NEW FEMININITIES IN

DIGITAL, PHYSICAL AND SPORTING CULTURES

Women’s
Football in Latin
America
Social Challenges and
Historical Perspectives
Vol 2.
Hispanic
Countries

Edited by
Jorge Knijnik
Gabriela Garton
New Femininities in Digital, Physical and
Sporting Cultures

Series Editors
Kim Toffoletti
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Deakin University
Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Jessica Francombe-Webb
Department for Health
University of Bath
Bath, UK

Holly Thorpe
School of Health
University of Waikato
Hamilton, New Zealand

Aarti Ratna
Leeds, UK
Palgrave’s New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures
series is dedicated to exploring emerging forms and expressions of femi-
ninity, feminist activism and politics in an increasingly global, consumer
and digital world. Books in this series focus on the latest conceptual,
methodological and theoretical developments in feminist thinking about
bodies, movement, physicality, leisure and technology to understand and
problematize new framings of feminine embodiment. Globally inclusive,
and featuring established and emerging scholars from multi-disciplinary
fields, the series is characterized by an interest in advancing research and
scholarship concerning women’s experiences of physical culture in a vari-
ety of cultural contexts.
 Jorge Knijnik • Gabriela Garton
Editors

Women’s Football in
Latin America
Social Challenges and Historical
Perspectives Vol 2. Hispanic Countries
Editors
Jorge Knijnik Gabriela Garton
School of Education World Players Association
Western Sydney University Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Penrith, NSW, Australia

ISSN 2522-0330     ISSN 2522-0349 (electronic)

New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures

ISBN 978-3-031-09126-1    ISBN 978-3-031-09127-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8

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 Jorge dedicates this book to his treasured parents Carlos and Olga; I will
forever cherish our family’s car trips across South America when I took in
bits of the continent’s diverse cultures, and, most of all, I learned how to love
South American hermanos y hermanas.
Gabriela dedicates this book to her husband Cristian; thank you for your
support and company as we moved across the world to follow my footballing
and academic dreams; I’m looking forward to sharing many more
adventures with you in the years to come, including this new experience
called parenthood.
 Foreword

This book is the story of a marginalised community trying to decon-

struct, reshape, and take ownership of the most engrained and influential
popular expression in Latin America: fútbol, which is full of myths. It is
more than a space to socialise. It is, in many ways, a form of living with
specific codes and ideals. Since the nineteenth century, football has been
used as a political arena, whether to discuss politics or as a place to seek
political support. Nevertheless, this platform historically has been played
and led by men.
Being a core part of the Latin American cultural life, this activity also
has played a role in educating new generations and transmitting values
and social expectations. Masculinity and femininity have been clearly
shaped and reproduced by football all over the region, including the role
of women in and out of the sport. As Brenda Elsey, the author of Futbolera,
stated: ‘misogyny and homophobia constitute a significant part of sexism
facing women’s football’. Furthermore, since the 1980s, the sport has had
to endure the stereotype of being a ‘breeding ground’ of lesbianism, with
all the bullying and consequences that affect girls and women who dare
to practice it. Yet, as all the authors in this book argue, progress is being
achieved on many grounds led by women, particularly players as agents
of change.
While writing these lines, players are fighting for equal investments,
salaries and conditions in developed countries. For example, in the
vii
viii Foreword

