Spain’s football federation launches fertility support scheme for female players and referees

The RFEF said the initiative is designed to give women greater freedom over decisions about motherhood without forcing them to choose between their sporting careers and their personal lives.

Under the agreement, which will remain in place until spring 2029, eligible women will have access to specialist advice and treatments including egg freezing, in vitro fertilisation (IVF), egg donation and genetic testing.

The RFEF will cover the cost of egg freezing for eligible players, with the initial preservation of their eggs provided for five years.

The scheme applies to players who have been called up for at least two matches with Spain’s senior women’s national team, as well as women’s futsal internationals, referees and assistant referees in the top division and female RFEF employees. Coverage for eligible players is being applied retrospectively from April 2025.

RFEF president Rafael Louzán described the initiative as an ‘innovative agreement at a global level’ for a football federation and said it had developed partly from discussions with Spain’s international players.

‘If Spain and its national teams are the best in the world on the field, they must also be the best in matters such as work-life balance,’ Louzán said.

Giving players greater choice

The programme has been established in partnership with fertility clinic group Tambre and is intended to provide women with both medical information and access to reproductive, physical and mental health support.

Reyes Bellver, the RFEF’s director of women’s football, said the objective was to ensure that ‘during the athletes’ most fertile years, they are protected, have access to information, and we can meet their needs’.

Spain internationals Olga Carmona and Patri Guijarro attended the presentation of the agreement this week.

Carmona, who scored Spain’s winning goal against England in the 2023 Women’s World Cup final, described the initiative as ‘a very important step for us’.

Guijarro said the measures were important so that ‘athletes don’t have to choose between their personal life and their sporting life’.

Referee Alicia Espinosa said greater access to fertility information and treatments should also enable women to make decisions with ‘less pressure’.

Inge Kormelink, CEO of Tambre, said the clinics would ‘provide rigorous medical information and specialised support so that all female athletes can freely and without pressure decide whether to become mothers now, later, or never’.

Part of wider changes in Spanish women’s football

The initiative forms part of a series of measures introduced by the RFEF aimed at improving conditions and work-life balance for women, including arrangements to support senior national team players who have children.

It also comes after several turbulent years in relations between Spain’s women’s national team and the federation.

Long-running disputes over conditions and the treatment of players intensified following Spain’s World Cup victory in August 2023, when then-RFEF president Luis Rubiales kissed player Jenni Hermoso on the lips without her consent during the medal ceremony.

The incident prompted international outrage and demands from players for sweeping changes within Spanish football. Rubiales resigned as federation president the following month after being suspended by FIFA. ALSO READ: Luis Rubiales guilty of sexual assault and fined over €10k for World Cup kiss.

The latest agreement follows reproductive health measures introduced elsewhere in elite football, including by English club Chelsea.

There has, however, also been some criticism of the RFEF initiative. Critics have argued that sporting organisations should concentrate on providing conditions and protections that enable female athletes to have children when they choose, rather than placing too much emphasis on delaying motherhood through assisted reproduction.

The agreement comes against a wider backdrop of declining fertility across Europe. The average number of live births per woman in Europe has fallen substantially over the past six decades, from 2.62 in 1964 to 1.34 in 2024.

For the RFEF, however, the emphasis is on giving women working at the highest levels of Spanish football more information and greater control over decisions that can otherwise collide with the relatively short span of an elite sporting career.