[Source: Reuters]

Soccer-playing mums will be front-and-centre when the Women’s World Cup kicks off this week in Australia and New Zealand after tenuous progress since the 2019 tournament for working mothers.

United States co-captain Alex Morgan will be travelling with her three-year-old daughter Charlie.

It was not until December 2020 that FIFA approved rules that guarantee maternity leave for professional women footballers, a move the ruling body’s President Gianni Infantino said was essential for the global soccer body to boost the women’s game.

Under the regulations, a player is given 14 weeks maternity leave and clubs are obliged to retain her afterwards and provide medical support.

But while rules can help a player’s career stability, changing the “culture of the sport” is more complicated, said Ali Bowes, a senior lecturer in the Sociology of Sport at Nottingham Trent University.

Bowes co-authored a 2021 study that showed professional women footballers in England also have concerns that they must choose between being a parent and a professional athlete.

Iceland midfielder Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir won her claim against former club Olympique Lyonnais in January after she was not paid her full salary during her pregnancy months after helping the team win the Women’s Champions League title.

The World Cup features an array of working parents ready to buck age-old stereotypes, with Jamaica’s Konya Plummer travelling to her second World Cup after giving birth last year when her team mate Cheyna Matthews had her third child.

Midfielder Amel Majri, the first player to report to the France national team with a child after she gave birth in 2022, will be part of the country’s bid for a first World Cup title.

For the United States, mums on the pitch are common. U.S. Soccer counts 17 current and former players who had children in their playing days, beginning in the mid-1990s, and has been offering assistance to mothers for more than 25 years.

Morgan is one of three mums playing for the four-time champions, with defender Crystal Dunn and midfielder Julie Ertz planning to have their young ones with them on the road.