United States, a historic settlement between the US Women’s National

Team players and the US Soccer Federation has been reached. This agree-
ment includes, among other things, a payment of $24 million and a
promise that players on the women’s and men’s teams will be paid at an
equal rate going forward, contingent on the negotiation of the next col-
lective bargaining agreement (CBA). In Australia, a new 2021 CBA has
positioned the W-League as one of the most progressive in the world.
Sweden also has developed the same conditions and compensation for
men’s and women’s national teams. New Zeeland, Denmark, and other
countries are on similar paths.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in Latin America, which is not there
yet. Collective agreements are almost nonexistent and rarely consider the
voice of the players. Nevertheless, there is hope. As will be seen in the
course of this book, there are major milestones and turning points under-
way for women’s rights: Argentina with the semi-professionalisation of
the sport; Chile with a landmark law passed in Congress that mandates
the execution of contracts for women players in the national league; in
Mexico the Liga MX Femenil has become a benchmark in terms of visibil-
ity and growth of the industry; and so on.
This book should facilitate the readers’ understanding of how the his-
torical power dynamics have set the rhythm for progress in women’s foot-
ball in Latin America, as well as the current challenges it faces. Notably,
it helps to unveil some of the barriers beyond the recurrent arguments
and myths that contend that there is ‘simply’ insufficient interest, relegat-
ing women’s football to an inferior version of the ‘true’ game.
The book’s chapters make a remarkable contribution to a perception of
how women and organised movements have shaped football in the last
decade and how the sport has served to dismantle other myths about the
role of women in the social and political sphere. The authors invite every-
one to rethink and deconstruct what it means to be a woman soccer
player. What does it mean to be a professional in the region? What con-
stitutes a fan? Undoubtedly, what is here will help readers understand
why the most ‘footballised’ region in the world has not been able to unleash
the full potential of women at local and international levels they deserve
in the sport.
 Foreword ix

A new framework is needed that allows for gender equality, visibility,

recognition and investment. Here, academia has a tremendous role to
play in advancing women’s football, recognising the history, struggles and
bravery of its community and questioning the current system that makes
the barriers to the development of women’s football a nearly insurmount-
able task. National and international institutions that govern football at
various levels are responsible. The 2020 FIFPro’s ‘Raising Our Game’
report on women’s football showed the unequal treatment governing
bodies give to the game and players, especially outside Europe and other
industrialised countries. It is true; the sport is growing but at very unique
paces. This book allows one to reflect on the historical burden, and the
current challenges players face in Latin America as a way to think of a
future with more opportunities for the next generations.

Camila
Vice President, FIFPro García Pérez
Director, Chile’s National Association
of Female Football Players (ANJUFF)
 Acknowledgements

This book, as a collaborative initiative of producing and disseminating

original practices and research, is in debt to numerous people who have
exchanged ideas and dreams with the authors and facilitated our work
‘from behind the scenes’. Therefore, we would like to convey our appre-
ciation and gratitude to many of them who were incredible sources of
inspiration and support.
Initially, to all chapter authors and contributors in this book; their
patience during the numerous steps of the peer review and editing pro-
cesses, as well as their belief in our work were terrific; without their efforts
and high level of expertise this book would never have seen the light of
day. Extra kudos to them for producing brilliant research in academic
English all through a pandemic that severely hit most of their South
American countries.
We are truly thankful to Associate Professor Kim Toffoletti, Dr. Jessica
Framcombe-Webb, Professor Holly Thorpe, and Dr Aarti Ranta—the
wonderful Palgrave Macmillan editors of the New Femininities in Digital,
Physical and Sporting Cultures book series. Since the inception of our
book proposal their collegiality, confidence, as well as intellectual input
to this project were outstanding; after working with them, there is no
doubt that we will publish feminist books only under their guidance.
We are also indebted to the amazing crew at Palgrave Macmillan who
helped achieve the best outcome we could ever dream of for this book; in
xi
xii Acknowledgements

addition, we thank Dr. Marcella Meneguello for her diligent efforts with
the formatting and editing of the book’s initial draft.
In addition, we would like to express our gratitude to the Institute for
Culture & Society at Western Sydney University, in particular to Professor
Brett Neilson, for providing the preliminary funding to support the book
proposal. To Dr. Jamie Cleland for his input when this book was only a
dream; to the Centro Esportivo Virtual (CEV) and to the Associacion
Lationoamerica de Estudios Socioculturales del Deporte (ALESDE) for their
support in disseminating the original trilingual call for papers that
resulted in more than 70 potential contributions. Finally, we are grateful
to all the external reviewers who gave their time and extensive know-how
to improve all manuscripts submitted for this book.
Last, but certainly not least, we would like to acknowledge the guerre-
ras—past, present and future—who have fought and continue to fight
for a better and more equal sport and world. This book would not have
been possible without you. Thank you for telling your stories and letting
us fight by your side, on and off the pitch.

