A Brief History of Women’s Football in Croatia/Yugoslavia during the Interwar Period

Abstract

During the 1920s and 1930s, football became an important activity in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (from 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Leisure, which became an important factor in the lives of almost every social group of (urban) society, together with limited but adequate finances, can be observed through a sport that attracted thousands to the pitches and tens of thousands to the stands as it became clear that Yugoslavia, and Croatia as its part, were on a slow path towards modernity. By the end of the 1930s, there was a short-lived appearance of women’s football that shows that the modernisation of society had led to attempts to shift this sport towards the female population as well. Despite a good start, i.e. the establishment of several women’s football clubs on the territory of today’s Croatia (their formation occurred nowhere else in Yugoslavia), mixed, often negative or even mocking articles, followed the first female football games, matches in the summer of 1938 that attracted thousands to the stadium stands of the largest Yugoslav cities. In the wake of these games, several female and male functionaries attempted to form a female football federation. Unfortunately, in a largely pre-modern society, in which women still did not have the same civil rights as men, with an intense presence of medical stereotypes about the impact of sports on women and a strong state authority that tried to control all sporting efforts, women’s football was effectively banned by a Ministry of Physical Education’s decree in early 1939. It took several decades to restore the idea of women’s football in Croatia and Yugoslavia.