A Luton-born football writer is to deliver a bookshop talk about the importance of women’s football and the progress made in the fight for equality.
Carrie Dunn will appear at Brown Books in High Town on December 3, to promote her brand new book, ‘Woman Up: Pitches, Pay and Periods – The Progress and Potential of Women’s Football’.
With the triumph of England’s Lionesses at Euro 2022, the women’s game has been in the spotlight like never before.
But this is the result of decades of struggle to get women’s football – banned by the English FA for 50 years – on a more equal footing to its male counterpart.
Part of that journey was started in Luton by bus driver Harry Batt and his wife June who started the Chiltern Valley Ladies FC team in the 1967 at Crawley Green Recreation Ground, while also defying the ban to take an unofficial team of England players to international tournaments around the world. A plaque was this year unveiled at the Luton sports fields where that all began.
Upon their return from the 1970 World Cup in Mexico the newly-formed Women’s Football Association, hit the players with six month suspensions, while banning Harry Batt for life.
And while the current professional players are starting to reap the rewards of their success on the pitch, with the growth of the Women’s Premier League and the success of the national team, their personal journeys have often involved fighting against the odds.
So that a new generation of girls getting involved in football all over the world don’t face the same obstacles as their predecessors, football journalist Carrie Dunn shines a light on the evolution of women’s football and the gender gaps that still persist.
Packed with practical advice and first-hand accounts from leading female players, ‘Woman Up’ is an inspirational, informative and entertaining account of women’s football’s painful past and its exciting future.
Carrie Dunn is a full-time writer. Her recent books include The Pride of the Lionesses (Pitch, 2019), nominated as Football Book of the Year in 2020, and a sequel to The Roar of the Lionesses: Women’s Football in England (Pitch, 2016), one of the Guardian’s best sport books of 2016. Her most recent book Unsuitable for Females (Arena, 2022) tells the stories of the people who have kept women’s football blazing a trail over the last century.
She has covered the last three Women’s World Cups for the Times and Eurosport, and is a regular voice on BBC radio as well as The Athletic’s Women’s Football Podcast.
Carrie has a PhD in sport sociology, and her particular research specialism is in women’s experience of sport. Her own footballing career began – and ended – with the Junior Hatters’ supporters’ club in Luton.
Tickets for the event at Brown Books are free and can be booked here.
