Women footballers in Italy’s top-flight league are to finally be deemed professional, an “epochal change” that ends years of female players earning capped salaries due to being recognised only as amateur athletes.
The Italian Football Federation (FIGC) said the change to the women’s Serie A league would take effect from 1 July, in time for the start of the new season.
“Today is a big day,” said Gabriele Gravina, the federation’s president. “We’re the first federation in Italy to put this change into effect”.
Umberto Calcagno, who heads up the Italian Footballers’ Association, said the move marked the “start of a new challenge” in which “the system committed to taking advantage of all the opportunities of this epochal change”.
The women’s Serie A was established in 1968 and for the first two decades players were only refunded travel expenses until their squads came under the remit of FIGC’s National Amateur League, meaning women could earn a capped salary, albeit on contracts that exempted them from contributions to social benefits such as pensions and healthcare.
Unlike their multimillion-euro-earning male counterparts, the gross salary of women playing for Serie A clubs is limited to €30,000 a year.
FIGC, which has organised the Serie A women’s league since the 2018-19 season, began the legal process to upgrade their status after coming under increasing pressure following the national team’s success in qualifying for the 2019 Women’s World Cup after a two-decade drought, and in reaching the tournament’s quarter-finals.
“It’s been a long time coming, but finally, it’s happened,” said Elisabetta Vignotto, a celebrated striker who was among Italy’s first female footballers. Vignotto, now 68, played with several clubs in the 1970s and 80s and was a top scorer for the national side.
“There was no salary, we just had our travel expenses refunded,” she said. “It was only towards the end of my career that we got a bit more in reimbursements, and even then we had to rely on good faith.”
Sara Gama, the captain of Juventus and Italy, said the change would give women’s football “the opportunity for growth from unexplored borders”.
Although women’s Serie A has been around in some shape or form for more than 50 years, the first top male club to launch an official women’s side was Fiorentina in 2015, following a requirement for all Serie A men’s clubs to have a women’s team.
“I played for many clubs because at that time they would only last a year or so due to running out of money,” said Vignotto.
The women’s Serie A league has 12 clubs, although this will be reduced to 10 from next season.
