Christmas Day Queens: The History of the UK’s ‘Dick, Kerr Ladies’ Football Team

Posted By: KLTVon: December 23, 2025In: Local History, News, Sport & Fitness, The DEN

Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Dr Rachael Jefferson –

On Christmas Day in 1917, the ‘Dick, Kerr Ladies’ (DK Ladies) football team – founded by female munition workers – won their inaugural football match.

Despite it being a war period, this victory led to extensive tours, with the DK Ladies often beating other football teams by sizeable margins.

The DK Ladies helped popularise women’s football, broke crowd attendance records, and showcased the athletic prowess of women on a national and international stage.

However, the team regularly faced strong opposition from the Football Association (FA), reaching a climax in 1921, with a ban that set back the women’s game significantly in England.

How women’s football began in the UK

Women have been playing football in the UK for hundreds of years. Indeed, Sir Philip Sidney’s 1580 poem, ‘A Dialogue Between Two Shepherds’, alludes to ‘When she, with skirts tucked very high, with girls at football plays’.

Yet it took more than three hundred years for women’s football to be given any real exposure.

Before this, in the mid-1800s, football rules were not unanimously applied. Cambridge rules were codified in 1848, and a decade later, the Sheffield rules of football followed suit.

These events inspired the formation of the newly founded FA, which approved and standardised ‘The Laws of the Game’ on 8 December 1863.

From the factory to the football pitch: how the DK Ladies ruled the roost

The DK Ladies team began playing football at the Dick, Kerr & Co. munitions factory in Preston, Lancashire, during World War I.

Women became the vast majority of munition workers in factories across England when jobs were vacated by men heading to the frontline to fight.

Work yard football games were widespread in these harsh war times, becoming important recreational outlets for the so-called ‘munitionettes’.

The outdoor exercise also helped counter the unhealthy working conditions the women suffered inside the factories, from which some died.

With charity-focused goals from the outset, the DK Ladies raised money for wounded soldiers while elevating the nation’s morale.

Their first Christmas Day match in 1917 against the Arundel Coulthard Factory brought in more than £600 for the local Moor Park Military Hospital.

The festive match took place in front of a crowd of 10,000, and the DK Ladies mercilessly beat their opponents 4-0. This lit a football fire in their bellies, and they became the first alleged ‘professional’ women’s football team with their touring expenses paid.

In spring 1920, DK Ladies represented England in the first International Women’s fixture. They defeated a French side 2-0 in front of a crowd of 25,000, raising over £3000 for the National Association of Discharged and Disabled Soldiers and Sailors.

Their Boxing Day match scheduled later in that same year was watched by more than 53,000 spectators, with another 14,000 unable to gain entry.

Red card for women’s football: patriarchal fear and pseudoscience

With growing fame in an established male game, patriarchal fear and power battles ensued when World War I ended in 1918.

It was hard to ignore the success of the DK Ladies team, and the FA worked on ways to weaken this.

On 5 December 1921, the FA delivered the ultimate blow, banning women from playing on FA-affiliated pitches.

This institutional backlash against women’s post-war emerging rights and emancipation limited players’ access to football facilities.

It successfully passed the power back to male players who had returned from fighting in the war.

The FA’s justification for this decision at the time was that football was ‘quite unsuitable for females’.

The decision ultimately led to a 50-year national curtailing of women’s football, which extensively reduced both the game’s popularity and opportunities for women to participate in the sport.

Aside from the alleged impropriety of women wearing shorts to play football, scientific evidence was found to have been fabricated by male doctors to confirm that playing such an energetic game would compromise women’s fertility levels.

At a post-war time when the nation needed rebuilding, women should duly return to their conventional child-rearing roles.

Dick, Kerr Ladies playing at American League Park, 1922 [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Defiance and grit

One of the primary reasons that the DK Ladies are remembered is their determination to continue playing even after the 1921 FA embargo.

This grit in the face of adversity ensured their team prevailed for the next forty-four years – despite decreased visibility and the Second World War (1939-1945).

They produced record-breaking performances, winning 758 of their 828 home and abroad matches, drawing 46 times, and only losing 24 games.

Since the USA did not have professional women’s sport teams until later in the twentieth century, the DK Ladies even played US men’s teams, bucking the gender conventions of the time in the process.

Paving the way for women’s football futures

The DK Ladies’ meteoric rise, triumphs, and the challenges they encountered, underscore the enduring struggle for gender equality in sport.

As trailblazers, they not only showcased the talent and passion women brought to football, but they also laid the groundwork for the revival and eventual growth of the women’s game.

Their legacy helped inspire the formation of the Women’s Football Association (WFA) in 1969, and after relentless public pressure, the FA finally lifted its ban on women’s football in 1971.

When England’s Lionesses lifted the Euro Cup in 2022 and 2025, they stood tall on the shoulders of these pioneering giants.

The DK Ladies defied decades of systemic discrimination, paving the way for future generations of women to claim their rightful place on the pitch.

About Dr Rachael Jefferson

Dr Rachael Jefferson is a Senior Lecturer and Discipline Lead in Human Movement Studies and Creative Arts at Charles Sturt University in Albury-Wodonga, New South Wales, Australia. Her expertise spans physical education, dance, sociology, and inclusion, informed by a PhD, an MA, and a Bachelor of Education (Honours). She also holds qualifications in Applied Social Research, Research on Yoga in Education, and mindfulness, and is a certified Mental Health First Aider. Rachael is a strong advocate for women’s rights in sport and regularly writes on these issues for The Conversation, The Age, and other national and international outlets.

For inquiries regarding this article, please contact Dr Jefferson directly via her university email.