article: The women's game attracted crowds of more than 50,000 before the FA move in 1921. To celebrate International Women's Day, the 37-year-old took part in a Q&A session in her role as BBC Sport's guest editor. She discussed topics such as Manchester United's lack of a senior women's team and England's hopes for Euro 2017, along with the CBeebies show Footy Pups, which Yankey hosts in a bid to help encourage a new generation of sports stars. BBC presenters Clare Balding, Gabby Logan and Jess Creighton were among those to fire questions at the former winger. What would women's football look like now if the FA had not banned it and what improvements would she like to see? (Clare Balding) Wow, what a fantastic question! It's a tricky one to answer. No one really knows but I'd like to think the attendances and participation levels would be on a par with the men's game. And to the follow up question, I would love to see the standard of play improve to make the game more attractive as a spectator sport. And of course the amount of coverage within the media could always be better. Can England women win the 2019 World Cup? (Gabby Logan) The Euros this year will be a massive challenge for the team but with two more years of experience, who knows what can happen. Hopefully with talent like [forward] Georgia Stanway from Manchester City coming through, the team will have a bright future! What can England take away from their 1-0 defeat by Germany in the SheBelieves Cup? (Jess Creighton) I don't think it's a bad result at all. I think if you take a look at where England are in preparation, obviously our league hasn't started yet. The French and German teams are in season so our players are naturally not as match fit as everyone else. Losing 1-0 to Germany… in years gone by I've been on the side losing by many more goals than one. The real test now is in the Euros. It's a chance for [manager] Mark Sampson and the squad to gel as a team and for him to look at his players and make a difficult selection for the Euros. The difficult thing now is the expectation and the players have to take that on their shoulders. That's the hard thing to handle and it's more than just going out on the field and playing. Why not dream big? We saw that with [Premier League champions] Leicester. What do you think about a club like Manchester United which does not have a senior women's team? (Martinez Anibiko Koosa) I imagine as a football club run as a business that somebody didn't see having a women's team as a financial business idea. Hopefully things will change because Manchester United are a huge club in world football. If they were to get on board and have a women's first team that would really show a massive turnaround because they had one many years ago. The fact they have a pretty good youth department
summary: Former Arsenal and England winger Rachel Yankey believes that women's football attendances and participation would be on par with the men's game if it had not effectively been banned by the Football Association for 50 years.