Women's Australian rules football

Women's Australian Rules football

Marking contest during the 2022 AFL Women's season Showdown between Adelaide and Port Adelaide at the Adelaide Oval
Highest governing body	AFL Commission
First played	1917; Perth, Western Australia
Registered players	530,166 (2021)
Characteristics
Team members	16 per side + 5 interchange (differs to men's 18 per side + 4 interchange)
Type	Team sport Ball sport Contact sport
Equipment	Modified ball
Venue	Australian rules football playing field (Australian rules ground, cricket pitch or similar sized field)

Women's Australian rules football (in areas where it is popular, known simply as women's football or women's footy or women's AFL), is the female-only form of Australian rules football, generally with some modification to the laws of the game. It is played by more than half a million women worldwide and with 119,447 Australian adult and 66,998 youth female participants in 2023 is the second most played code among women and girls in Australia behind soccer.

The first Australian rules football matches involving women were organised late in the 19th century, but for several decades it occurred mostly in the form of scratch matches, charity matches and one-off exhibition games. The first all-female matches began early in the 20th century, and regular competition first emerged after World War II. State-based leagues emerged between the 1980s and 2000s: the first was the Victorian Women's Football League (VWFL) formed in Melbourne in 1981, with others including the West Australian Women's Football League (WAWFL) formed in Perth in 1988 and the South Australian Women's Football League (SAWFL) formed in Adelaide in 1991. The AFL Women's National Championships were inaugurated in 1992.

In 2010 the Australian Football League (AFL) assumed control of the sport with the intention of professionalising it and began restructing competitions around the country to support an Australian national league, AFL Women's (AFLW), that commenced its inaugural season in 2017. By 2022 all 18 AFL clubs had begun fielding women's teams. The AFLW attracts a large audience of more than one million attendees^[1] and over two million viewers,^[2] and has managed to maintain its high levels of interest despite moving to primarily ticketed and subscription broadcasting models in 2021. The AFLW competition is one of the most popular women's football competitions in the world with an average attendance in 2019 of 6,262 a game. The record attendance is 53,034 which was set at the 2019 AFL Women's Grand Final which, prior to the 2020 ICC Women's T20 World Cup, held the record for the most attended fixture in Australian women's sport.

Women's Australian rules has also grown rapidly outside of Australia since the 2000s. The Women's International Cup has been run since 2011. Players to represent their country and be recruited at AFLW level include Laura Duryea, Clara Fitzpatrick (Ireland) and Kendra Heil (Canada).