In addtion, FA research has shown that the number of girls under the age of 15 who have played some form of football in the past 12 months exceeds 1.5 million.
Sport England’s Active People survey in 2011 highlighted that 275,300 adult women play some form of football in England. This demonstrates that women's football is now the third largest team sport behind only men's football and men's cricket. Indeed, FIFA has recently confirmed that there are 29 million females playing football across the world.
Mixed football has now been extended to children up to U13s. 42% of the 2.5m children to participate in The FA Tesco Skills programme in the last three years are girls, while 20% of the 106 Skills Coaches are female, too.
Over 22,000 females have successfully attained FA coaching qualifications (including 170 Level 3 - UEFA ‘B’ - coaches) and full-time Women’s Football Development Officers (WFDOs) are employed across the country in the County FAs to support local female football. The number of female referees has reached 843, an increase of 12% since 2008, and The FA has launched a specific Female Referees Strategy and Female Ambassador scheme.
For more information on Women's and Girls' Football in Devon please contact:
Matt Hodgson, Women's and Girls' FDO
01626 325919 or 07973 312146
matthew.hodgson@devonfa.com