Read "1881: Women’s Soccer Is Born; "What next?"" from Chapter 1, "Everyone, Everywhere" of Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore, and Amazing Feats by Donn Risolo:

"Today, women have their own World Cup, under-20, and under-17 world championships, and Olympic soccer tournament, plus continental championships. There was a time, though, when the (male) soccer establishment considered organized women’s soccer something of an outrage.

Perhaps not in the Scottish town of Iveresk, Midlothian, where, in the late eighteenth century an annual match was played between the married and unmarried fishwives of Fisherrow. From the first such contest in 1795 area bachelors would watch the bachelorettes in action and decide on a potential bride based on the young woman’s soccer skills.

But that open-mindedness had shut tight nearly a hundred years later, as evidenced by the account of a female version of Scotland versus England played in 1881 in nearby Edinburgh:

So it has come at last! What next? Two teams of young women have just played a game under Association Rules in Edinburgh.

Several years ago there was a rage for silly displays of certain kinds of athletics by women, but we thought the time had passed for another outburst in the form of Association football. It had been whispered some weeks ago that twenty-two young women were practicing the dribbling game in a hall in Glasgow for the purpose of “coming out,” and that eventually they had applied to several of the Glasgow clubs for the use of their ground, but not one would grant it for such purpose. Somehow or other, however, the Edinburgh Association players are not so particular about the arrangement of matches, if there is any chance of a gate, and the ground at Eastern Road belonging to the Hibernians was given without much ado.

To give the arrangement the semblance of an international event the girls had the “cheek” to designate the farce, England v Scotland, and, as a matter of course, it suited them best to allow Scotland to win by three goals to none.

The “Scottish Eleven” wore blue jerseys, with crimson sashes round the waist, knickerbockers, blue and white hose, and high laced boots, while the English team had on crimson jerseys, with blue sashes, white knickerbockers, and crimson and white hose, and badges with the English lion. The football shown was of the most primitive order, and reminded one of a couple of A B C classes of schoolboys engaged in a “big side.”

It is said that other matches are about to come off, one in Glasgow this afternoon. If it does come off in that city it will most probably be on some of the professional running grounds, for no football club with any regard for its good name would encourage such a humiliating spectacle made of the popular winter pastime.

The account concluded with the lineups of both teams. For the record, Scotland’s enormous head start in women’s soccer hasn’t been parlayed into success today. Scotland failed to qualify for the first four Women’s World Cups and in December 2003 was ranked No. 30 by FIFA in the first installment of its worldwide women’s rankings."