Alternative Influence single, Time 4 Her to Shine, released April 2025 (available on YouTube)
The UEFA Women’s Football Championship of 2022 spotlighted the excellence of the women’s game, smashed through gendered stereotypes and, with the Lionesses bringing England victory, impassioned women and girls across the country to watch, support, and play football. One trailblazing summer of sport convinced swathes of traditionally men’s football fans to set aside their commonly-spouted sexist attacks on the ‘sub-par’ quality of the women’s game and finally take a real interest in the sport.
These bigoted attacks still exist, but are being counterbalanced by a wider understanding of the gap in coverage and investment between the men’s and women’s game, and the fact that the sexist FA banned women from using their pitches and facilities for 50 years from 1921 to 1971. Initially England’s FA had shown an interest in giving cautious support to the wartime women’s football matches as long as the players could be heralded as plucky munition workers – ‘the Munitionettes’ – serving the imperial war effort. However, once working class women began to play and use football as a means to raise funds for striking, locked-out miners, the FA retracted support and enacted the ban on the women’s game.
This reactive, oppressive ban, copied by Canada’s football association, not only stifled the women’s game at home, but prompted a series of similar bans and sanctions in other European countries including France, Spain, and West Germany – in a period of deepening conservative political movements. Most outrageous of all was the ban on women’s football (and several other sports) that was imposed by a legal decree of the president of soccer-mad Brazil in 1941. This made it fully illegal for women or girls to play football. Brazil’s prohibition lasted until 1979. In short, the perceived ‘sub-par’ quality of and lack of interest in the women’s game is rooted in systems of male chauvinism, sexism, and misogyny.
Alternative Influence’s new single Time 4 Her to Shine celebrates the incredible strides being made by women’s players, teams, and leagues across the country to remedy this gap. It champions the role models across the sport empowering women and girls to join their local team and support their local club.
The release of this track comes at a critical time, as the FA has banned transgender women from playing the women’s game – from the grassroots to professional level – following the Supreme Court ruling in April. The FA’s decision is a huge blow to the women’s football, which has been a beacon of inclusivity, accessibility, and progress for years. We must keep fighting until all women are, once again, welcomed and included into the game. We welcome the release of Time 4 Her to Shine as an important contribution to that fight.
Cait
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 306 June/July 2025
