football Summit," said FIFPRO Europe General Secretary Joachim Walltin. "We're now almost six months into the program and for us it was important to meet other unions, project partners, and stakeholders."
As part of the project, FIFPRO Europe and the University of Bordeaux sent an extensive survey earlier this year to the 12 European football player unions – based on the ‘wheel of conditions’ designed by FIFPRO – which aims to measure the degree of professionalisation of the countries involved.
The preliminary findings were presented and discussed at the Women’s Football Summit. The consolidated results show that contracts, education, and social protection are the more advanced areas in the sample, while access to remedy, health and safety and, freedom of association and collective bargaining, are areas that require significant improvements.
Caitlin Fisher, senior researcher on the project, said: "As part of ROGE25, we are exploring together the uneven professionalisation trajectories in women’s football and the implications of growth on labour conditions—and where we can learn from each other."
"According to our indicators, Spain, Italy and Sweden are the most professionalised women’s soccer leagues," said Nicolas Delorme, an associate professor in sociology of sport at the University of Bordeaux who led the survey. "Interestingly, even if their global scores are roughly similar, their profiles are substantially different: they are not excelling in the same areas. The same occurs with the less professionalised leagues.
"The next step of the study will consist of making a cluster analysis to gather the leagues according to their strengths and weaknesses. The toolkit will thus include specific solutions for each identified sub-group."
FIFPRO Europe will work together through capacity building and action research workshops with women's footballers to develop a three-part toolkit on sustaining player union work in women’s football – guiding players in social dialogue, and movement-building for social change.
"We met the criteria of the EU Commission and their own gender equality strategy: ‘A Union of Equality’ (2020-25)," said Walltin. "The next steps of this project will be coordinating workshops with the unions involved in this project, and then the players, with the overall objective to strengthen our unions so they can support women’s players and increase the professionalisation of women's football."
Learn more about ROGE25
