WOMEN'S FOOTBALL - AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

4.1 Since the early 1970s, there has been a gradual increase in the numbers of women players in England.. By 1989, there were 263 women's clubs and around 7,000 players, in 1990, 314 and 9,000 registered players and the figure for 1992/3 was 450 with 12,000 registered players (figures from the Women's Football Association). The figures for the 1997/98 season are 1000 girls teams, with 20,000 players and 700 women's teams with 14,000 players, giving us a figure of 1700 teams with 34,000 registered players, all told (figures from the FA.). It has also been estimated that up to 215,000 women played football in the UK in the late 1990s (Boyle, 1998) Figure 1 shows the increasing number of women's football teams in Britain and Figure 2 the increase in the number of registered players.