The F.A.’s ban of women’s football 1921 in the contemporary press–a historical discourse analysis

Abstract

On the 5th of December 1921, the English Football Association (FA) issued a ban prohibiting women’s football matches from taking place on pitches owned by clubs associated with the FA. Thereby the sport’s practice was not forbidden but its development was significantly hindered by restricting access to facilities. The FA’s decree was the centre of much debate in the newspapers of the time. A discourse evolved around the question of prevailing gender roles as well as challenges thereof caused through the practice of football and sport by women. Many statements implicit to this discourse were frequently linked to a much wider disparity between contemporary traditional gender norms and the ascent of female emancipation due to the circumstances during and after the First World War. This paper employs a method of historical discourse analysis to assess and analyse statements within the newspaper discourse and contribute to the research about women and gender in sport and beyond. Moreover, the paper aims to render visible the ways in which questions of gender and its socio-political importance were already a matter of contention in the early twentieth century, mirroring some of the debates in academic circles nowadays.