Jorge Knijnik
Gabriela Garton
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Jorge Knijnik and Gabriela Garton

Part I Football: The Final Feminist Battleground in Latin

America   9

2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s

Football and Women’s Rights in Argentina 11
Gabriela Garton, Nemesia Hijós, and Verónica Moreira

3 ‘Our
 football is joy, it’s dissident, and it’s feminist!’: La
Coordinadora Sin Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista and
Women’s Fight for the Right to Football in Argentina 35
Matthew Hawkins and Julia Hang

4 Another
 ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women, Feminism and
‘barras’ in Mexico 55
Claudia Pedraza Bucio

xiii
xiv Contents

5 La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista: A Social Experimentation

and Learning Territory 77
Enriqueta Tato, Jimena Aon, Juliana Roman Lozano,
Maria Belén Bramanti, María José Figueroa, Mónica Santino,
and Paula Korsakas

Part II Mujeres Futbolistas: Experiences and Achievements  95

6 Power,
 Policy and Priorities: The Experiences of
Colombian Women Playing Football 97
Sophie Legros, Sarah Oxford, and Ana Margarita
Salas de la Hoz

7 Bolivian
 Women as Professional Footballers: The Voices
and the Feminism of the karimachus115
Eliana Aguilar Aguilar and Ana Alcazár-Campos

8 Socio-Political
 Dynamic of Women’s Participation in
Football in Venezuela131
Rosa López de D’Amico and Lesbia Verenzuela

9 Invisible
 Champions: An Ethnography of Peruvian
Women’s Football147
Mark Biram

10 Mexican
 Women and Academics Playing Football165
Ciria Margarita Salazar, Isela Guadalupe Ramos Carranza,
and Emilio Gerzaín Manzo Lozano

11 Football
 and Gender in Chile: Impact of the 2008 FIFA
U-20 Women’s World Cup on the Participation of Chilean
Women in the Sport187
Miguel Cornejo Amestica, Carlos Matus Castillo,
and Carolina Paz Cabello Escudero
 Contents xv

Part III Latin American Conversations: Pasado,

Presente y Futuro 209

12 ‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long as they don’t play

football): Football and Womanhood in the 1920s’
Argentine Capital211
Pablo Ariel Scharagrodsky and Magalí Peréz Riedel

13 Transgression
 and Resistance: An Approach to Mexican
Women’s Football History through the Case of Alicia
Vargas (1970–1991)231
Giovanni Alejandro Pérez Uriarte

14 An
 Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia:
Building Tools for Collective Action247
Gabriela Ardila Biela

15 Has
 Latin America’s Title IX Arrived? Impact of the
CONMEBOL Institutional Incentive Regulations on
South American Football269
Fernando Augusto Starepravo, Giovanna Xavier de Moura,
and Felipe Canan

16 ‘Si nos permiten jugar’: Constructing a Feminist Football

in Latin America289
Jorge Knijnik and Gabriela Garton

Index303
 Notes on Contributors

Eliana Aguilar Aguilar is a Bolivian professor and a researcher; she has

a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the Universidad Católica Boliviana
(La Paz, Bolivia). She is a therapist for women victims of violence, chil-
dren and adolescents at risk. Her research interests include gender vio-
lence, football and family relationships from a gender perspective.

Ana Alcazár-Campos is a full Professor in the Department of Social

Work and Social Services at the University of Granada (Spain). In addi-
tion, she is a member of the Group of Research: ‘Otras. Perspectivas
Feministas en Investigación Social’ at the University of Granada. Her
research interests include the analysis of public policies from a gender
perspective, specifically those related to gender violence; the interaction
between feminisms; and social intervention.

