Whilst rights are rolled back, women’s sport intensifies the resistance

Siwan Lillicrap, the former Wales captain, was my rugby coach at the time. One Wednesday evening we sat in her office as she prepared to play in the Six Nations that weekend. Lillicrap often played rugby twice a week and fitted gym sessions and rugby training around her full-time job. She and her team-mates had to take annual leave to play, not receiving a penny.

The men, meanwhile, playing in the same tournament were paid handsomely. I had just finished my politics degree, and it was the injustice, not the rugby, that caught my eye. I felt something between feminist rage and inspiration that I hadn’t felt before. Or at least not since I watched Bend It Like Beckham when I was six. The film’s plot of a girl called Jess breaking her family’s rules to play football was the first time that I felt the itch I’ve been scratching ever since. I love seeing women do things they are told they shouldn’t. I pitched Lillicrap’s story to The Times and six years later, I’m still writing about women’s sport.

Today’s final was a milestone at the end of this summer of women’s sport, and a point to assess how far women’s rugby has come and still has to go since that conversation with Lillicrap. Here was the final, between England, who have been fully-professional since 2019, and Canada, who had to crowdfund their way here.

Yet as stadiums around the world are being filled with unprecedented enthusiasm for women’s sport, fundamental rights around the world are being rolled back, from Afghanistan to the United States, narrowing the scope of women’s autonomy. This loss of agency in politics and law, alongside triumph in sport, reveals a paradox. As the world is troubled by the regression in the freedoms for women, sport moves in the opposite direction.

A quick recap: the US Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade struck down nearly half a century of constitutional protection for abortion rights. In its wake, more than a dozen states imposed sweeping bans or severe restrictions, leaving women facing criminal penalties for making personal medical choices.

In Iran, the death of Mahsa Amini in custody of the morality police that same year highlighted the dangers tens of millions of women face for choosing what to wear. The Iranian government has doubled down since, reinforcing compulsory dress codes and violently punishing dissent. In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s return to power has stripped women of access to higher education and most forms of employment. Restrictions there on movement, clothing and even digital access only get tighter.

Across the world, funding for reproductive health has been cut, gender-based violence protections weakened, and politicians, including President Trump, have supported policies that roll back protections for women.

Pope John Paul II may once have said: “Amongst all unimportant subjects, football is by far the most important.” To paraphrase, sport can be a lens on the world. In a sense, sport has always been a proxy battleground for feminist progress, a place where gains can be publicly celebrated even as losses mount elsewhere.

Against this bleak backdrop, women’s sport shines. The Rugby World Cup, hosted by England, sold more than 440,000 tickets, a record that tripled sales from the previous tournament. Football has provided even greater evidence of the cultural moment. The UEFA Women’s Euro 2025, hosted by Switzerland and won by the Lionesses, became a watershed moment in European sport. Attendance across all matches was more than 657,000, with a cumulative live audience of more than 400 million people worldwide. The final alone drew more than 16 million viewers in the UK.

Those are two competitions hosted in Europe, but the power of sport for women globally is if anything even more remarkable. Malala Yousafzai, the human rights activist, told me recently that sport became an escape for her in Pakistan’s Swat Valley under Taliban rule, even though it was forbidden. “Women’s sports brings people together from all backgrounds,” she said. “It is a uniting force, and it is inspiring and empowering for girls.” Recognising the feminist power in sport, she has now launched an investment company for women’s sport.

It’s striking that the waves of feminism match so perfectly with the waves of participation in women’s sport. The first, emerging in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, coincided with the early signs of women’s football. One of the main ways women won the right to vote in the UK was in recognition of the work they had done during the First World War, particularly in the munitions factories. While they worked there, they also played football, and began to draw great crowds. But women were then banned from playing in 1921, a ban that lasted 50 years based on the FA’s claim that the sport was “quite unsuitable for females”. The recent meteoric rise of women’s football is, in many ways, women reclaiming space that for too long was denied them.

The second wave of feminism, spanning the 1960s through the 1980s, fought for reproductive rights, workplace equality and liberation from the narrowly defined roles that hemmed in women. The second wave was about having autonomy. At the same time, women’s tennis celebrated champions like Billie Jean King, who famously beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes in 1973. At Wimbledon in May, while reading press cuttings about her career, King told me that her “whole life has been about feminism.” aWomen’s rugby – a sport far from the classic ideals of femininity – began to be played in universities in the UK, with the first Rugby World Cup taking place in 1991. At the time, the International Rugby Board (now World Rugby) refused to acknowledge the event. Today, World Rugby proudly champions the women’s game as its biggest bastion of growth.

The third wave, beginning in the 2000s, broadened feminism to include diversity and body positivity. Here again, women’s sport mirrored the wider cultural movement. Teams are now celebrated for the visibility of LGBTQ+ athletes and for representation of women of colour. Sportswomen like Ilona Maher, the USA rugby player who has become one of the most followed sportspeople on the planet, speak openly of their love for their bigger bodies.

Perhaps that is why the rise of women’s sport feels so symbolic in this moment of global uncertainty. It suggests that even as the political and legal terrain becomes more hostile, culture moves in the opposite direction. The stadium, like the Allianz Stadium yesterday, becomes a space of freedom and equality, a sign of what the world outside could look like.

It was impossible yesterday not to share the joy of the spectators, and recognise the growth of women’s sport. It is not enough to compensate for the rights lost elsewhere, but it is a reminder that history does not move in only one direction.

Photograph by Alex Davidson – World Rugby via Getty Images