Why all-female football environments matter for girls: confidence, leadership and pathway access
There’s a well-worn question in community football, and we hear it all the time, especially around our junior squads: “Shouldn’t girls just play with the boys?”
The honest answer is that mixed play can be incredibly valuable for development, especially in the early years. It builds adaptability, physicality, speed of play, resilience and confidence. We encourage all our girls to play against the boys whenever they get the chance, they’ll be the better for it.
HOWEVER… mixed play is one tool, not the whole toolkit.
And mixed play is certainly no adequate replacement for a dedicated, all-female environment that has been designed around the needs, growth and ambitions of girls and young women.
As Victoria’s only all-female NPL pathway, we see this difference every single day. In the way our girls take up space, the way their confidence expands, and the way their ambition grows when they’re surrounded by strong female role models and given full access to the pitch, the equipment and the attention they deserve.
Both environments matter, but they deliver different outcomes. And all-female spaces remain essential if we want young women to thrive in football for the long-term.
The value of mixed play
Mixed play is often at its most beneficial before adolescence. At those younger ages, girls tend to thrive on the faster tempo and the variety of styles they encounter when they’re playing in boys’ teams. It stretches them in good ways. It can give them resilience and composure. And for many girls, it offers a sense of accomplishment that becomes part of how they see themselves.
But something starts to shift as players get older. The social dynamics change, the power balance changes, and the girls who once stormed through mixed teams with unshakeable confidence can start to hold back - sometimes consciously, sometimes without even realising it.
This is where the value of an all-female environment becomes clearer.
What happens when the entire space belongs to girls?
When a girl walks into a club where every voice, every captain, every role model and every teammate is female, the atmosphere is completely different. There is a sense of ease and of possibility, of being allowed to take up space without competing with louder or more dominant dynamics. Leadership stops being something you have to break into, it’s simply part of growing up in that environment.
And it’s not just about confidence (although that part is undeniable): it’s about expression. It’s about risk-taking.
And it’s about trying things, both on the ball and off it, without the pressure of being compared to someone taller or more physical, or feeling like you’re stepping into someone else’s territory.
In all-female environments, our players don’t edit themselves. Instead they experiment, they call louder, they direct traffic. We find that players will take the shots they might have second-guessed elsewhere. And ultimately they grow into themselves, instead of trying to squeeze themselves into a version they think will “fit.”
This stage is where female development accelerates in an all-female environment. Not because the game is easier, but because the psychological space is different.
Access matters!
There is also a practical side to all of this, one that people outside sport often underestimate (but to which most women and girls who have played in mixed-gender clubs will relate).
In mixed clubs, girls and women frequently share facilities with boys’ and men’s programs. That means sharing pitches, equipment, prime training slots, and sometimes even the club’s broader attention and resources. None of this is ill-intentioned, we don’t blame the boys or men - or even the clubs - it’s simply the legacy of a system where boys’ programs historically dominated participation and resourcing.
After all, up until the 1970s, women were banned from playing football. There was no such thing as an all-female team, let alone an all-female club.
But these shared arrangements can come with unintended consequences. Hands up who has a daughter who has experienced one or more of the following?
The girls always train at a less convenient time.
The girls warm up on the outer field or smaller field, because the main pitch is booked by the boys.
The boys and men get the new equipment, and the girls and women get their hand-me-downs.
Sponsorship announcements highlight boys’ achievements by default, and the girls’ only sometimes.
The club says it has to prioritise the mens’ games, because they bring the crowds and the sponsorship revenue.
The club’s social media is 80% men, 20% women (usually only if they win).
The cultural priority of the club subtly tilts towards its larger, louder (male) programs.
You can start to see how easy it is for female players to slip to the edge of focus.
An all-female club removes that problem entirely. At Alamein FC, every training session, every prime slot, every coaching conversation, every resource, and every piece of equipment exists for one purpose only: the development of girls and women. The pitch is all theirs, the spotlight is all theirs, and perhaps most importantly, the pathways are all theirs.
This certainly isn’t about competition with boys’ programs. It’s about ensuring that girls finally have environments where they’re not competing for space at all.
The critical middle years
If there is one age where environment matters most, it’s those tricky middle-teen years. This is the point in sport where girls leave in droves. Not because they lose interest in football (or any other sport they love), but because the surrounding structure stops meeting their needs. They don’t feel seen, safe, connected, or challenged in the right way.
In a female-centred environment, these barriers drop away. Girls are surrounded by older female players who become real-time role models. They walk into a space where the expectations align with who they are becoming, not who they’ve been told to be. They can speak up, make mistakes, lead warm-ups, direct younger players and find belonging without sacrificing ambition.
That combination, belonging and ambition, is what keeps girls in the game.
Once it exists, everything changes: their focus, their work ethic, their confidence, their long-term vision of themselves in football. Retention in sport is not accidental, its environmental.
Both pathways need each other
All of this doesn’t mean that mixed play is wrong, or outdated, or harmful. Far from it. Mixed environments can be fantastic, and many girls benefit enormously from them! What we advocate for is not exclusion, but choice, the ability for girls to move between environments that support their development at different stages.
Mixed play can push a player in valuable ways
Female-focused environments can shape her identity in ways mixed play simply can’t
When both exist (and when girls are given genuine access to both), that’s when the pathway becomes strongest.
The future
If we want women’s football in Victoria to flourish, we need spaces that don’t just accommodate girls, but centre them. We need pathways designed with intention, not by default. We need clubs where girls don’t inherit leftover time slots, leftover facilities, or leftover attention.
We need places where women and girls are the priority.
That is why all-female clubs exist, and it’s why Alamein FC is so proud to be the only all-female club in Victoria to provide a complete NPLW pathway.
Not because girls can’t play with boys. But because girls deserve space - real, meaningful, uninterrupted space - to develop, lead and dream.
At Alamein, we see what that space creates every single day: confident players, ambitious teenagers, strong young women, and a football culture built entirely around their potential.
And if the goal is to build the future of women’s football, then these environments are not optional, they are essential.
