Women's association football

Women's association football, more commonly known as women's football or women's soccer, is the team sport of association football played by women. It is played at the professional level in multiple countries and 187 national teams participate internationally. The same rules, known as the Laws of the Game, are used for both men's and women's football. After the "first golden age" of women's football occurred in the United Kingdom in the 1920s, with one match attracting over 50000 spectators, The Football Association instituted a ban from 1921 to 1970 in England that disallowed women's football on the grounds used by its member clubs. In many other nations, female footballers faced similarly hostile treatment and bans by male-dominated organisations. In the 1970s, international women's football tournaments were extremely popular, and the oldest surviving continental championship was founded, the AFC Women's Asian Cup. However, FIFA did not allow a woman even to speak at the FIFA Congress until 1986 (Ellen Wille). The FIFA Women's World Cup was first held in China in 1991 and has since become a major television event in many countries. Women may have been playing football for as long as the game has existed. Evidence shows that a similar game (cuju, also known as tsu chu) was played by women during the Han Dynasty (25–220 CE), as female figures are depicted in frescoes of the period playing tsu chu. Annual matches being played in Midlothian, Scotland are reported as early as the 1790s. In 1863, football governing bodies introduced standardized rules to prohibit violence on the pitch, making it more socially acceptable for women to play. The first match of an international character took place in 1881 at Hibernian Park in Edinburgh, part of a tour by Scotland and England teams. The Scottish Football Association recorded a women's match in 1892. The British Ladies' Football Club was founded by activist Nettie Honeyball in England in 1894. Honeyball and those like her paved the way for women's football.