'We feel we've been listened to': Spanish FA launches fertility support scheme for female players and referees
Players have welcomed the deal as an important tool for players balancing the demands of professional sport and personal life
Spain’s football federation has announced a support package which will fund fertility treatment for female players and referees, giving them more freedom over when to start a family.
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The Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) said on Tuesday its agreement with the Tambre clinic would allow sportswomen to access treatments including in vitro fertilisation and egg freezing.
The federation called it a pioneering step for women's sport in the country.
Spain internationals Olga Carmona and Patri Guijarro attended the announcement and welcomed the deal as an important tool for players balancing the demands of professional sport and personal life.
"We are very happy to have reached this agreement, to have one more option to decide how and when to choose to become a mother," Carmona said.
Guijarro said the measure formed part of a broader push to improve work-life balance for female athletes and ensure motherhood does not become a barrier to a career in elite sport
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"Ultimately, it's a very positive agreement because it's true that for all these years we've been fighting to achieve a better work-life balance for mothers," Guijarro said.
"In the case of being able to have a career whilst being a mother, work-life balance measures are now being put in place; we feel we've been listened to.
"It's important that female athletes feel they don't have to choose between their professional and personal lives."
According to Reyes Bellver Alonso, director of women's football at the RFEF, the federation will cover the full cost of egg-freezing treatment and provide a range of benefits linked to different treatments for all international players who have been called up at least twice.
The deal with Tambre will be in place until 2029.
"The debate on motherhood and work-life balance is a vast one, and it is good that these issues are being discussed because it always helps to raise their profile in other areas," Bellver Alonso said.
She said football had made significant progress in protecting players' rights, contracts and pregnancy safeguards, including eliminating anti-pregnancy clauses.
"If there is one area where work has been done on maternity rights, the protection of women, the protection of contracts and work-life balance in women's sport, it is football," she said.
"I think that we often focus on the criticism and fail to convey how beneficial and pioneering these developments are, and the struggles the players have also gone through."
The RFEF said the agreement was not designed to discourage footballers from having children while they are active, but to offer another option so they do not have to rule out motherhood because of their sporting career.