The Lionesses’ New Year Honours List snub shows us how hard women have to work to get noticed

Everyone seems to think that a smattering of honours for our female sporting heroes makes up for some glaring omissions, writes Victoria Richards – but this piecemeal approach to recognition would never be accepted in the men’s game

What is the Honours List really for? In revealing the names of those on this prestigious, twice-a-year scroll, aren’t we meant to feel warm and fuzzy; to forget about the things that make Britain bad and knit together, for a change? If anything can do that, it’s football! And if any football team specifically can do that, it’s the Lionesses – right?

Well, that’s what you would assume from reading the headlines of the latest New Year Honours List 2026: you might believe that the Lionesses “dominated” the awards; that they’ve been universally recognised for their successes at two major tournaments in the past three years. Except... only half of them have. In fact, just seven of the Lionesses – and only five of them players – have received gongs in the shape of MBEs and OBEs.

Imagine the uproar if a team made up of, say, Wayne Rooney and David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Paul Scholes, Michael Owen and Ashley Cole had won the Euros – twice – and then only a couple of them got immediate honours, while the rest had to wait and follow on in dribs and drabs. We’d be reading petitions, calls to arms and might even see protests in the streets for the “snubbed” Three Lions.

Indeed, look at our female rugby stars too. Six members of the World Cup-winning England squad of 2025 have been named on the King’s New Year Honours List. Yet serious questions must be asked about why so many are excluded. In 2003, all 31 members of the men’s England's World Cup-winning rugby squad were decorated in the New Year’s honours list, a month after vanquishing Australia in Sydney. 31! Why are the Red Roses capped at six? What is it about the women that means they don’t deserve the same treatment?

Meanwhile, just a casual glance in the direction of the Lionesses’ trophy cabinet is enough to prove they deserve more – much more. In July, the England side won their second European Women’s Championship trophy in a row by beating Spain on penalties after a nerve-wracking final in Switzerland. And Euros 2025 was the first major football trophy won abroad by any England team – making the women’s squad objectively more successful overall (whisper it) than the men’s team. When it comes to recent tournaments, the Lionesses have reached three major finals in a row, winning two, while the men's team hasn’t won a major tournament since 1966! Pretty extraordinary, wouldn’t you say?

I would say. I’d say it very loudly indeed. I’d say that all of the Lionesses – such as Chloe Kelly and Alessia Russo, Hannah Hampton, Michelle Agyemang and Jess Carter, to name just a few of the winning squad who weren’t recognised – meet the requirements of that accolade head-on.

But this piecemeal approach to rewarding England’s winning women isn’t doing the Lionesses – or women’s morale – any favours. It only adds to the controversy from 2022, when just four of England’s 23 Lionesses who won the Euros that year were immediately recognised in the New Year list: Williamson (who’s now been recognised twice), alongside Lucy Bronze, Beth Mead and Ellen White (who received MBEs). The rest of the 2022 winning team had to wait for theirs – why?

When something happens once, it can be considered unfortunate, but when it happens twice, it looks an awful lot like careless misogyny. And in my view, it only serves to prove how hard women have to work to get noticed – even when they’re a tournament-winning Lioness.

When this happened to the Lionesses in 2022, more than 1,700 people signed a petition calling for all of England’s Euro 2022 winners to be recognised with at least an MBE. Four years later, you’d think they’d have learned something.

Then, the committee chairman Sir Hugh Robertson, who oversees sports honours, said there was a “danger” in what he described as “carpet-bombing” the entire squad, because “then you get people who’ve done five minutes on the pitch and get an award. So what we’ve tried to do is stick to the principle of the honours, which is to recognise excellence and extraordinary contributions”.

There’s no good reason why Chloe Kelly should have missed out – she’s hardly someone who’s only done “five minutes on the pitch”, as Robertson suggests. Lest we forget, Kelly scored the winning goals in both the Euro 2022 final and the Euro 2025 final penalty shootout – yet still no honours for her.

Alessia Russo, too, was significant in both tournaments, scoring against Northern Ireland and Sweden (in the semi-final) with her memorable back-heel goal. She even scored the equaliser in the Euro 2025 final against Spain in Basel, sealing the Lionesses’ status as the first England team to win a major trophy on foreign soil; while Hannah Hampton, her goalkeeper teammate, was a shootout hero in the Euro 2025 final (and was named BBC Women's Footballer of the Year 2025).

Jess Carter, meanwhile, started five of the tournament matches that led to the Lionesses going on to reach the final – and was arguably the bravest, after being forced to endure vile online racist abuse while taking part in the Euros. And what about Michelle Agyemang – who at 19, was the youngest member of the Lionesses squad at Euro 2025?

Sure, gender equality in the Honours list overall might be improving – for the King’s Birthday in 2025, it was at 48 per cent women, while the New Year 2025 Honours came in at a 49 per cent gender split – but it’s coming from a very paltry starting position. While progress has been made in recent years to ensure that there is an equal number of men and women on honours lists, this is not the case across all levels of honours – and women still get fewer awards than men at the higher honours levels (including Damehoods and CBEs). The Cabinet Office acknowledges this itself – so much so that a target was set in 2014 for half of all nominations to be for women.

Perhaps they should try harder – starting with giving the England women’s team blanket recognition for winning the Euros. Can you really imagine that if the men had won a tournament since 1966 – had they won either final at Euro 2020 or Euro 2024, even – that there wouldn’t be howls of protest if key members of the squad been overlooked?

Is five Lioness honours enough for the end of a dazzling run? Not even nearly. Gender parity shouldn’t be an issue here – the women’s team deserve to be recognised for their sheer excellence in (and on) the field. The New Year Honours List is the place to do that and the Lionesses are the best team we’ve had in years. Every single player deserves recognition – now. Otherwise, it’s starting to look an awful lot like one rule for women, another rule for everybody else.