A trained counsellor and former catwalk model, Karen didn’t even like football when she married her husband Charlie, “a big football fan”, in 1997 (Image: -)
There is Prosecco on tap alongside the beer in the bar, a dedicated breastfeeding space on match days, and staff include the former coach of the Afghan women’s national team – who helped her players flee to safety in Australia when the Taliban seized power in 2021. Welcome to Lewes Football Club, also known as Equality FC, which in 2017 became the first – and so far only – football club in the world to pay its male and female players equally.
At a time when the women’s game is experiencing exponential growth – evidenced in the Lionesses second successive triumph at the European Championships last week, and in recent record viewing figures across Women’s Super League tournaments – this East Sussex club is at the forefront of a revolution in the beautiful game.
Far from extracting resources from the men’s side, its groundbreaking commitment to gender parity has had a ripple effect that’s benefitted everyone – from the wave of sponsors drawn to its progressive ideals to the spectacular £750,000 sunken amphitheatre of a pitch, glowing green beneath you.
As a groundsman mows the turf, surrounded by the undulating hills of the South Downs, I drink in the inspiring view with Karen Dobres, 57, whose fascinating book on transforming this small club into a fabulous community resource garnering international attention, has just been published.
“I think of it as an imperfect Utopia,” she says, surveying the breathtaking pitch – a level playing field both literally and metaphorically – which was recently voted British Football’s Greatest Ground by away fans, beating Anfield, home of Liverpool FC, and Manchester United’s Old Trafford.
Funds for its 2022 construction came from a Football Association grant specifically honouring Lewes FC’s ground-breaking work on equality.
“We received the pitch for our work on the women’s side, and you can only imagine how happy the men’s team are about this amazing hybrid pitch we now have,” smiles Karen as we gaze over the pitch.
A trained counsellor and former catwalk model, Karen didn’t even like football when she married her husband Charlie, “a big football fan”, in 1997.
In 2010, together with five other fans, he was responsible for rescuing Lewes FC from looming financial ruin and turning it into a community-owned club.
The women’s team started in 2002, but Karen wasn’t involved until one day in 2016 when Charlie asked how she would feel if the women were paid the same as the men. “I was shocked – ‘There are women playing football, and they aren’t paid equally?’ If we did that, he said, it would be a world first,” she recalls today. “For me, it was a crash course in sexism in football.”
Karen subsequently went to her first women’s football match at the Dripping Pan – the stadium’s name comes from the salt that was extracted there when it was the walled garden of a priory.
“I was expecting a beer-swilling crowd, but had a profound moment watching these young women,” she recalls. “They were aggressive, shouting, using their voices, and showing incredible leadership skills. And you could get a cup of tea!”
It was an epiphany that led her to fight for women’s football to be taken as seriously as the men’s game. For two years she worked solidly encouraging women’s groups of all types to come and watch in solidarity.
Then in 2019, she became an elected director of the club.
“I wanted other women to witness this spectacle – women behaving as they’re rarely allowed to in public and using their bodies in this really purposeful, dynamic way,” she says. “People say women’s teams don’t deserve equal pay because they don’t draw crowds – but how can they if no one knows they’re playing?”
Part of her strategy was to help make the match-day experience more attractive for female fans, from supporting the introduction of an organic garden growing vegetables for lunches, to installing a statue of two cross-dressing real-life 17th Century female pirates – Mary Read and Anne Bonny – who dressed as boys to join pirate ships.
She stepped down in 2022 after her term ended and has continued as an enthusiastic volunteer ever since.
“Equality FC is always trying to expand our reach – though intriguingly Prosecco on tap has proved more popular with men than women,” she smiles.
Author Karen Dobres pictured at Lewes FC in Lewes, East Sussex. (Image: Adam Gerrard / Daily Express)
While fans can buy loaded fries, they can also eat a locally-sourced buckwheat pancake. In 2014, Charlie proposed “executive beach huts” where groups of six can watch the action with friends and a kettle. As former chairman Stuart Fuller once said of the club’s innovative approaches to football: “Get big, get niche or get out.”
The club’s goal appears to be working: a BBC report last year found female teams in England had doubled in seven years and Sussex saw one of highest upticks.
“Football is the last male bastion; some men get quite defensive about it – but I would never suggest that men’s football should suffer to support women,” says Karen. “We want to add value – not take anything away.”
A vast banner at the ground, which currently hosts seventh division men’s matches and third division women’s matches, reads: ‘Equality is a rising tide that lifts all boats’.
“What this means is that when you treat people fairly, everyone benefits,” says Karen.
“In 2017, when we first paid our women’s team equally to our men’s, there was more attendance and sponsorship for both teams.”