Miguel Cornejo Améstica is a full Professor in the Department of

Physical Education in the School of Education at Universidad de
Concepción (Chile). He was initially trained as a physical education
teacher and received his PhD degree in Physical Activity and Sports
Sciences at Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble, France). He was the
inaugural president of the Latin American Sociology of Sports Association
(ALESDE, 2008–2014).

xvii
xviii Notes on Contributors

Jimena Aon has been an activist with La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista

(Buenos Aires) since 2014. She is currently a shoe manufacturer. During
the 1990s she fought neoliberalism in Dario Santillan Popular Front. She
has studied Popular Education at the Universidad Madres de Plaza de
Mayo (Argentine, 2001) where she formulated workshops in territorial
social movements. She joined La Nuestra in 2014, where she can put into
practice the knowledge acquired on her journey.

Gabriela Ardila Biela is a historian with a master’s degree in interdisci-

plinary Latin-American studies from the Freie Universtät (Berlin). She is
currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Hamburg where she is
examining the historic path of female football in Colombia. Her work
focuses on feminist and anticolonial historiographic research
methodologies.

Mark Biram is a PhD candidate at the University of Bristol in the

United Kingdom. He holds a master’s in Latin American Interdisciplinary
Studies from the University of Newcastle (UK). His PhD project is an
ethnographic study emphasising players’ perspectives on Women’s Club
Football in Brazil and Colombia. The project is supported by a University
of Bristol scholarship and has been supported financially by the Society
of Latin American Studies (SLAS) and the Bristol–Brazil fund.

Belén Bramanti has a bachelor’s and teaching degrees in Physical

Education. He is an educator and an activist with La Nuestra Futbol
Feminista (Buenos Aires) in a political space that he deems to be an inex-
haustible source of learning, challenges and where he founded the abrazo
de una manada.

Claudia Pedraza Bucio is a researcher and Professor at the La Salle

University in Mexico City. She holds a PhD in political and social sci-
ences (National Autonomous University of Mexico). Her research inter-
ests are focused on gender, communication and sports issues. She worked
as a sport journalist for websites like Diosas Olímpicas, Buen Toque and
Provincia.
 Notes on Contributors xix

Felipe Canan is a Senior Lecturer in the Physical Education department

at the University of the State of Amazonas (UEA/Brazil). He holds a PhD
in physical education from the State University of Maringa (UEM/
Brazil). He is a researcher on the fields of sports politics and sports
pedagogy.

Isela Guadalupe Ramos Carranza is a full-time Research Professor in

the School of Educational Sciences of the University of Colima (Mexico).
She holds a PhD in physical culture from the Autonomous University of
Nuevo León and a bachelor’s of physical education and sport from the
University of Colima. She is a member of the Mexican National System
of Researchers and of the Academic Group UCOL85, ‘Education and
Movement’.

Carlos Matus Castillo is a Professor in the Departamento de Ciencias

del Deporte y Acondicionamiento Físico at the Universidad Católica de
la Santísima Concepción in Chile. He is a teacher of physical education
and has a master’s degree in physical education from the Universidad de
Concepción (Chile); a master’s in motor skills and education, and PhD
in physical activity and sport from the University of Barcelona and
INEFC (Spain). He is a researcher around physical education and sport
from the social sciences. He is a recipient of a Chilean Research Council
(ANID) Grant for Early Career Researchers and is currently examining
gender topics in Physical Education and Initial Teacher Training.

Rosa López de D’Amico has a PhD and is Full Professor at the

Universidad Pedagógica Experimetal Libertador (Venezuela) and the
Coordinator of the Research Center: Estudios en Educación Física, Salud,
Deporte, Recreación y Danza (EDUFISADRED), Maracay, Venezuela.
She is the president of the International Society for Comparative Physical
Education and Sport (ISCPES) and has edited, among others, Women
and Sport in Latin America (Routledge, 2016) and Sport in Latin America:
Policy, Organization, Management (Routledge, 2016).

