"Women's football is a game that should only be played by consenting adults in private," Brian Glanville claimed in 1990.

Twenty-one years on, the international community seems poised to signal its vehement disagreement. On Sunday the curtain rises for the hosts at the women's World Cup when Germany meet Canada at Berlin's magnificent Olympic Stadium with all 73,000 tickets long since sold out. Over the next 22 days, a tournament attracting unparalleled television coverage from a range of international broadcasters, including al-Jazeera, should leave female football finally basking in a powerful spotlight.

With around 80% of tickets for the 32 games at nine grounds snapped up, it is light years removed from 1955 when the former West Germany banned women's matches citing concerns over "injuries to body and soul", as well as to "propriety and decency".

By the time that barrier was lifted in 1970, Glanville, a celebrated journalist, was busy modernising 20th century sports writing. Like many of his British colleagues, though, he still came over all reactionary at first mention of girls kicking balls.

Rather more enlightened, healthily emancipated attitudes in, among other places, the United States, Scandinavia and parts of east Asia guaranteed that the growth of the women's game not only became inexorable but finally captured both German and English imaginations.

While Germany seek a third consecutive World Cup triumph, an average of 151,000 females play football every week across Britain, making it the principal women's participation sport.

How times have changed since the 1990s. Back then "soccer" was very much a man's game and Hope Powell, a midfielder capped 66 times by England, slept on gymnasium floors during nights before internationals.

Fast forward two decades and, as the coach of a talented Three Lionesses ensemble regarded as having a good chance of winning their inaugural World Cup, Powell has ensured her squad are accommodated in first-class hotels throughout their German odyssey.

If they are not quite in the England men's class when it comes to pampering or remuneration, Powell's players comprise a mix of semi-professionals and professionals whose central FA contracts guarantee them incomes, albeit modest ones, of £16,000 a year.

While 16 of the squad combine part-time jobs with representing sides in England's recently formed Women's Super League, the other five live in the United States where they play in the Women's Professional League.

Mindsets have certainly altered since 1921 when, alarmed that a Boxing Day game involving the famous, first world war-founded Dick, Kerr Ladies had drawn 53,000 spectators to Goodison Park, the FA banned females from playing at all its affiliated grounds.

Ninety years after that crushing setback, Powell is convinced this is not only England's "strongest ever" side but one who stand a realistic chance of progressing for the first time beyond the quarter-finals of a tournament first staged in 1991.

They will face stiff competition from the favourites Germany as well as an unusually fragile USA. Norway, Sweden, Canada, Japan and a dangerous Brazil also pose a threat with Marta, their principal attacker, dubbed Pelé with skirts. She is widely expected to prove the brightest star in the competition's firmament.

England's progress could hinge on whether they manage to finish above Japan in their four-team group, which also contains Mexico and New Zealand, in their fixtures in Wolfsburg, Dresden and Augsburg. Were Powell's players to secure the second qualifying position they would almost certainly be confronted by a quarter-final against Germany.

Yet if England's road from Monday evening's opener against Mexico in Wolfsburg to a possible final appearance in Frankfurt next month contains a few hazardous stretches, there is every chance that Lionesses such as Rachel Yankey, Eni Aluko, Faye White and Kelly Smith could impose themselves on a hitherto largely indifferent national consciousness before July is over.

International television audiences will be able to judge Powell's carefully calibrated 4-3-3 formation during the many hours of live broadcasts scheduled across Germany, its European neighbours and North America.

In a potentially significant initiative for women's rights, the influential Qatar-based broadcaster al-Jazeera will beam games to 23 countries across the Middle East and north Africa. British audiences can watch the final live on BBC3, while BBC2 offers a nightly highlights package and England's group games are available live through the red button.

Slower, less physical and with a lower tempo than the men's equivalent, but often highly tactical and technical, women's football has been praised by, among others, Kevin Keegan.

Viewers seeking a soap opera, meanwhile, can fret about White's potentially troublesome knee, Equatorial Guinea's progress or the pronouncements of Eucharia Uche. The subject of an official Nigerian complaint, ultimately dismissed, that they fielded two disguised men during qualifying, Equatorial Guinea should generate interest. Uche, meanwhile, is the Nigeria coach who harbours some bizarre views on homosexuality and religion.

The impressive, if sometimes feisty, Powell has attended too many FA management courses to say anything overly controversial. No one though should underestimate the 44-year-old south Londoner with a fighting chance of ending "45 years of hurt" by becoming the first England football manager to win a World Cup since Sir Alf Ramsey in 1966.