That’s not to say the moves have been welcomed by all. In fact, the steadfast commitment to equality has created some internal disagreements. Karen’s book addresses both the financial pressures of running a small club and the friction that innovation can create.
This became apparent in May last year when the women’s team was relegated to the third division. This was accompanied by a corresponding and sudden £450,000 drop in income, due to loss of FA grants and TV money distribution.
There was no ‘parachute payment’ to help them adjust, as in the men’s game. Yet Karen is frustrated by a recent national newspaper report stating that the club is in financial trouble due to its commitment to equality.
“Recent media reporting that falsely said that the club was ‘broke’ because we had ‘gone woke’ annoyed me and many others,” she says, clearly exasperated.
“It actually insulted all the great work done and the impact on not only girls and women, but the whole Lewes community and our community of owners who live around the world. “Equality FC has had a huge impact on Lewes’ own fans, on the club’s sponsorship revenues and on the wider game too.
“We knew back in 2017, and said so, that Equality FC would hasten the growth of the women’s game. Yes, things are pretty financially challenging right now at Lewes, like at so many clubs – but I’m happy to say that reports of the death of Equality FC have been greatly exaggerated.”
She points out an independent survey found that 73% of Lewes FC men’s team supporters now think about gender equality more than five years ago. “This is a huge win,” she adds.
And last week, the community-owned club invited their 2,000-plus owners to indicate their support for the proposal to explore investment in their women’s side – 79% were in favour.
“The primary objective is to enable the women’s team to become fully professional, enhance performance and build on our ‘Equality FC’ legacy,” said a spokesperson for the club.
News of the potential sale of the women’s side delights Karen. “We started with equality in 2017 and now, if we can sell a majority stake in Lewes FC women, we move to emancipation,” she says. “Most of our owners are in favour. It’s not a given, but we are excited.”
How the club is run is of integral importance.
In March 2009, the privately-owned Lewes FC was issued with a series of winding-up orders owing to large debts. The following year, it was brought under community ownership by the team including Charlie and led by comedian and playwright Patrick Marber.
Pitch Invasion by Karen Dobres, published by Cassell, 31st July, £22, Hardback www.octopusbooks.co.u (Image: -)
Charlie and another male director proposed the radical equality changes, ensuring the uplift in women’s pay came from director salaries – not from the funding for the men’s team.
“I don’t expect Manchester United to do this overnight,” says Karen about its pioneering significance. “Their commercial model and pay levels make it impossible. But there are things big clubs can do to show they value their women’s teams.”
As fans arrive at the ground, they’re greeted by a sign: “Lewes FC has designated breastfeeding areas for matchdays”. Some people might question if a football match is the place for babies.
Karen smiles: “The thinking behind our breastfeeding sign – probably the first thing you see after the turnstiles – is really about inclusion. A woman once asked a male steward where she could feed her baby, and he said, as you would, ‘Try the toilet’. But toilets aren’t a nice place to eat – why should babies have to?
“So we found a room – it’s actually the club’s Chief Operating Officer’s office – and one of the brilliant charities we support, RISE, donated a changing mat. Someone is always on hand to make tea. And now dads use it too.
“A football match can be a great day out for a baby or toddler – people say how welcoming it is here. It’s great commercially too. Our inclusive culture attracts respectful fans.”
Indeed. This is a club where under-16s go free, well-behaved dogs are welcome, and food bank users are given a free meal and drink along with tickets.
“We want to take away any obstacles that would prevent you coming – whether you are a seasoned fan or first timer,” she says.
Lewes FC is owned by people from 40 countries – each can buy just one £50 share (“the cost of good face cream – and much more exciting,” says Karen).
More than half are female shareholders.
Football folk of calibre have also been drawn here – including Chief Operating Officer Kelly Lindsay – a former US Women’s national team player on the world-beating side who went on to coach Afghanistan’s women’s team and later became director of women’s football for Morocco and head coach for its women’ national team.
“Kelly spoke to us all – me, the team, the fans – about how lucky we were to have our passports, and to be able to play and watch football freely,” says Karen.
“While in Afghanistan, she helped Afghan players expose the brutal abuses they suffered under the federation president and supported their escape to Australia on emergency visas after the Taliban’s return.”
Systemic under-investment in the British women’s game stems from 1921 when the FA banned the game amid post-war fears that their matches were more popular than men’s – destroying its populartiy as a spectator sport for deacdes to come.
“Although unbanned in 1971, resources weren’t really put into it until 20 years after that. Women have been held back from development as players and athletes for so many years that they start at a different level,” says Karen.
That will inevitably change as the Chloe Kelly effect takes hold, and more investment follows. And Karen for one relishes the differences in the audience for women’s football.
“They are quite different in character,” she smiles. “Personally, I enjoy both vibes.”
- Pitch Invasion by Karen Dobres (Cassell, £22) is out now