Carolina Paz Cabello Escudero is a sociologist from the Universidad

de Valparaíso, Chile. She has a master’s in Economic and Social History
xx Notes on Contributors

from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso and is a PhD can-

didate in history from the same university. Additionally, Carolina has a
diploma in ‘Culture, Memory and Heritage’ UV, a diploma in ‘Gender
and Sport’ UBA, and a specialisation course in ‘Sports Management’ at
the Chilean Olympic Committee and ‘Sports and Society’ at
CLACSO. She is a researcher at ASIFUCH, CESDE, ‘Formiga, Hacía
una economía política del fútbol chileno’ and ‘Archivo Fútbol Femenino’;
a member of the study group ‘Sport, Culture and Society’ at
CLACSO. Also, she is a director of Santiago Wanderers of Valparaíso and
a feminist activist, sports communicator and amateur female foot-
ball player.

María José Figueroa is an activist with La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista

(Buenos Aires) and an undergraduate sports student at the Universidad
de Avellaneda. She is a feminist, a football player and a Football Technical
Director. She considers La Nuestra a space for co-learning and per-
sonal growth.

Gabriela Garton has a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Studies from Rice

University and a master’s degree in Sociology of Culture and Cultural
Sociology from the National University of San Martin. She has a PhD in
Social Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires. Gabriela is also a
doctoral fellow with the Argentine National Council for Scientific
Research (CONICET) and currently is a visiting scholar at the Sport and
Exercise Science Department at Victoria University in Melbourne. She
also is involved in research projects related to football, gender and sports
in general at both Victoria University and the Gino Germani Research
Institute.

Julia Hang has a degree in sociology and her PhD in social science from
the University of La Plata (UNLP), Argentina, where she is also a Professor
of Classical Social Theory II. She received a postdoctoral fellowship from
the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).
Julia studies sports, gender and politics in Argentinian sports clubs.
 Notes on Contributors xxi

Matthew Hawkins has a PhD in anthropology from Carleton University,

Ottawa, Ontario, where he is also an instructor (faculty) in the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Matthew studies Argentinian
football clubs in the formation of the urban space, as well as football
fandom as a site of social politics.

Nemesia Hijós has a bachelor’s degree in social anthropology from the

Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), a master’s degree in anthropology
from the Institute of Economic and Social Development (IDES)—
Institute for High Social Studies (IDAES)—of the Universidad Nacional
de San Martín (UNSAM); she has a PhD in social sciences from the
University of Buenos Aires (UBA), where she also serves as an Assistant
Professor. In addition, she is a recipient of a doctoral fellowship from the
Argentine National Council for Scientific Research (CONICET).
Nemesia is a member of research groups related to football, politics, man-
agement, gender and social studies of sports at the Gino Germani
Research Institute (IIGG).

Jorge Knijnik is a Brazilian-Australian academic currently working as

an Associate Professor at Western Sydney University (Australia), where he
is a researcher in the Institute for Culture & Society and the Centre for
Educational Research. Dr. Knijnik embarked on his doctoral studies at
Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil) where he developed an original inter-
pretation of women’s and gender issues in football, as well as human
rights violations. In 2010, he was presented with the prestigious ‘building
the gender equity’ award by UNICEF, the Brazilian Research Council
and the UN-Women for his research work promoting gender equity
within educational settings. He has authored/edited, among others: Tales
of South American Football: Passion, Glory and Revolution (Fair Play
Publishing, 2023); Australianas: Cultura, Educação e Esporte do outro lado
do mundo (Fontoura, 2021); The World Cup Chronicles: 31 Days that
Rocked Brazil (Fair Play Publishing, 2018); Embodied Masculinities in the
Global Sport (FIT, 2015); Gender and Equestrian Sports: Riding Around
the World (Springer, 2013); Genero e Esporte: masculinidades e feminili-
dades (Apicuri, 2010); A mulher brasileira e o esporte: Seu corpo, sua histo-
ria (Mackenzie, 2003).
xxii Notes on Contributors

Paula Korsakas has a bachelor degree in sports sciences and a master’s

degree in sport pedagogy from the University of São Paulo (USP/Brazil)
and is a PhD candidate at Universidade Estadual de Campinas
(UNICAMP/Brazil). She is also an international coach developer, sport
consultant and activist for the right to play sports and gender equality.
She met La Nuestra Futbol Feminista in 2019 and was the facilitator of the
Community of Practice on Popular Education, Feminism and Football
in 2020.

