They say there’s never a perfect time in your career to have children – especially if you’re an athlete.
Wait until you retire from elite sport – former Lioness and Chelsea captain Millie Bright recently announced her pregnancy after retiring in April – and you risk leaving it late. But have a baby young and you risk sacrificing your performance at its peak and struggling to return at the same level. It is perhaps the starkest example of an environment in which “having it all” becomes a biological impossibility. Without it, true gender equality in sport is hard to imagine.
So it is very encouraging to hear that Spain’s footballing body is to offer egg-freezing to its top players. The arrangement, which is set to be agreed with a fertility clinic and which follows pressure from players including former captain Alexia Putellas, sends the powerful message that the world and European champions should not have to choose between their sport and motherhood.
“The federation understands that you are serving your country against your biological clock, that you cannot stop and cannot be a mother because you need your body to work,” Putellas told El Pais.
Spanish women’s football has come a very long way in three years, since captain Jenni Hermoso was kissed by former Spanish Football Federation president Luis Rubiales after the women won the 2023 World Cup, and the scandal that reverberated around the world exposed the sexism still at the root of the sport. I hope others will follow their example. But supporting women and their family planning is not as simple as paying for their egg-freezing.
