SCOTLAND’S leading clubs have been urged to follow the example of Rangers and help to grow the women’s game in this country.

Pauline MacDonald, the Scotland Women’s Under-17 coach, claimed the Ibrox club have raised the bar for women’s football as she attended the launch of the new SFA equality and diversity strategy Football Unites at Oriam.

The Premiership leaders increased their financial commitment to Rangers Women in July last year, appointed former Liverpool player Gregory Vignal as their head coach and moved their home games to their training centre in Milngavie.

MacDonald, the former Arsenal and Scotland defender, believes the national team qualifying for Euro 2017 and France 2019 has helped to elevate the profile of the women’s game here.

However, she feels the Scottish Women’s Premier League has an important role to play as well and has welcomed the investment in their team that Rangers have made.

“We still have a long way to go,” she said. “Just now our top league is quite diverse in terms of the level of professionalism. We have clubs like Rangers who have put in something like £1.2m to develop it. But other clubs at the other end of that table are in a very different situation.

“What we need to do is bring the two together, make the league more competitive and try and increase professionalism across all teams. That will give us a better and more viable product to put out there.

“The work that Rangers have done since taking on their women’s team is absolutely what we would look for. Maybe the rest of the SWPL teams could do the same if they can link with a men’s team.

“It’s not just about the finance that brings, I think it’s the share of resources, the share of expertise, but also the visibility with the strip launch and things like that.

“It helps portray the game much more professionally and makes the game so much more visible to not just young aspiring female athletes. We want to make the game attractive to everybody in Scotland, to everybody that enjoys football.”

MacDonald added: “What is important to us is that we can create a product that the media and the TV want to continue to support. The success in qualifying for the last two major championships is something that has increased visibility for us.

“But we need to continue to push that which means we need to continue to increase participation which will increase competition which helps us increase the product.”

MacDonald believes Scotland still lags behind leading women’s football nations across Europe when it comes to providing opportunities to play and would like to see girls given the chance to compete with boys right up to under-21 level.

“We need to encourage our most talented youngsters to play within mixed football,” she said. “We have seen across the last 10 years or so that the top national team players are generally players who have played within the boys and men’s game for the longest duration. It is something that happens in Germany and Holland.

“To be able to do that we have to create an awareness and educate the youth of today for that to be acceptable and for there to be a welcoming culture for females to go into.

“I think you can play up until the age of 15 against boys just now. But if you look at Germany and Holland now it goes up to under-19 and under-21 level. Just now there are very few places where that would be socially or culturally welcoming for a female player.”