Sophie Legros is a PhD candidate in International Development at the

London School of Economics. She is currently doing fieldwork in
Medellin, Colombia, using mixed methods to research changes and con-
tinuities in gender norms and their intersections with women’s economic
empowerment, gender inequalit and development outcomes. She has
extensive experience as a practitioner in sport for development in 20
countries worldwide.

Emilio Gerzaín Manzo Lozano is a full-time Research Professor in the

School of Educational Sciences and a member of the Academic Group
UCOL85, ‘Education and Movement’, at the University of Colima
(Mexico). He was initially trained as an elementary school teacher and
has received a bachelor’s in hearing and language, a master’s in linguistics,
and a PhD in modern literature, with a specialty in hermeneutics and
orality. His research interests are physical culture and sport, pedagogy
and didactics of physical culture.

Juliana Roman Lozano has been an activist with La Nuestra Fútbol

Feminista (Buenos Aires) since 2010. She is a Colombian, a feminist and
a football player. She is also a migrant woman who, since a very young
age, has been travelling around the world. She is a documentary film-
maker, a National football technical director and an anthropology stu-
dent. In 2020 she was part of the only all-women coaching team for
Huracán, a First Division football club during Argentina’s first profes-
sional women’s championship. She considers La Nuestra as her place in
the world; there her battles are voiced and her strength for militancy,
learning and knowledge is nurtured.
 Notes on Contributors xxiii

Verónica Moreira is a Professor at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA)

in Argentina, where she earned a PhD in social sciences. She also has
completed a (research) master’s in social anthropology (IDES-IDAES/
UNSAM) and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology (UBA). She is a
researcher at the Argentine National Council for Scientific Research
(CONICET). For several years, she has coordinated research groups
related to football, politics, sports in general and body techniques at the
Gino Germani Research Institute (IIGG).

Giovanna Xavier de Moura is a PhD candidate in the Department of

Physical Education at the State University of Maringa (UEM/Brazil). She
is a lecturer in the Physical Education Department at Ingá University
Centre (Uningá, Brazil). She is a researcher in the Research Group on
Public Policies of Sports and Leisure. Her interests are focused on study-
ing gender relationships in sport, rugby and sport policies.

Sarah Oxford is a researcher at the School of Public Health and

Preventative Medicine, Monash University, Australia. Her work exam-
ines the intersections of gender, sexuality, race and class, with a specific
focus in sport for development. Sarah completed her PhD in 2018 at
Victoria University, receiving a citation for the Vice Chancellor’s Award
for Excellence in Research and Research Training. Sarah’s research has
been published widely in peer-reviewed journals and scholarly books.

Magali Perez Riedel received her PhD in communication from the

Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. Her areas of study are digi-
tal communication, discrimination, queer studies and representations of
LGBTQ people. Magalí is the author of ‘Gender and Sexual Diversity’ in
the blog Boquitas Pintadas (2014) and the editor of Trans, Out, and in the
Public Eye: Representations of Transgender People on Television and Film
(Peter Lang).

Ana Margarita Salas de la Hoz is from Santa Marta, Colombia. An

early researcher, she is pursuing studies in anthropology and is the author
of the article ‘Women’s Football: A Goal against Machismo. A Global
and Local Perspective on Processes of Violence and Gender Inequality’.
xxiv Notes on Contributors

An activist, youth leader and student-athlete herself, she plays for the
Magdalena regional team selection.

