The Rugby Football League Women's Super League (known as the Betfred Women's Super League due to sponsorship) is the elite women's rugby league club competition in England. Originally competed between four teams in the 2017 season, the league has developed with the 2023 season being contested by 12 teams playing home and away against each other in two groups with subsequent play-offs and Grand Final. In January 2023 it was announced that the league would be reduced to eight teams in the 2024 season.
The first female rugby league teams in England were formed in the 1980s. The Women's Amateur Rugby League Association (WARLA) was established in the mid-1980s and a league that initially had six teams expanded to 18 teams across two divisions by 1991. In 2008, the Women's Rugby League Conference was inaugurated and this was followed by the RFL Women's Rugby League, set up in 2014. It was mostly made up of community clubs with only Hunslet, Featherstone Rovers and Rochdale Hornets being professional clubs with a women's team. The Bradford Thunderbirds team became Bradford Bulls in 2016. The league had a very low profile and only ran for three years until the Women's Super League was formed in 2017.
To give the sport a bigger profile, the Super League name used by the men's game was adopted in 2017. The new league was still made up of community clubs but more professional clubs entered a women's team, The four founding clubs were Bradford Bulls, Castleford Tigers, Featherstone Rovers and Thatto Heath Crusaders. In the inaugural season Bradford Bulls finished top of the league before defeating Featherstone by 36–6 in the Grand Final to add to their success of having also won the Challenge Cup earlier in the year. The league expanded in 2018 with Leeds Rhinos, York City Knights and Wigan Warriors joining while St Helens took over from Thatto Heath Crusaders. Leeds took the League Leaders' Shield but were defeated 18–16 by Wigan in the Grand Final. The league was expanded again to eight clubs for 2019 with the addition of Wakefield Trinity Ladies. Leeds defeated League Leaders' Castleford by 20–12 to become champions in front of a record crowd for a Women's Grand Final of 1,673.
In 2020, the growth of the league was planned to continue with Warrington Wolves and Huddersfield Giants joining from the Championship. The structure was also slightly changed with the addition of a mid-season split and Shield Final for the bottom five clubs to play for. However, with competition suspended in 2020 the changes did not come in until the 2021 season. A Grand Final record crowd of 4,235 saw St Helens complete the treble with a 28–0 win over Leeds and Huddersfield won the Shield Final. 2022 saw the introduction of the RFL Women's Nines as a pre-season tournament for 20 teams which included all the sides in the Super League. In 2022, the league expanded to 12 teams with the addition of Leigh Miners Rangers and Barrow Raiders who had been the top two teams in the 2021 Championship. It was also split into two groups with end of season promotion and relegation between them. League Leaders' York lost 12–4 to Leeds in the Grand Final and Warrington won the Shield Final to earn promotion to Group 1. However, as Castleford had opted to play in Group 2 in 2022 there was no relegation this season.
In the 2023 season Wakefield dropped down to the Championship and were replaced by the Salford Red Devils and Leigh Leopards took the place of Leigh Miners Rangers following a partnership agreement between the two teams. York Valkyrie (the renamed York City Knights) retained the League Leaders' Shield and defeated Leeds 16–6 to become champions in front of a new Grand Final record crowd of 4,547. Barrow won the Group 2 Final to secure their place in the 2024 Super League alongside Featherstone who finished top in Group 2.
In January 2023, the Rugby Football League announced a new pyramid structure for women's rugby league based on a long term vision outlined in 2016 in which the Super League would sit above four regional divisions, Midlands, North, Roses and South, who would compete for promotion to the Super League. The WSL South had been established in 2021 and the Midlands and North leagues were launched in 2023. The change meant that the Super League would be reduced to eight teams from 2024, with four of the teams from Group 2 in 2023 joined by clubs from the Championship as part of a new tier two league. On 24 January, when the fixtures for the 2024 Super League season were announced, it was revealed that in 2024 the second tier would have only three leagues: Midlands, Northern and Southern, from which only the winners of the Northern and Southern Championships would play-off for a chance to earn promotion.