"Ladies in the football field!" proclaimed one incredulous headline in 1895. "Lady footballers?" sneered another. And the papers were filled with satirical cartoons depicting women on the pitch with restrictive bodicesThe close-fitting upper part of a dress. and flouncyLoose, material-heavy and mobile. skirts.

The 1880s and 1890s saw the first established women's football teams, as women fought to be included in the sport which had long been regarded as too rough and masculine for them. But it inspired such outrage that the audience violently charged the pitches at their earliest games in 1881 and threw projectiles at the teams.

A ban on English women's football by the FA was in place until 1971. And England did not establish a fully professional women's football league until as late as 2018.

But yesterday, England's Lionesses did the country proud after bounding to a rousingExciting; moving; interesting. victory against Australia in the Women's World Cup semi-finals. They are on the brink of England's first World Cup win since 1966, for either the men's or women's teams.

The Lionesses have broken record after record since crashing onto the scene, with some arguing that they far outpaceOutperform; perform better. the men's team.

And yet women in football are paid much less, with a gender pay gap worse than in politics, space and medicine. The average Women' Super League player earns just £47,000 per year compared to an estimated average of £5 million for male Premier League players - meaning that men earn almost 100 times what women earn in the same profession.

But for some, the success of the Lionesses signifies a seismicOf enormous size or effect. shift which could trigger a movement towards gender equality in the sport. The match drew a record-breaking crowd, increasing on the global trend towards women's sport in recent years.¹ They say that it is only a matter of time until women's sports become level with men's.

But for others, football is not the field to build our progressiveIn a political context, the belief that society can be transformed in the interests of ordinary people. It is normally associated with the politics of the left. future. For one, even as women's teams grow in popularity, there is little women's leadership. According to Women in Football, only 5% of licensed coaches and 9% of board members in the UK are women. 

And, as many have pointed out, commercialRun or maintained to make a profit. football is famous for its exploitative practices. Allegations of poor labour practices, human rights abuses and use of sweatshopsA shop or factory in which employees work for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions. plague the sport - and the most exploited workers tend to be women and children

Yes: Women have long fought for the privilege to play sports on an equal basis with men, and we are rapidly progressing towards that goal. Today's victory showed that we need to support and uplift women's teams.

No: How could this be a historic win for gender equality when football is famed for being such an exploitative sport? Besides, it adds nothing to women's rights and opportunities on the other side of the world.

Or... Since the problem was never with women's playing, the success of women's teams will not help to dismantle the patriarchal structures that hold women's sport back. We will only have equality in sport when we have equality in every other area of life.