Ciria Margarita Salazar is a full-time Research Professor in the School

of Educational Sciences of the University of Colima (Mexico). She is a
member of the Mexican National System of Researchers, a member of
the Academic Group UCOL85, ‘Education and Movement’. She holds a
PhD and a master’s in physical and artistic education from the University
of Extremadura, and a master’s in social sciences from the University
of Colima.

Mónica Santino is an activist with La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista (Buenos

Aires). She is a physical education teacher, a sports journalist, a football
technical director, and a former football player. She has worked in several
women’s football community clubs, and she plays an active part in the
Argentinian Homossexual Community (1989–1996). She played foot-
ball for the All Boys in the Argentinean Football Federation (AFA) tour-
naments (1996–2000).

Pablo Ariel Scharagrodsky is a lecturer and a researcher in the School

of Education at the Universidad de Quilmes (UNQ/Argentine), where
he is the codirector of the research group, ‘Discourse, Practices and
Institutions in Education’. He has earned a PhD in social sciences and
humanities from the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes (UNQ/
Argentine). He has also completed a master’s (research) in social sciences
with a major in education (FLACSO, Argentina) and a bachelor’s degree
(teaching) at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP/Argentine).
His research interests are history of education, feminist pedagogies and
gender studies. He has published, among others, The Changing Face of the
Sport: Anglophonic Perspectives (1970–2010), coedited with Cesar Torres
(Editorial Prometeo, 2019), and Women on the Move (Editorial
Prometeo, 2016).

Fernando Augusto Starepravo is an Associate Professor in the

Department of Physical Education at the State University of Maringa
(UEM/Brazil). He holds a PhD in physical education from the
 Notes on Contributors xxv

Universidade Federal do Paraná. He is the leader of the Research Group

on Public Policies of Sports and Leisure. His research focuses on sports
policies for various social groups.

Enriqueta Tato has been a physical education teacher since 2012, a sign
language interpreter (Villasoles, 2013–2015), a ASAM (2015–2017), a
feminist activist, a football player until 2017, and a physical trainer and
runner. She is a teacher and has played for several football clubs—Racing,
Huracán, Boca and San Lorenzo, with whom she disputed the Libertadores
Cup in 2012. In 2020 she was part of the only all-­women coaching team
for Huracán, a first division football club during the first professional
women’s championship in Argentina. She has been part of La Nuestra’s
coaching team since 2013. She oversees the training sessions for the youth
and adult categories and of the planning for all categories.

Giovanni Alejandro Pérez Uriarte is a PhD candidate in contemporary

and modern history at the Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María
Luis Mora (Mexico). He received a master’s degree in history and a bach-
elor’s degree in Latin American studies from the Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México. His research interests are the social and cultural
history of football in Latin America. He is a researcher of the Research
Group of History of Physical Education and Sports in Mexico.

Lesbia Verenzuela is an Associate Professor (PhD) at the Universidad

Nacional Experimental Politécnica de las Fuerzas Armadas (UNEFA),
Campus Cagua, Venezuela. She is a researcher in the Research Centre:
Estudios en Educación Física, Salud, Deporte, Recreación y Danza
(EDUFISADRED) in Maracay, Venezuela.
 List of Diagrams

Diagram 10.1 Representation of the labels applied to women

footballers177
Diagram 10.2 Representation of the words gender, feminism, empow-
erment and women’s leadership 178

xxvii
 List of Tables

Table 8.1 Social Views about Venezuela Women’s Football 141

Table 10.1 Beginnings in the Practice of Football and the Motivational
Elements for Deciding to Enter Competitive and
Professional Football 176
Table 10.2 Women Academic Football Players’ Perceptions of Change
and Opportunity for Women Today 179
Table 15.1 National Club License Regulations and Women’s Football 281

xxix
 1
Introduction
Jorge Knijnik and Gabriela Garton

Football is ubiquitous. The omnipresence of the ‘world game’ across the

continents, however, does not mean that its cultures are homogeneous.
On the contrary, diverse people take the game, adjust it to their social
contexts and create a range of footballing cultures that are distinct and
unique in the various regions where the sport is played.
For these reasons, Jayne Caudwell (2011), in her major work about
women’s football in Europe, emphasises the importance of more local
gender analysis within football to continue to build feminist momentum
within the game. Caudwell’s points are critical to understanding today’s
female participation in football in Latin America, and how it represents,
or does not, an act of gender resistance both in the sport and beyond.

