Forward and Backward: Women's Soccer in Twentieth-Century India

Football now permeates every aspect of daily life. It was not like this 10 years ago. Companies now realize the huge benefits of trying to tap into women's interest.

—Nick Baron, the Football Association's spokesman for England Fans

England's progress in the World Cup is likely to draw record interest from women, as the notion of the "football widow," annoyed and alienated during high-profile matches, becomes a thing of the past. For the first time, marketing of the World Cup is being directed toward women, particularly younger ones, as companies attempt to cash in on the growing popularity of football. High Street stores, including Top Shop, have produced World Cup merchandise like bikinis and underwear, printed with the cross of St. George and other slogans designed to show support for the England team.

Both the Football Association (FA) and television companies expect record interest in the tournament from women, and about 15 percent of England fans in Japan with the official England supporters' club will be female. Pubs and clubs also expect many women will watch England during morning broadcasts.

Female football merchandise is one of the fastest-growing areas in the marketing of the game at club and international level. There has always been England merchandise aimed at men during a World Cup, making it a multimillion-pound industry, but many firms now feel that similar merchandise for women could prove just as lucrative. Umbro, which makes the England kit, has produced an England team shirt taking into account the female body, and an England team dress bearing the three lions crest. Top Shop has England World Cup products aimed at women in all of its three hundred stores, with a glitter England bikini and England beach towels proving the biggest sellers.¹

In contrast to the upbeat nature of women's soccer in Britain, women's soccer in India continues to languish, hardly comparable in popularity to its British counterpart. Women spectators, key to the popularity of football in Britain,² are still rarities in India, with football still regarded as a male domain, a taboo for respectable middle-class women. In contrast to their counterparts in Britain, most women footballers in India are members of the lower classes who try their luck at soccer with no other means of livelihood in sight.³ Women's soccer associations continue to stagnate in India, financial crisis being a permanent component of the women's game. Leading stars are hardly given due recognition, and jobs offered to women soccer players after they stop playing are clerical rather than management level. It is common to see noted women footballers starving after retirement, often rescued from their plight by welfare organizations and sports enthusiasts.

Given these circumstances, the Women's Football Federation (WFF) will be hard pressed to make a difference in the near future.⁴ However, it would be improper to hold the WFF solely responsible for the gloomy picture surrounding the women's game. Rather, the attitude of the Indian male, the nature of the development of urban Indian societies after Independence, and the story of women's emancipation in India have all had a role to play in crippling the development of women's football. Always keen to relegate women to the household, the average Indian male has hardly ever encouraged the women in his life to play soccer. Looked on as a sport unsuited to women, given their physical build, women's soccer is still a taboo in average Indian middle-class homes. Daughters or wives playing football are considered a disgrace for the family, and ostracism from society is the outcome of such forays into the public sports arena. Under such circumstances, women are often forcibly stopped from playing football, while in many other cases women hardly ever attempt to play, having grown up...