HA Lecture | Playing Like a Girl: A History of Women's Football

Wednesday 28th January 2026 | 6pm

Fiona Skillen (Glasgow Caledonian University)

Playing Like a Girl: A History of Women's Football

Football for women has a long history in the UK. The earliest records of women playing football are from Scotland in 1628. The roots of the modern women’s game can be traced back to the 1880s and 1890s and during the First World War, the women’s game became more firmly established. However, on 5 December 1921, the English Football Association (FA) implemented a ban on affiliated clubs allowing women’s teams to use their grounds and the use of FA registered referees, thus undermining and restricting the women’s game. The FA claimed that football was unsuitable for women and that it should not be encouraged. In 1961, UEFA directed its members to recognise women’s football, ending the ban. The FA ban has been well documented; however, the English experience of the ban implemented by the FA has been conflated with the experience of the rest of Britain and Ireland. This talk will offer a more nuanced picture by paying particular attention to the FA ban’s implications for women’s football in Scotland and by discussing its long-term impact on the women’s game in the twentieth century.

Join us for this talk by Fiona Skillen, Professor of History at Glasgow Caledonian History and a leading expert on the history of women’s sport. The event is hosted in cooperation with the Tyneside branch of the Historical Association.

A LIVE Lit & Phil Event | FREE

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Image 1 | Ladies football in Treharris | Image copyright free from Wiki Commons

Image 2 | Ladies Football | Image source copyright free, from WikiCommons

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