This seminar reveals the gendered precarity that increased professionalisation of women’s football has brought and highlights the role played by players’ collective organisations in fighting for change.
Speaker: Dr. Alex Culvin
The profile of women’s professional football is growing with games now screened on the BBC and Sky. This summer Euro2022 is in England, with many games already sold out, including the final at Wembley.
Yet for most players, even at the highest level, women’s football involves short-term, precarious contracts, low pay, few benefits, bodily surveillance, delayed motherhood and disrupted personal lives.
Change has started. This year there have been improvements in maternity and sick leave protections in the top two English leagues, and a landmark equal pay victory for the National US Women’s Soccer Team.
This timely seminar reveals the gendered precarity that increased professionalisation has brought and highlights the role played by players’ collective organisations in fighting for change.
About the speaker
Dr. Alex Culvin works in player and union relations at FIFPro the global union of professional footballers.
Alex is also a Senior Lecturer in Sports Business at Leeds Beckett University. Alex is a former professional footballer, who represented Everton, Leeds United, AZ Alkmaar, Bristol, and Liverpool.
Alex’s PhD was the first to examine football as work for women in England, focusing on employment policy and workplace conditions. Her research interests centre on elite sport, policy, gender, and business.
Alex is the chair of the Football Collective, a global network of football scholars and a Policy Advisor for Fair Game. Alex’s work has been published in the Telegraph, BBC Sport and The Independent.
She tweets from @alexculvin.
This event is organised by the Gender an Sexualities Research Centre and BSA Work, Employment and Economic Life Study Group.
For more information visit the GSRC blog and Twitter account.
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