Maria Zuiderveld
Södertörn University, Sweden

Women’s Football in Africa
176 pages, hardcover, ill
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge 2024 (Women, Sport and Physical Activity)
ISBN 978-1-03-266561-0
For the first time in history, Marocco in 2023 participated in the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. The success of the Atlas Lionesses bore witness of change, as the president of a sporting club told BBC Sport Africa: “It was not easy in the past to have a lady playing football,” “Today, it is very easy. You see the parents coming with them, they push the ladies, they negotiate with the school to get slots for extra training.”
Women’s football in Africa is on the rise. Morocco was far from the only African country in the 2023 Women’s World Cup. Zambia, South Africa and Nigeria also qualified, with stars like Rasheedat Ajibade and Hildah Magaia among the teams.
Chuka Onwumechili’s book Women’s Football in Africa, tells the story of those who have paved the way for this to happen and the resilience among the women who refused to give up the love of the game. The book also describes the challenges that persist for women and football in African countries.
For example, Nigeria had women playing football in 1930 even though there was still a colonial ban on women in football
The book consists of 10 chapters, presented in a chronological order. In the first chapter, Onwumechili provides a historical background and documents the development of women football in Africa. This chapter gives many examples from media reports of games at the time. Onwumechili describes the long history of women playing football in Africa. For example, Nigeria had women playing football in 1930 even though there was still a colonial ban on women in football (p. 42). Onwumechili captures the development in the early history of women and football in Africa:
Importantly, the colonial government implemented its threat to prevent access to its grounds. This meant that women footballers lacked funding to play in municipal grounds where they could attract paying spectators. Instead, they confined their play to schools. The school grounds were more accessible because several of the women players were students and playing on their grounds or wherever they could find an open space within the school premises was possible. (p. 10)
Three chapters focus on specific countries that have fostered particularly successful women football national teams. Some of the countries described in the book are Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Cameroon and Senegal. Onwumechili also talks about the rise of interest for women football among the fans. However, as he points out, there are regional differences in Africa regarding women’s possibilities to play and pursue a career in football depending on several factors.

Further, there are also several chapters on the current situation for women in football and specific obstacles concerning women playing football. Some of the structures that hinders women that Onwumechili brings up are social and cultural attitudes, prejudice as well as financing and funding.
The last chapters of the book deal with the future challenges of women and football in Africa. One point is the lack of gender equality among the leadership of women football teams. According to Onwumechili, only 3 out of 12 teams in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in 2023, had women as managers (p. 107). Thus, there are structures of gender inequality that cuts through the field of women and football in Africa.
However, there are some sections that could have benefited from more nuance and complexity. One example is a more profound description of the gender gap in African countries concerning education, political participation etcetera. This could have allowed for a deeper understanding of specific obstacles a woman have to pursue a career as a professional football player. Further, the book focuses on the development in Africa, but this description could have been deepened by a comparison at the same time in history withthe situation of women footballers in other parts of the world.
Nevertheless, Onwumechili’s book is about progression towards more gender equality in sports in an African setting. This is a welcome contribution to the field of research of gender perspectives on sports. Yet, it is also another proof that we need to view sports not as an isolated phenomenon but as an integrated part of society.
Copyright © Maria Zuiderveld 2024