With the beginning of this year, specifically from 1 January 2021, several changes came into force within the FIFA Regulations on Status and Transfer of Players (FIFA RSTP). As part of this amendment, the specific conditions within women's football were adjusted, which I would like to discuss in more detail in the following text.
Women's football has experienced an increase of interest in recent years, whether from the players themselves, spectators or people working in management positions in football organizations. During the last Women's FIFA World Cup, a total of 1,131,312 spectators personally took part in the matches (on average 21, 756 spectators per match). In terms of broadcasting, the tournament was watched by over 1.12 billion people worldwide, when the final match attracted 82 million spectators, thus breaking the record in viewership of the final match of the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2015.
Not only the above-mentioned statistics prove that the women's football is on its rise. That was logically noted by FIFA when it introduced the Women's Football Strategy in 2017 [1]. As part of this initiative, FIFA seeks to get more women not only on the field, but also in leadership positions, whether in national or international football organizations.
One of the accompanying factors of this program was then the above-mentioned change within the FIFA RSTP, specifically the implementation of Article 18quarter. [2] It regulates specific working conditions for professional female players and its main purpose is to guarantee a minimum standard of conditions related to pregnancy and maternity leave for female players. This provision shall then set a global standard that each national federation has a duty to ensure, while allowing to these national federations to go beyond this article and set the rules on pregnancy and maternity leave to be even more favorable to female players than the general rule in FIFA RSTP. So what has changed since the new year?
The FIFA RSTP now defines maternity leave as 14 days of paid leave, including a period of at least 8 weeks after the birth of a child, when the player has the option to choose when her maternity lave will begin. This minimum period is based on the recommendations of the International Labor Organization and its Maternity Protection Convention of 2000. [3]. At the same time, the new paragraph 7 of the Article 18 of the FIFA RSTP states that the financial remuneration at the time of maternity leave must be at least 2/3 of the agreed remuneration for the duration of the contract, unless there are more favorable conditions for the player under national law or collective agreement.
In addition, Article 18quarter sets out the following rights and obligations:
- the validity of the contract cannot be conditioned by the player's pregnancy or the exercise of her maternity rights
- special protection against termination of the contract due to pregnancy or maternity leave - the violation of this rule by the club is now conditioned by high financial sanctions
- pregnant player has the right to choose between the continuation of providing sporting services to the club or providing the services to the club in an alternative way
- pregnant player has the right to choose whether she will continue in the competition in the case that her pregnancy is assessed as safe by her doctor
- the obligation of the club to provide suitable equipment and environment for female players after the childbirth (to provide the possibility of breastfeeding/the possibility of breast milk pumping while providing the services to the club)
Last but not least, an amendment has been made under Article 6 (1) of the FIFA RSTP, which now allows an exceptional possibility to register a player outside the transfer window, in the case of compensation of a player who has taken maternity leave or return of a player after exhaustion of her maternity leave.
As mentioned in the introduction of this article, national football associations are now obliged to include all the above-mentioned rights and obligations in their national regulations. From my point of view, it will be very difficult to achieve that all these changes are properly followed, and I can imagine that at first, their enforcement will be quite difficult, not mention that in some countries, including Czech Republic, football players are still not considered employees and labor law regulations are thus difficult to apply on them.
However, the very fact that women are being noticed in the rule-making process, is in my opinion the way in the right direction and we can all only hope that thanks to these improved conditions for players, the female element in football will appear more and more and the popularity of women's football will continue to rise.
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