2023 Women’s World Cup: Australian football suffers despite Matildas

Just 50 years ago, Australia was so indifferent to its first national women’s football team that only recently did it actually begin figuring out who was in it.

And yet, these days, Matildas captain Sam Kerr is the face of football in the country – something unimaginable for a female player even a decade ago.

So watching her beloved team kick off their World Cup campaign on home soil, you’d be forgiven for thinking that women’s football in Australia is fast catching up with the men’s game.

A green and gold sea of more than 80,000 cheering fans filled the Sydney stadium, while almost two million more were glued to their screens across the country.

Demand for tickets for last Thursday’s match was so great organisers had moved it to a venue almost double the size, and before the tournament even opened the Matildas had sold more jerseys than the Socceroos managed during – and since – last year’s men’s World Cup.

But the Matildas’ growing profile obscures a women’s game which in Australia is often still left to beg for scraps from the men’s table.

“The Matildas’ success is definitely despite the structures and environments that exist here in Australia, not because of them,” Samantha Lewis – one of Australia’s top football journalists – told the BBC.

Former Matilda Sarah Walsh, who is now the head of women’s football at the national governing body, says the women’s game has been suffering from a century of neglect.

The first official women’s football match took place in Australia in 1921, but by the end of that year associations around the world had followed England’s lead in deeming the sport an endeavour unsuitable for women.

For 50 years women’s football was effectively banned nationwide, and for much of the other 50, it wasn’t a priority.

“Our game [is] so underdeveloped, we’re almost starting from scratch,” Ms Walsh told the BBC.

But female participation has become the fastest growing area of the game – expected to spike even more thanks to the Women’s World Cup – and Football Australia wants to achieve gender parity by 2027.

Four years short of that deadline, three-quarters of players remain male. Like most sports, football leagues across the country have been struggling to retain women and girls.

The inequality they face when starting out at grassroots level is still well entrenched.

Female players say they’re turfed off the best fields and time slots. Many teams report subsisting on meagre support, with referees and club officials – like coaches – prioritised for men’s teams. And research shows at least 96% are forced to wear ill-fitting uniforms made for men – often hand-me-downs.

At many clubs, women don’t even have their own changing rooms.

Simple things like freshening up after a game or managing their periods become a battle for privacy. Often there are too many urinals, not enough cubicles, and the showers – if they even have doors – don’t lock.

When Jaya Bargwanna started playing football, it was a barrier she quickly became acutely aware of.

Instead of using half time to recoup with her teammates, the new mother often spent the 15-minute break running around, trying to find a quiet and safe place to breastfeed her daughter.

“At most places that means you sit in the back of your car,” she told the BBC.

Ms Bargwanna’s club has recently made a concerted effort to change – from building new, government-funded change rooms to erecting a scoreboard that includes the achievements of women’s teams.

They’re basic gestures – but they feel massive, Ms Bargwanna says.

“It shows… not only are we part of a club, we’re important to the club.”

But it isn’t just the everyday inequalities that deter female players – many struggle to see a professional future in the game.

Elite training opportunities for women and girls in the country are scarce, and pathways to the top unclear and convoluted.

For example, Ms Lewis says, in the A-Leagues – Australia’s only professional competition – almost every club has a youth academy to turn boys into stars. But for the girls it offers only two.

That can leave hopeful players like Madi Wright feeling lost and disillusioned.

As a child hell bent on keeping up with her older brothers, she fell into football, and fell in love.

Tiny but talented – earning her the on-field nickname of Mighty Mouse – Ms Wright had lofty ambitions.

“My number one goal was always to play for the Matildas,” she told the BBC.

“I felt like playing soccer was my purpose in life.”

But as she grew older and more skilful, she also grew discouraged.

Frustration at the discrimination female players faced, from the sexist jokes to the opportunity drought and lack of recognition, ate at her resolve.

And by the time her possible break finally came, in the form of an offer to join a football college in the US, she feared chasing her dream would be a fruitless and expensive pursuit.

It felt like she was faced with leaving her friends and family in Australia or shelving her dream. She chose the latter – a decision she now regrets.

“I had a little voice in the back of my head telling me that I might not even be good enough to go all this way and spend all this money.

“I kind of got to a point where I was like, will it even be worth it?”

It’s a familiar conundrum for many promising female players, as often even those who ‘make it’ still struggle to earn a living.

In 2019 the Matildas inked a landmark equal pay deal – a phenomenal achievement considering just six years earlier the players were still required to wash their own uniforms.

But for women in the A-Leagues, football remains a part-time, semi-professional endeavour.

The players union says most earn around the minimum wage, which last season was about A$20,000 (£10,500; $13,500). They are forced to juggle extra jobs – and often study – with their playing careers, while the top male player in the A-Leagues pockets A$2m.

And the women also have shorter seasons – meaning less game time, and less chance to develop than both their male counterparts and international peers.

“It’s no coincidence that our current World Cup squad is made up almost entirely of players who play for clubs outside of Australia, where they’re given the resources, pay, and facilities to be full-time athletes,” Ms Lewis says.

A similar story is reflected in the ranks of female coaches, referees and administrators. Only one in five football coaches across Australia are women – at the elite level, it’s just three – while only 13% of all match officials are women.

These are issues Football Australia knows it needs to address. Infrastructure, career pathways and female participation throughout the entire game are all identified as key areas where improvement is needed to cement the legacy of the Women’s World Cup.

But the key issue – their root cause – is the same which suffocated the women’s game a century ago.

“The biggest inequality of all [is] the ongoing cultural assumption that women’s football is not worthy of equal funding, visibility, or treatment,” Ms Lewis says.

“We’re still having to reshape beliefs and attitudes towards women’s place in society,” Ms Walsh adds.

And that is where the Matildas progress is most pronounced.

The team has busted the myths about the quality of women’s sport, the audience for it, and the money it can make – in fact the Matildas are now a stronger brand than the Wallabies, Australia’s national rugby union outfit.

And so while the breakthroughs at the Matildas level are largely yet to flow through all levels of the game, change is coming, Ms Walsh says.

“Everyone [is] pulling in the right direction.”

For Ms Wright, now 22, much of that change will come too late. But the Matildas success has given her the courage to try and work towards a professional football career again – despite the odds.

“I think I’ll always have that dream – to be realistic with myself, it’s possible, but right now it’s very very hard in Australia.

“But maybe for the little Madis in Australia, this gives them some more hope for the future.”