Adorning the lampposts on either side of the path are banners featuring members of the England women’s team, players who once used to pay to play football but are now household names with sponsorship deals and full-time contracts.

They will be taking on two-time world champions Germany at Wembley, with a record crowd for the Lionesses set to fill the stands.

The true attendance figure may drop by a couple of thousand, but will still comfortably surpass the previous record of 45,619, also set at Wembley against Germany in 2014.

Indeed, it will probably also be the highest attendance for a women’s football match in the United Kingdom. That record stretches back to 2012, when the United States took on Japan in the final of the London 2012 Olympic Games, a game watched by 80,203 people.

Good news for the women’s game in England then, but it is not just the Lionesses that are smashing records. Australia’s team, the Matildas, achieved an attendance high of 20,029 at their match against Chile in Sydney yesterday.

This was not even the most significant moment in the week for them, however. The team made headlines when the Football Federation Australia and Professional Footballers Australia announced a four-year deal allowing their players to earn the same as their male counterparts.

The Matildas will now also share an equal split of all commercial revenues and will be allowed to travel business class for international matches, as the men do. Coaching and operational support will be brought to the same standard as the men's team.

Australia join Norway and New Zealand in ensuring their women’s football teams receive equal pay, setting a precedent for the rest of the world. It was probably a boost to the US Women’s National Team (USWNT), who also enjoyed their own little victory this week.

Earlier this year, members of USWNT filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation for allegedly paying women less than men for "substantially equal work". The players involved are now able to sue US Soccer as a collective, after a federal judge allowed their lawsuit to proceed as a class action.

It was an important moment for USWNT, with the judge also rejecting US Soccer’s argument that the women had not suffered discrimination as they had actually earned more than the men during the period in question.

According to the judge's written ruling, agreeing with this argument could yield an "absurd result," in which a woman could be paid half as much as a man, as long as she negated the disparity by working twice as many hours.

All in all, an extremely significant and positive week for women’s football around the world. It is interesting that all of this took place at an international level, however, especially when contrasted with what is taking place at a domestic level in some countries.

Take Spain, for instance. Last month, ninety-three per cent of players across the 16 teams that compete in the country’s top division voted to go on strike.

The decision was taken after negotiations over a collective agreement with the clubs broke down over minimum salary and part-time contracts. The players demanded that part-time contracts have a minimum salary of €12,000 (£10,400/$13,200), 75 per cent of a full-time salary, but the clubs argued it should be 50 per cent, or €8,000 (£6,900/$8,800). 

With the Primera División de la Liga de Fútbol Femenino currently on hold for an international break, the strike is scheduled to begin next Saturday (November 16).

This situation is long way off from the deal the Matildas have struck and shows that things are not progressing at the same pace around the world. It also suggests that positive changes are being made at the highest level of the sport - international football - but things are stalling further down the food chain.

Another case in point can be found in Italy, where female players are still considered amateurs by a law from 1981. They are subsequently not permitted to earn more than €30,000 (£26,000/$33,000) per year before taxes.

Players are campaigning to change this law, supported by the Italian Football Federation and Vincenzo Spadafora, Italy's new Minister for Sport and Youth Policies. Once this is done, they plan to make their women's league fully professional.

Despite this, there is still a way to go before new legislation is passed and women’s football in Italy is stuck until that happens.

It is not all good news then, but the mobilisation of players in both Spain and Italy is still extremely significant for women’s football. It is important that pay and attendance figures are improved on at a domestic level, seeing as that is where footballers play week in, week out.

International football is almost a club for the elite, and while they do deserve to be treated fairly, so do those who can not quite reach the same heights. If players in Spain and Italy are successful in their demands, it will benefit the whole of women’s football.

The women's game has been developing at a rapid pace for some time now, but a week of considerable change all around the world has not been seen to this extent before. It is a week to be built upon, while remembering that progress needs to be made across all levels of women's football.