Fertility Support in Women’s Football: A Choice or an Expectation?

Chelsea have announced Fertility Plus as their first Official Fertility Partner, in a move that puts reproductive health firmly into the conversation around women’s football. The partnership will see Chelsea Women introduce a first-of-its-kind fund which has enough money to pay for every player to freeze their eggs, alongside providing bespoke fertility support including smear tests, contraception and menstrual support.

As the women’s game continues to grow, it’s amazing to see clubs investing in areas of player care that recognise women have different needs to their male counterparts. For so long, conversations around women’s bodies, periods, pregnancy and fertility have been pushed to the side of elite sport and seeing clubs acknowledge that these things are part of a female athlete’s life is an important step.

Chelsea’s announcement comes at similar time as news that the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) is working on an agreement with a fertility clinic that would give players in the Spain women’s national team access to egg cryopreservation (freezing). Alexia Putellas backed the initiative, describing it as a huge step forward. She said “The federation understands that you are serving your country against your biological clock, that you cannot stop and cannot be a mother because you need your body in order to work.”

I think both of these partnerships will offer life-changing support for many of the Chelsea team/Spanish nationals. For professional footballers, a career demands an enormous amount from the body, often during the same years in which many women may be thinking about starting a family. Giving players access to information, fertility support, and egg freezing will feel like giving them another option with which to make their own decisions.

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But initiatives like this don’t come without reservations. Spanish triple jumper Ana Peleteiro-Compaoré has questioned whether egg freezing should be seen as the feminist solution it is being presented as. Her criticism isn’t necessarily about the physical egg freezing itself, it’s about why the responsibility falls on women to adapt their reproductive timelines to fit professional sport, rather than asking whether the structure of professional sport should change to accommodate motherhood.

Peleteiro took to Instagram with a video where she asked “Why does the institution these women work for have an interest in financing them to delay their motherhood? Is this measure intended to make it easier for women to be mothers, or is it intended to make it easier for them not to be while they’re playing?”

And this is where the conversation gets more complicated. Shouldn’t clubs be focusing on supporting women whenever they do choose to become mothers. Shouldn’t they be ensuring that contracts are protected during pregnancy? That recovery and postpartum care will be prioritised? That players can return to their careers without being treated as though becoming a mother has somehow made them less committed to football?

These are the questions that need to sit alongside conversations about fertility preservations because there is a difference between giving women more choices and creating a system where one side eventually starts to feel like an expectation.

Photo Credit: via @apelteirob

Chelsea have been clear that their initiative is not about telling players to freeze their eggs. Dr Amit Shah and Dr Anil Gudi, co-founders of Fertility Plus, have said the partnership is about the wider education, support and access to trusted information, and this distinction feels particularly important. Through expert-led educational content, myth vs medicine resources and CFCW ambassador insights, Chelsea have an ambition to challenge common misconceptions about fertility, and contribute to improved understanding, with a goal to make their players and women in the Chelsea community feel informed and confident when navigating their fertility journey.

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This to me is where the partnership has the potential to be genuinely positive. I hope giving players the resources to be able to understand their options and ask questions surrounding the decisions they must make about their future, gives them the power and autonomy to make the right choices for themselves.

However, information and choice will only go so far if the wider system still makes motherhood feel incompatible with a successful career, so although a great move by Chelsea, the question remains about how we make professional sport work around women, rather than constantly asking women to work around professional sport.