From the battle for equal pay, to LGBTQIA+ rights and the fight against sexual violence, women footballers have become some of the most effective gender equality campaigners in the world—not by choice, but out of necessity, because they are trying to play the game they love on an unequal playing field.

After years of toiling in obscurity, women footballers around the world have broken through to the mainstream, pulling in billions of spectators, scooping up record quantities of prize money, and landing major sponsorship deals. Once derided as playing a lesser form of the beautiful game, players like Sam Kerr, Lauren James, Khadija Shaw, and Aitana Bonmatí are today some of the most respected athletes on the planet.

That doesn’t mean that the playing field is level—far from it. Men still out-earn women by a factor of four to one in international competitions and, as the whole world saw when former Spanish football federation president Luis Rubiales forcibly kissed Jenni Hermoso during the medal ceremony of the 2023 World Cup final, players are as vulnerable to sexual violence as women and gender minorities everywhere. This is where the paradox lies. Women footballers are more successful than ever, but the game they play remains largely hostile to them. Yet such conditions have led footballers to become some of the most prominent and effective gender equality campaigners in the world. By striving to be the best at what they do, these athletes have shed light on some of the world’s most pernicious gender gaps—and showed how to close them.

The Feminism Factory tells the story of how, despite the best efforts of the men who run it, football has become a global laboratory for feminist activism.