The biggest ever Women’s World Cup is taking place in Canada with 24 national teams and as part of their record-breaking coverage, American network Fox Sports has been discussing research carried out at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU).
Jean Williams, senior research fellow and deputy head of the Sports History Research Group within DMU’s International Centre for Sports History and Culture (ICSHC), has published three books ‘A Beautiful Game’, ‘A Game for Rough Girls’, and ‘Globalising Women’s Football’ on the history of women’s soccer and recent trends in professional player migration. FIFA, the sport’s worldwide governing body has funded some of this research as has the European confederation, UEFA.
Jean was invited to summarise her pioneering research in a keynote speech at the prestigious Duke University in North Carolina, USA, in April this year, hosted by Professor Laurent Dubois, Director of Forum for Scholars & Publics at Duke University, and Dr Josh Nadal.
The keynote focussed on research agendas and policy debates discussing history and in particular the ban by the English FA on women’s football from 1921-1970. Many other national associations followed this example by banning women’s football until FIFA took control of the women’s game in 1969.
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Points raised by Jean’s keynote speech were then brought up during Fox Sport’s record-breaking coverage for the ongoing World Cup by former Mexican captain Monica Gonzalez in discussion with her fellow panellists, which include England women’s all-time top scorer Kelly Smith.
The channel has had viewing figures of over a million people per game, and some of the highest audiences ever for its dedicated soccer coverage.
Jean said: “The opportunity to speak at Duke University was particularly exciting because it brought together leading academics as well as industry practitioners in the US and Canada. These included Carla Overbeck, former Captain of U.S. National Team, and her team mate Cindy Parlow Cone who helped to win the World Cup in 1999. Media analysts included Shireen Ahmed; Sarah Gehrke, the Media Relations Manager for Washington Spirit and Monica Gonzalez.
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“It’s a good example of how historical research can have an international public audience, particularly my recent work on professional female player migration. This is the biggest ever women’s World Cup with 24 teams and what we’re seeing in this tournament is the growth of women’s soccer as a more global sport.”
“With England’s Kelly Smith anchoring Fox’s coverage to some of the largest audiences for soccer that the channel has ever had, it demonstrates what new opportunities there are for female soccer stars worldwide.”
This is not just an academic interest - several of those at the Duke event are writing blogs and opinion pieces for Sports Illustrated. A multi lingual line-up of writers is also analysing the history of teams and addressing contemporary concerns, such as the rules concerning hijabs, for players who wish to wear headscarves.
Jean is very much enjoying the current tournament and has a few ideas as to who will reign supreme in Vancouver on July 5. She said: “Germany are always impressive in major tournaments, however, the US are looking really strong too. And with so many new teams, there could be an upset yet. Cameroon are really exciting to watch as their 2-1 win over Switzerland indicated.
“The great thing about it so far is that we’re seeing a lot of new stars like Colombia’s striker Lady Andrade. It’s to be hoped that the next tournament will be expanded to 32 teams to give more women’s team the opportunity to play on a world stage with wide scale media interest.”
England's women are next in action when they take on the winners of the 2011 competition Japan at 00.00am on Thursday on BBC One.
Posted on Monday 22 June 2015