Showing results for "Football" in Gender Studies

Before Mary Earps, Jess Fishlock and Lucy Bronze, a generation of trailblazing women's footballers defied the odds. In 1921, the FA banned women from playing football in England, but these rebels refused to quit. Leaving behind jobs, families and their homeland, they travelled across Europe in search of professional opportunities. This groundbreaking book uncovers their untold stories: the original Lioness who started a new life in the Netherlands as a teenager, the first woman of colour to play for England, the girl who turned down international recognition to play in Italy.

With the triumph of England's Lionesses at Euro 2022, the women's game has been in the spotlight like never before, enjoying unprecedented media attention. But this is the result of decades of struggle to get women's football–banned by the English FA for fifty years–on a more equal footing to its male counterpart. 

Though it burst into public consciousness only with the 1999 World Cup, women’s soccer has been around almost as long as its male counterpart, flourishing in England during and after World War I. Beyond Bend It Like Beckham presents the first in-depth global analysis of the women’s game - both where it has come from and where it is headed. Though women in the United States and Canada still fight for equal treatment and funding, their situations differs markedly from the hostility, abuse, and even outright bans that some women still encounter.