Football’s Familiar Fear of the Frisson of Female Sexuality

Karen Dobres reflects on the modern echoes of the 1921 women’s football ban –
which the all-male FA council deemed necessary to ‘safeguard their wombs’

A political trick of the right in the UK and the US is not open hostility towards women but concern for us.

Restrictions are not presented as a form of discipline or control but as protection. Limits are called ‘care’ and power reveals itself with an avuncular hug.

Across America, anti-abortion laws are being justified as safeguarding women from regret or harm, rather than as a mechanism for controlling reproductive autonomy. The revival of the ‘tradwife’ culture is marketed as a celebration of femininity, as though encouraging women back into economic dependence is an act of reverence rather than regression.