The women’s game has grown impressively since the Coppa del Mondo in Italy 1970 but there is still a lot do to as Canada prepare to host the 2015 World Cup

Studying guides to the women’s World Cup in Canada this week, you would be forgiven for thinking female footballers only started playing in global tournaments in 1991.

The first unofficial women’s World Cup took place 21 years earlier with the Coppa del Mondo in Italy 1970, an event followed by the Mundial in Mexico 1971, the series of Mundialito tournaments throughout the 1980s in Italy, and Fifa’s Women’s Invitation Tournament in China in 1988.

England even came close to hosting its own tournament after Geoff Hurst and Alf Ramsey met the winger Sue Lopez in 1971. The pair promised £150,000 sponsorship and the support of Bobby Moore and Martin Peters to popularise the sport at a time when the Football Association had just overturned its 50-year ban on women playing the game. It was an offer light years ahead of its time, an extraordinary move from a group of national heroes who had won the 1966 World Cup.

“Geoff Hurst reassured me it was no gimmick and that they would be deadly serious about coaching the team to ensure England did well,” wrote Lopez in Women on the Ball, the definitive book on the history of the sport, before adding it was “one of the most disappointing chapters in the history of the WFA [Women’s Football Association]” that the governing body voted against taking up the offer. The idea died an immediate death and England have yet to host a global tournament in the women’s game.

In 1991, 20 years after that discussion, Fifa organised the first official World Cup in China. The global governing body’s involvement brought status and recognition but in truth the World Cup struggled to live up to its grand nomenclature. For a start there was no winners’ prize money, no sponsor and the matches lasted just 80 minutes. In the final, when Michelle Akers of the USA put two goals past Norway, most of America did not even know about it because – unbelievably – the game was not broadcast in the United States.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brandi Chastain of the US celebrates after scoring with the decisive penalty against China in the World Cup Final in July 1999. Photograph: LACY ATKINS/AP

Sweden played host in 1995, and with that tournament came, at last, 90-minute matches, though the women’s game had to wait until 2007 before prize money was introduced at $5.8m (£3.7m). It was America’s engagement in the sport, though, that really set the marker for the global game.

USA 1999 saw the competition expand from 12 teams to 16, while in the World Cup final 90,185 people turned out to watch Brandi Chastain’s famous penalty-scoring celebration at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles, a record crowd for a women’s sporting event to this day. The US tournament also launched female players as global stars, from Mia Hamm to the bra-wielding Chastain.

The 2007 World Cup was significant for England’s high-profile involvement, Kelly Smith’s boot kissing, and the debut of a Brazilian goalscoring genius, Marta, whose stunning semi-final goal against the USA delighted the world. By the time the World Cup came to Germany in 2011 there was a far greater awareness and interest in the sport than ever before.

Across 181 countries 62.8 million people watched a gripping final on TV as Japan beat the USA on penalties, becoming the first Asian country to win the World Cup. In Germany more people tuned in to the match than watched the Wladimir Klitschko v David Haye fight. A new Twitter record of 7,196 tweets per second was set, too – more than for William and Kate’s wedding or the death of Osama bin Laden.

This summer the increased interest and investment has begun to translate into the level of professionalism among the 24 teams attending, up from the 16 finalist nations four years ago. Around 10 teams are bringing their own chef, five are travelling business class and one has even enlisted its own private jet to travel between fixtures.

However, despite the enormous growth in the tournament it would be foolish to ignore the inequalities that persist. The much highlighted row over the use of artificial turf in Canada, that many have argued would never be imposed on a men’s World Cup, is just the tip of the iceberg. While prize money is now available to the winners, at $13.6m it is a tiny fraction of the $406m on offer to the men in Brazil last summer. And damningly, even within the sport itself a gender gap exists – only eight of the 24 teams in Canada this summer will be led by female coaches, a fact that prompted Hope Powell to express concern that women are being “squeezed out” of their own game.

How this World Cup plays out – with eight countries making their debut at what is the first senior global tournament to be held on artificial turf – will be fascinating. Whether it prompts Wayne Rooney and Roy Hodgson to speak to Toni Duggan about investing in women’s football is doubtful; the real hope is the sport takes a further leap forward towards parity with its male counterparts.