Arsenal, and leaders in women’s football have acknowledged this is an issue.
Emma Hayes has even stated that right now Womens football is essentially a middle class sport.
This is due to where the centres of excellence and scouting networks are set up.
For example, rather than Hale End in Walthamstow (men’s academy), the women’s academy is in Buckinghamshire — this immediately impacts the accessibility and inclusion, and therefore the demographics who can access them.
Similarly, women’s football is much more developed in wealthier nations, as a result there are a lot of Northern & Western Europe players, whereas again there isn’t the same level of development and pipeline to elite football from less developed parts of the world.
Lastly, managers often can recruit from where they have influence: Jonas has brought in more players from Scandinavia, while Montimurro brought players from Australia.
All of these reasons add up to Women’s football currently not being very diverse.
O’Donnells on Ferdinand Bolstraat