A single day, under the title of International Women’s Day, where women get praised and appreciated is simply not enough in football and barely scratches the surface. 

The day specially marked out on our calendars to remind men not to mansplain, say out loud they think they are the best at driving, sports and all those other everyday lifestyle choices and where they have to pretend to actually care about what women do is also the day of the fourth round of the women’s FA Cup. 

Luckily the glorified day falls on a Sunday this year, meaning lovers of the beautiful game have less reason to not go down, pay a couple of pounds, find their best and loudest voice and support their local team battling to get their hands on a title. 

Interestingly some of the clubs that have suffered a long drought of silverware are actually highly successful with their women. Much like the uproar that happened at Wimbledon when the media claimed Andy Murray was the “first British person to win” for many years they had simply omitted the glorious history of women in sport.

The most successful club in the competition are Arsenal, with a total of 13 wins — eight of those coming since 2004 — and yet the men and the press office of Arsenal football club decided to let the club be insulted by its supposed lack of silverware. 

The women’s team, and current champions, simply faded into the background and found their impressive feat completely ignored for the chance to make better headlines on the back pages of male-dominated newspapers.

The women’s FA Cup aims to do exactly the same as the better known FA Cup and was created in 1970 with a total of 71 teams, from England and Scotland, entering and hoping to get into the record books. 

Southampton emerged successful, lifting the first cup, thanks to Pat Davies getting a hat-trick and Dot Cassell scoring to beat Stewarton and Thistle at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre, a venue that holds claim to fame for many sports.

For the first nine years Southampton reached the final every year and raised the trophy seven times, only being stopped by Queens Park Rangers and Fodens, in just as many venues.

Despite being a prestigious cup in football the women found it difficult to secure an impressive ground such as Wembley and are still unable to enter the cup with such dreams despite the England Ladies having breached the male-football-only impression at the end of last year in a friendly against Germany. 

People that are unable to attend the final because of its seemingly random location every year have found themselves passed from pillar to post since the 1980s by television companies as they all squabbled about who actually wanted it. 

Unlike the FA Cup final, which is practically mandated to appear on the BBC, the women’s FA Cup found itself on Sky for a number of years. Their reluctancy to host was evident when they refused to alter scheduling after one match went to penalties and they put it on the red button instead of letting it remain on the channel, causing outrage among fans and viewers.

The national uproar that would be expected if broadcasters deemed penalties of the men’s FA Cup final not be important enough to overrun would be an unprecedented disaster where public relations dived for their rabbit holes for several weeks. 

Now though the broadcast rights have returned to the BBC’s reluctant hands they will begrudgingly at least show the game, if hardly anything else, in full.

The campaign to continue belittling women’s achievements especially in football continues with the rhetoric regarding international record holders. 

Peter Shilton, England goalkeeper for 125 games, is not the most capped English footballer despite common misconceptions and should instead willingly concede defeat to Arsenal forward Rachel Yankey, with 129 caps. 

Yankey also holds the achievement of being one of the first 17 women to be offered a professional contract with the FA in 2011, despite also finding time to coach youngsters in football alongside practice and playing. 

The contracts can be viewed as an impressive step for women’s football as players finally started to see professional recognition but also an indicator of the reluctance of the FA to acknowledge women as professionals. 

March 8 is not only the day for women to stand up for themselves and their sporting ability but it is also a time for the men to sit down and realise that there are extraordinary athletes playing week-in week-out with hardly any recognition from their club’s supporters. 

The Women’s Super league kicks into action at the end of the month and goes all the way through to October, a perfect chance for people that are missing football in the summer, and claim that there are only friendlies to go to, to actually get themselves acquainted with the women’s game and get their heads out of their own bottoms. 

We are women. We have all the body parts essential to football. We have the skills, the ability to calculate moves, work as a team and have the determination to get to the top. 

We deserve to give women’s football and women attention every day of the year not just when the calendar falls to the most breast-like number of March and tells you to respect women, after all the FA are all about respect in football according to their campaign.