In a heart-bursting performance England’s Lionesses won the UEFA Women’s Championship 2022 in a 2-1 defeat of Germany at Wembley. The win represents a watershed moment in the sport’s unstoppable growth - but the players' victories, off the pitch, also deserve our time.
After all, unbelievably it was only last January that women footballers in England were awarded full maternity rights. For former England player Katie Chapman, who played for the Lionesses in the 2007 and 2015 World Cups and the 2001, 2005 and 2009 Euros, all while raising three sons and long before there was any support, being a mother on the pitch meant being something of a trailblazer.
‘In a sporting environment there is never a right time to have a baby,’ says Chapman, who publicly battled for childcare support during her playing days. She shares photos of herself lifting trophies in one arm and her sons Harvey, Riley and Zachary in another.
‘As soon as I’d get the call inviting me to be part of the England squad, I’d start putting a childcare plan in place. Week to week, playing for a club, it was that constant switch over - my husband would come home from work and I’d go to training. It’s the same as so many other families, of course, where parents work different hours, days or nights, to make ends meet and make sure the kids are looked after.’
In the UK, mothers are entitled to Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) for up to 39 weeks, receiving 90% of average weekly earnings, before tax, for six weeks, then £151.97 or 90 per cent - whichever is lower - for another 33 weeks. Many private companies improve upon this.
In football however, which only turned fully professional for women in 2018, players are likely to stop playing three months into pregnancy, meaning statutory pay does not stretch far; an agreement for clubs to improve upon this, by paying 14 weeks’ full wages before dropping to statutory pay, was reached in January and will come into force next season.
Chapman, who turned 40 this year and retired from football in 2018, remembers how rare it was to be a mum at the training ground: ‘When there’s only one mother in a 23 player squad your voice is only so loud. You want to represent your country and you don’t want to damage your career by asking for more support. But if I didn’t speak up, there was no one else to do it for me.’
Chapman played for Fulham, then Arsenal and Chelsea while they were still semi-professional, and her sons were born in 2003, 2008 and 2013, and are now 19, 13 and nine. With each, Chapman stopped playing at three months pregnant, which meant her wages stopped too. She chose to continue training, though, until two weeks before her due dates, returning to football six weeks after giving birth. ‘There was no maternity cover,’ she says. ‘Women and pregnancy weren’t really taken care of. We did it for the love of the game.’
The semi-professional nature of women’s football during Chapman’s career left mothers unprotected, financially while, culturally, women were still fighting to fit into a ‘man’s game’. And once the game turned fully professional, in 2018, maternity pay was left to the discretion of clubs. From next season, those in the Women's Super League and Championship (England’s top two women’s football tiers) will be required to meet the improved conditions as part of their Football Association (FA) license agreement.
Tearing herself away from her kids to train or play major tournaments abroad was difficult for Chapman, too: ‘When it was the 2015 World Cup, in Canada, I remember crying leaving them. The parental guilt was the hardest part. I was lucky that I had a big family and a great childminder, once I had my third.’ Her former husband paid out of their family pocket to surprise her by bringing the boys to join her in Canada, where she helped England secure third place, and sheremembers the 2007 Euros in Finland, where her sons followed her and the team from hotel to hotel for matches.
Yet being a mum drove her career too. She says: ‘I had my best tournament, in Finland, because they were with me. It was better than all those times we’d talk over the phone and I didn’t know whether it was doing me any good or making it worse, being apart. I was used to being woken in the night and the chaos of getting up in the morning so it made no odds to me to do it during a tournament. And after my second child, I came back the fittest I’d been. Being a mum kept my hunger for the game. I enjoyed going to training and I enjoyed going home to my kids.’
There is just one mum in this summer’s Euros squad of 23 women - defender Demi Stokes whose partner carried their baby boy, born in May - although maternity rights are now in place to make it easier for those who want to follow.
The FA’s policy change follows other sports governing bodies delayed response to the choices faced by stars who want to become mothers. Only last November, UK Sport updated its guidance for elite athletes, advising that Olympians and Paralympians should continue to be paid during pregnancy and for up to nine months after birth. The organisation said stars should no longer be forced to choose between their sporting careers and starting a family and committed to introducing further guidance tailored to same-sex parents and those choosing surrogacy, adoption, egg freezing or IVF.
Chapman says of football’s change: ‘It’s great that we’ve got there but it should have been a long time ago. We are females. We are going to have children. If the practical and emotional measures that support that aren’t in place it adds pressure. If an athlete gets an injury, they’re rehabilitated and supported through it, even if it means 12 months out. Pregnancy should be no different at all.’
Speaking up, when she did, wasn’t just about football, she says, but for every woman, in or outside sport. She criticised football’s policy towards mothers in 2010, but later returned to the national side and has continued to push for better support ever since, eager to get to a place where other players can take a break from football to have a child without fear of it ending their career.
She says: ‘Lots of workplaces are still terrified of a woman getting pregnant, of whether they’ll come back, how much time off they’ll want. It can still feel scary telling your boss. These conversations have to keep evolving.’
High profile athletes, like Serena Williams and Jessica Ennis Hill, who have returned to elite sports after having children, are helping the cause. ‘It's about seeing it and talking about it,’ says Chapman. ‘If it's seen once, it can be done again and again. All women need is support - and enough change.’