Women’s football in England has endured a meteoric rise over the past decade. The success of the Lionesses combined with the establishment of the Barclay’s FA Women’s Super League has transformed the game from a struggling sport into a global spectacle.

The opening round of this season’s WSL fixtures attracted a staggering combined crowd of 63,000, with over 31,000 people alone attending the Manchester derby at the Etihad Stadium. The rapid progression of the sport, certainly in England, is hard to overlook.

UCFB sat down with Reading FC Women’s Director of Football and Manager, Kelly Chambers, to exclusively discuss the correlation between the games evolvement and the number of employment opportunities now available to women in the football industry.

Chambers said: “The good thing about the female game now is that it has grown so much and there are jobs in all aspects of it.”

She added: “When I was growing up and going through my badges I just loved football so I wanted everything to do with football, whether that was coaching or playing – I just loved it. At that time there wasn’t really any jobs, especially professional jobs, out there that females could go for. Obviously there’s a lot in the men’s game, but for a female to step into that environment is very, very difficult.”

Regarded as one of the game’s longest-serving and most successful coaches, Chambers revealed that significant progress continues to be made with regards to women forging careers in football. She said: “Even in the men’s game, you can see females starting to creep into the academies, you see female coaches in there now and you see female physios.”

Talking about the importance of gaining an education when looking for employment, Chambers stated: “I think it’s huge; the better the badge then nine times out of ten the better the job is that you can get and that you can aspire to get. The game’s changing every day, every week, and every year.”