Clare Balding: Women Want Equal Play - and Now

This promises to be a seminal year for women's sport and for women's football in particular. The potential for progress is exciting, but any hope of that bearing fruit requires an honest debate about how much attitudes have really changed towards women playing a so-called 'man's sport'.

England is the host nation for the European Championship, which will be staged at venues across the north-west of the country from 5-19 June. Whether it is a sign of greater enlightenment or a stronger passion for football, the north-west has a strong tradition of support and interest in women's football.

In 1920, 53,000 spectators turned up for a charity match at Goodison Park and a further 14,000 were turned away. The teams had to be given a police escort to ensure their safe arrival at the ground. The occasion was a women's match staged in support of the returning forces from the First World War. It involved Dick, Kerr Ladies, a Preston-based team so successful and popular that they attracted large crowds wherever they played, went on tour across Europe, the US and Canada and became the first world club champions in the women's game.

At a time when women's football might have blossomed, with 150 teams playing regular matches in front of decent crowds, the Football Association caught fright and in 1921 banned women from playing on FA-affiliated grounds. That injunction lasted until 1971 and any evolving development or competition to the popularity of the men's game was nipped in the bud.

It might be assumed that with such huge financial gains across the globe, the men's professional game might now be more confident of its product and its identity, and yet the tension between the men's and women's game still exists.

Just before Christmas, Fifa, the sport's international governing body, issued an edict forbidding a female player from joining a men's club in Mexico. Maribel Dominguez created headlines across Latin America when she was signed by the second division club Celaya on a two-year contract, but Fifa ruled that 'there should be a clear separation between men's and women's football'.

Fifa will find strong support among the governing body of golf, but one might hope that in the fifth year of the twenty-first century, we might allow ourselves a more open-minded view. If a player is good enough to be selected for a team, the gender of that player should be irrelevant.

The signing of Dominguez would have been a landmark event, its impact reaching far beyond the world of sport. It would have put Annika Sorenstam's efforts on the men's golf tour in the shade and paved the way for a future in which it is commonplace for men and women to compete on level terms across a range of professional sports. The day when that is so widespread that it barely merits discussion is still a long way off.

Four million viewers watched the film Bend It Like Beckham last week on television and millions more saw it in the cinema. It charts the story of Jess, a young Sikh girl battling her family and her culture to follow her passion for football. She dreams of her skill being discussed by Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen on Match of the Day and ultimately wins a scholarship to be coached in the US.

The film also touches on the latent homophobia that forms part of the prejudice against women's football. Jules's mother, played superbly by Juliet Stevenson, mistakenly believes that her daughter is in a sexual relationship with her friend and team-mate Jess. She is wrong, but the assumption and the distaste she displays accurately reflect the bigotry faced by women who prefer playing sport to flower-arranging.

Yes, some female footballers, athletes, golfers, tennis players, rugby, hockey and lacrosse players are gay. So what? So are some men in sport. So are men and women the world over. Shock, horror. Homophobia is part of the problem but not all of it.

In the book Soccer, Women, Sexual Liberation, first published in 2003, there is a chapter on women's football in England. 'Most British people,' writes Jean Williams, 'could name a male football star whether or not they consider themselves to be enthusiasts of the sport. In contrast, the majority of self-confessed football fans could not name a single female player.'

And yet the FA maintain that women's football is the fastest-growing sport in the UK, with up to a million participants. The figures are open to debate, with other estimates putting the regular participation total at fewer than 200,000, but the funding and the facilities are better than they have ever been. So why do so many women drop out of sport in their teens? According to research carried out by the Women's Sport Foundation, girls aged 7-11 are less than half as likely as boys to take part in physical education and sport. By the age of 18, 40 per cent of girls have dropped out of sport altogether.

What is it about our society that encourages girls to think that hanging around in shopping centres exposing their thongs, painting their nails orange, drinking Bacardi Breezers and smoking cigarettes is somehow cooler than playing sport? It would be too easy simply to say 'that's just teenage girls'.

Society makes a huge contribution to the way people develop - if we are faced with a generation of self-obsessed girls who either reject a lettuce leaf for fear of gaining an ounce, or overdose on big-value burgers and fries, we are all to blame. Much of society, even in 2005, decrees that women should have a shapely figure, try not to get their hands dirty and all times look 'feminine'. Worrying as that limiting stereotype has always been, it has been translated over the decades in such a way that it seems to preclude women from playing what have been deemed 'unfeminine' sports.

Williams writes: 'What has never been satisfactorily explained is a peculiarly English expression of contempt for women who play football.... The derision shown to English female footballers simultaneously trivialises their sporting accomplishments (as in the pejorative 'play like a girl') and insists on the female as the object of masculine desire (women are supposed to play at being a woman, not at football).' Williams argues that the rise in interest and player participation does not equate to 'a new dawn' and laments the lack of female representation at administrative level, but concludes that the voices of the players themselves will start to be heard more clearly.

But it is not all gloom and doom - and the European Championship allows a chance for those voices to sing out. It should be a showcase event for the best in the game and, with coverage being shared by Eurosport and the BBC, offers a chance for the public to judge for themselves how standards have improved.