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Dick, Kerr Ladies, a works team from a Preston munitions factory, drew about 53,000 spectators to Goodison Park on Boxing Day 1920 for a charity match, one of the largest crowds of the era for any club game. Less than a year later, in December 1921, the Football Association declared football 'quite unsuitable for females' and barred its member clubs from hosting women's matches. The ban stayed in place for about fifty years, until the early 1970s.
The FA justified the ban in the language of welfare, saying the game was physically unsuitable for women. Its statement also raised suspicions about how charity gate money was handled. That came at a moment when women's matches were rivalling men's for crowds and cash. Framing a restriction as protection of the excluded group lets an institution remove a competitor while presenting itself as benevolent.
The ban did not make it illegal for women to play football. It denied them the affiliated grounds, referees and official structures that a spectator sport depends on. Cutting a group off from shared infrastructure can shrink an activity to near-invisibility without any formal prohibition. It survives only in marginal spaces such as parks and borrowed rugby pitches.
Women's football boomed because the First World War put women into factory work and made their public activity seem patriotic and necessary. Once the men came back and prewar social roles reasserted themselves, the tolerance granted under emergency conditions was withdrawn. Gains won through an exceptional circumstance are fragile unless they are locked into institutions before the circumstance ends.