Across a range of indicators, the women's game has recorded gains in its overall standing. According to a FIFPRO publication — the body that represents footballers at a global level — total industry revenues are projected to climb past the $1bn (€894m) mark by 2027.

Scheduled for Brazil — making it the first South American host of the women's tournament — the upcoming edition will also close out the 32-team format, with attendance figures and commercial returns both projected to surpass any previous instalment of the competition.

The U17 Women's World Cup, staged in Morocco, runs on an annual schedule across five consecutive editions. Among the nations sending squads to the 2026 tournament are Germany, France, Spain, Brazil, the United States, and North Korea, who arrive as the holders of the title.

Three nations — Puerto Rico, Australia, and Argentina — are stepping onto the stage for the first time. Qualification carries particular weight for Puerto Rico, where neither a men's nor a women's football side had previously reached a World Cup. Head coach Andres Mirabelli noted to FIFA that the squad had taken on the identity of being the territory's first to earn that distinction.

Complementing broader national development programmes, a community of close to four million people settled across the United States helped expand the pool of available talent. Crinion, who serves as the US head coach, relayed to FIFA that the sport's trajectory had grown more visible to her and that the direction of travel left her genuinely energised about where things were headed.

A shift in standards has taken place. FIFPRO data places the average monthly football salary across North America at $5,940 (€5,547), a figure that sits well above the comparable average recorded on any other continent. A speaker also noted that the U-17 Women's World Cup has taken on the role of an early competitive milestone for younger players — one the sport now treats with growing seriousness.

According to the FIFPRO report, pay for professional women footballers in numerous countries hovers around or dips beneath the national minimum wage threshold. Drawing on player surveys gathered from around the globe, the document determined that just two-thirds of professional players receive compensation across all twelve months of the year.

Contracts in women's football average around 1.6 years in duration. Data shared by Frankie Brown — who oversees research and strategy for women's football at FIFPRO — point to a worldwide average salary of roughly $2,600, though the median lands nearer to $1,600. Brown described that gap of about $1,000 as a window into how pay is distributed across the sport, and also noted that the stratification within women's football runs deeper than the well-documented divide between the top five leagues and the rest of the world.

Disparities show up not just between leagues but within individual ones as well. Brown noted that certain other leagues contain a mixture of professionally run clubs — ones that pay their players a liveable wage — alongside sides whose players hold amateur contracts and receive no payment whatsoever.

According to a statement from Alex Culvin, who holds the director of women's football role at FIFPRO, the findings place psychological pressures as the second leading factor behind players' decisions to leave the sport early, with 46% of those weighing an early exit — representing nearly half of all players surveyed — pointing to their mental health as the reason.

Across interviews, players have pointed to the demands that come with the sport's expansion — among them heavier workloads and abuse directed at them through social media — while noting that clubs have yet to put adequate structures in place to address those realities.

The FIFPRO report calls on FIFA to establish baseline standards for the women's game — covering areas such as contracts, pensions, and healthcare — that would be binding across clubs and national associations. The players' union has also pressed for mental health provision tied to general wellbeing rather than athletic performance outcomes.

A quoted remark frames the divide between the women's game's leading markets and the broader sport as a gap requiring active effort to close, while Germany is positioned as a model for structural development, with the 2027 World Cup in Brazil and its own hosting of the 2029 European Championship serving as reference points for raising the level of the domestic game. Across the 2023–24 campaign, the typical base pay for a player in the women's Bundesliga hovered at roughly €48,000 annually.

The Women's Bundesliga did not mandate that clubs employ assistant coaches, goalkeeper coaches, and athletic coaches on a full-time professional footing until the 2025–26 season got under way. Culvin noted that players spread across different continents share a common experience of job insecurity, and argued that redistribution arrangements within women's football need to reach a broader pool of players and do more to underpin a sustainable ecosystem for the sport.