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Article: The role of women in football

By voyage reporters Oliver Trenchard and Joe Makin

During the rise of the WAGs, the role of women in football has been a glamorous, but peripheral one. Will the Women's World Cup in Germany have the power to change that?

The career of dreams

Ask any young boy, British or German, about what he'd like to be when he's older, and chances are you’ll get the reply: "footballer". Especially in the UK, the players seem to live in a parallel fame universe, and are almost considered as super-humans. What is the role of women in football though?

Wives and Girlfriends

Since the 2006 World Cup in Germany, WAGs (Wives & Girlfriends) have become famous in the UK, as some people argued that they affected England's performance in the World Cup. WAGs also became famous in Germany during the 2008 European Championships when Michael Ballack publicly stated that he wanted to ban his fellow German team mates from seeing their WAGs.

Women as footballers

Scarily, this influx of WAGs seems to be the desired career choice of lots of young girls nowadays, but will the same happen to men during the 2011 Women's World Cup in Germany? Will people be talking about HABs (Husbands & Boyfriends)? With the Women's World Cup, this could be a platform for women's football to reach out across the world and become as popular as men's football.

Upcoming World Cup

There is no doubt that the German women's football team has been one of the dominant teams on the women's football scene for a long time, with the English women's team struggling to keep up. Perhaps the World Cup will encourage more British and German girls to take up the sport – and help to balance out the inequalities between the two genders.