Women's football in Asia has enjoyed enormous growth recently, as Vietnam and the Philippines showed by qualifying for the FIFA Women’s World Cup™ for the first time in 2023, and it will only continue to thrive. The AFC Women's Champions League is set to start later in 2024, while the Philippines will host the first FIFA Futsal Women's World Cup™ in 2025. To help continue the momentum, FIFA, working hand-in-hand with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the Football Association of Indonesia (PSSI), hosted a Women's Football Regional Workshop in Jakarta - where the FIFA President inaugurated the FIFA Indonesia Office prior to the FIFA U-17 World Cup last year. Each Member Association was represented by the person from their country, who is responsible for the growth of women’s football.

"We’re bringing the member associations of Asia together in one place to discuss, to exchange, to share knowledge, to talk about our collective challenges, to highlight some of the success stories, and to really try to work collectively to grow and develop the women’s game here in Asia," said Dame Sarai Bareman, FIFA's Chief Women’s Football Officer. "This is a really important region for us. It’s a region that lives and breathes and is crazy about football. And specifically for women’s football, it’s traditionally and historically been one of the strongest regions. And it’s important for us to continue to foster that."

The importance of the FIFA Women's Football Strategy - launched in 2018 to guide the development of women's football - and for member associations to follow suit with their own strategies was one of the main topics.

"We’ve just been through a process to refresh and update (the WFS). It’s important to present that to our member associations because we know at FIFA that we are really reliant on the success of our members in order for us to be successful," said Dame Bareman. "We have some fantastic women in this region, who are leading the women’s game, former players, coaches, just incredible women," she added, citing Kunzang Choden of Bhutan as an example. "She’s a former referee, then she became a player, she was a player and now she’s leading the administration and the federation. These are exactly the type of women that we should be bringing into our federations to help us to lead the women’s game and achieve our objectives."

Erick Thohir, the PSSI President, explained that FIFA's guidance was invaluable in supporting countries develop the women's game. Indonesia itself is in the midst of finalising its women’s football strategy with the assistance of FIFA’s Women’s Development Programme and is set to inaugurate a new national training centre with dedicated training facilities for women’s football, thanks to the financial assistance of the FIFA Forward Programme. "FIFA right now are actually working with us day to day [on] how we can develop a good blueprint for Indonesian football, especially for the women’s side. So, there is a target we want to achieve,” he said. “For example, for our women’s team can qualify for the [FIFA Women’s] World Cup in 2035, and for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup. So, we have to start from now.” "I keep mentioning that Indonesia is a sleeping giant, which is true. We need to learn a lot from FIFA in terms of administration, professionalism, transparency and how we can create a blueprint and also implementation for all the programmes."

Kanya Keomany, a Vice President of the Lao Football Association and FIFA Council Member, also stressed the importance of having a strategy for women’s football. “Without the strategy, we wouldn’t have direction. We wouldn’t know where to go and what we [want] to reach eventually, so with this strategy, we were able to unlock some of the funds to start the women’s league in Laos," she said. “This year, we’re expanding the league to 10 teams, which is even more than the men’s league, so this is a very big step that we took to develop women’s football in Laos.” FIFA Forward funds have played a big part in developing women’s football in Asia, with Laos being one of many examples. In addition to funding, FIFA’s Women’s Football Division have worked closely with the Lao Football Association to develop a strategy, dedicated to the growth of the women’s game.

"We also look forward to the other countries getting on board,” said Sanjeevan Balasingam, FIFA Director Member Associations Asia & Oceania. “This event that we’ve had here will, we hope, bring more development and see teams flourish in the 46 countries in Asia." “Asia is important… The AFC is also implementing a lot of new women’s competitions and next year, we’ll have the (FIFA) Women’s Futsal World Cup in the Philippines. So, that’s another women’s football tournament to look forward to. So, I think the game is in the right place. We just have to take it from here to the next level.”