News Center- Wherever there are men and women, one can talk about inequality; unequal pay, employment, opportunities, and chances. Women have struggled with the mindset of saying, “Women cannot understand” in all areas and they have faced this discrimination deeper in football. Women were marginalized and they stayed out of football for years. Therefore, the struggle to exist in such a gendered area is also quite painful.

History of women's football

Football, which arose as the “invention” of men in the early 19th century, has been a game mostly played and directed by men. In two-thirds of the 20th century, women were officially banned from playing football. Despite bans, women began playing football in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Women founded their own football league in France in 1902; the first official football match between two women's teams in Sweden was played in 1918 and women participated in organized football in Austria in 1923. Football became popular among women during wartime in the UK. Women started working in many areas including factories. The women working in factories began to play football during lunch-breaks. In 1921, there were approximately 150 women’s football clubs in England. On 5th December 1921, the Football Association issued a statement and banned women from playing football by saying “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.” Hostile attitudes towards women's football showed themselves not only in England but also in different countries in the 1940s. For instance, in Germany, women were banned from playing football between 1955 and 1970. In 1941, Brazil’s National Sports Council banned women from participating in sports such as football, boxing, and decathlon and that ban remained in effect until 1979. Thus, as a result of bans all around the world by sports organizations, women had to stay away from playing football until the 1970s.

What was the situation of women's football in Turkey?

The situation of women’s football in Turkey faced the same bans until the 1970s as all around the world. Women began to establish women’s teams and played football as teams in the 1970s. But the archives write that women played in football matches in the 1950s. Moreover, the newspapers wrote the Izmir and Istanbul women's football teams played a football match organized within the scope of the Istanbul Sports Festival held in 1954 and 1955. Turkey’s first women’s football team is the Kınalıada Girls’ Football Team (also known as Istanbul Girls’ Football Team) founded in 1969. They played with men’s football teams because there was no other women’s football team. In the 1980s, women’s football teams founded in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. In 1985, the first women's football tournament is held in Istanbul. In 1985, The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) took steps to form the Women's League; however, the establishment of the league was postponed on the ground that there weren’t enough women’s teams. Eight years later, The TFF decided to establish a women’s league and the league became active on April 2, 1994.