Players to represent their country and be recruited at AFLW level include Laura Duryea, Clara Fitzpatrick (Ireland) and Kendra Heil (Canada).

The game's governing body, the AFL Commission, has been criticised for its lack of acknowledgement of the history of women's football, taking credit only for the virtually overnight "revolution" of the AFLW while making only passing reference to its origins and development.

[citation needed] Overall public support for women's football in the league's home of Melbourne has also lagged behind the rest of the country to an extent.

Despite this, women have nonetheless followed the Australian game passionately since the mid-19th century, accounting for approximately 50% of spectators at matches, a uniquely high figure among football codes.

[7] Costume football matches were popular from the late 1870s as a form of outdoor fancy dress theatre amusement mixing opera, comedy and pantomime.

In 1887 one of the earliest accounts of numerous "young ladies" participating was held in Ballarat, at the Eastern Oval in front of a huge crowd of 6,000.

[6] In 1894, a high profile costume match was played to raise funds for the Australian Dramatic and Musical Association which featured one of the earliest all-female teams which included Nellie Stewart, Florence Maude Young, Jennie Lee, Violet Varley and Flora Graupner.

Records exist of a football side in Perth, Western Australia made up of department store staff playing as Foy & Gibson's as early as 1915.

[23] Perth's successful "Shopgirls Premiership" competition continued after the war and through the 1920s and included teams from Brennan's drapery and Foy & Gibson among others.

According to the AFL Record, following World War I, a match in Melbourne was held to show that women could play what had previously been seen to be a man's sport.

[37] That year, Oakleigh and Carnegie Football girls' clubs staged a match in front of a large crowd at Caulfield Racecourse in Melbourne.

[45][3] The league competed through the 1950s and was actively promoted by Footscray VFL champions "Mr Football" Ted Whitten and Jack Collins.

[55] Women's Australian rules football began to rapidly grow in 2000, with the number of registered teams increasing by a phenomenal 450%.

[57] In June 2007, the organisers of the E. J. Whitten Legends Game included, for the first time, female participants - Daisy Pearce and Shannon McFerran, both of the Victorian Women's Football League (VWFL) - enabling them to play against former men's AFL players.

[58] The first full international game was held between the USA Freedom and Team Canada in Vancouver on Saturday 4 August 2007 in front of a crowd of almost 2,500.

[62] However the AFL would later miss this targe, postponing it until 2020 to allow its expansion clubs the Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney time to submit their bids in full.

In June 2013, they organised an AFL sanctioned exhibition match held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground which attracted 7,500 spectators, then a record.

The inaugural AFLW match was held at Ikon Park in February 2017 between traditional rivals Carlton and Collingwood and attracted 27,500 fans, however over 2,000 people were locked out due to security concerns.

[66] Following the AFLW season, the first State of Origin match in the code for almost a decade, attracting 9,400 to Docklands Stadium to watch Victoria women's team take on the Allies.

After the 2015 edition, the AFL arranged the 2016 Exhibition Series and announced the formation of the AFLW in September 2016: with this, the raison d'etre for the Championship and Women's Football Australia ceased to exist, and they were dissolved.

The number of female Australian Rules Football teams reached 1,690 nationally, a huge 76% increase on the previous year.

The work done by League president Debbie Lee and Media Manager Leesa Catto as well as involvement by celebrities such as Tiffany Cherry have helped to boost exposure for the sport.

This was following legal action taken against them in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (following a complaint to the Equal Opportunity Commission) by Penny Cula-Reid, Emily Stayner, and Helen Taylor.

[90] The three schoolgirls were banned from playing in junior leagues, with fears of expensive insurance liability in case of injury and "medical reasons" being cited by Football Victoria (i.e. the physical differences between the bodies of boys and girls).

[91] Organised Women's Australian rules football has been played in Western Australia since 1988, with the first premiership being won by Mount Lawley.

In 2023, Australian rules football player Heather Anderson of Adelaide became the first female athlete diagnosed with CTE after her death by suicide on 13 November 2022, at the age of 28.

Tasmanian Women's Football League AFL South Africa runs a junior program which includes girls in mixed competition.

[99] In 2018, a women's division was added to the Asian Australian Football Championships signalling all-women's matches in many countries including Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Like the AFL, this includes a large number of Irish converts from gaelic games such as Laura Duryea, Cora Staunton and Clara Fitzpatrick among others.

However it also includes players from other countries (many with a rugby background) including New Zealand: Brooke Walker, Makaela Tuhakaraina, Lucy Single, Jesse Tawhiao-Wardlaw, Dee Heslop and Vaomua Laloifi; the United States: Danielle Marshall (USA); Canada: Kendra Heil and South Sudan: Akec Makur Chuot.