J. Knijnik (*)
School of Education, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
G. Garton
World Players Association, Melbourne, Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_1
2 J. Knijnik and G. Garton

The publication of the two volumes of the Women’s Football in Latin

America: Social Challenges and Historical Perspectives, a book-length col-
lection within Palgrave’s New Femininities in Digital, Physical and
Sporting Cultures series, is thus both timely and relevant for global gen-
der research. It indicates that new forms of gender expression, perfor-
mance and feminist activism that have been influenced by, but also
impacted neoliberal ideologies around the world, have found a complex
and paradoxical social terrain in South American football.
As shown by the amazing, and many times surprising, narratives of
both volumes of the collection (volume 1, Brazil, and this volume,
Hispanic Countries), the gendered contexts where South American foot-
ball drama reveals itself is undoubtedly linked with the global gender
(dis)order, changes and tensions that have been described and analysed in
the other volumes of the ‘New Femininities’ series. This link becomes
clearer when initially looking into the fertility of the new feminist research
methodologies applied by researchers in both the Brazilian and the
Hispanic Countries volumes: (1) from oral and documentary historical
analysis that connect the sporting femininities of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries to those of the twenty-first century, and (2)
from local ethnographies to policy studies that enhance one’s understand-
ing of the social constraints, where it tries to stay afoot, as well as employ-
ing digital tools to further comprehension of the mediatic forces that
shape women’s football in South America. All the analytical tools dis-
played in the Women’s Football in Latin America collection reveal and offer
novel ways to investigate the diverse range of physical cultures emerging
in this post-feminist era.
Another relevant feature of both volumes of this collection is the mul-
tidisciplinary application of its contents. The array of disciplines within
the social sciences and humanities—from philosophy to sociology, from
media studies to sports pedagogies and sport for development
approaches—are a sound indication of the relevant overlapping that need
to be carefully considered when researching women’s football in the con-
temporary moment. Moreover, new data (e.g., women’s indigenous foot-
ball in South America) that appear in the volumes reinforce the necessity
for more refined studies that acknowledge the relevance of the native
population in the construction of the gender order within local and
 1 Introduction 3

global sporting and physical cultures; they are central for advancing
ongoing debates around new femininities in sports and physical cultures.
Therefore, and following Caudwell’s insights on sustaining the drive of
football feminism in Latin America, this Hispanic Countries volume of
the Women’s Football in Latin America collection aims to bring to the
international English readership a variety of high-quality research on
Latin American women’s football that has emerged during the past
decade, with a focus on the Spanish-speaking countries. With chapters
written by researchers and practitioners with a profound knowledge of
the diverse contexts in which women’s football is played and lived across
Latin America, they look at the social and historical meanings of the
embodied representations of gender differences that have been deeply
embedded in the history of Latin American women and football.
The authors report on how, in a variety of ways, Latin American
women have found spaces in-between, amid severe macho structures, to
establish and play their football. Moreover, the studies in this volume
show that these patriarchal configurations are embedded by intersectional
inequalities of race, geography and social class. The researchers bring evi-
dence to demonstrate that these intersectional oppressions act together to
reinforce each other, making the work of denouncing, untangling and
overcoming them a craft that requires ongoing theoretical and analytical
fine-tuning efforts to unveil the various levels of oppression that girls and
women face within these macho structures of football in Latin America.
The volume has been structured around three sections. The first,
‘Football: The Final Feminist Battleground in Latin America’, presents
four studies that directly demonstrate how football became a major front
for feminist struggle in Latin America. In the first chapter, Gabriela
Garton, Nemesia Hijós and Verónica Moreira, after showing what the
Argentinean women’s players withstood during the last decades—harsh
conditions when trying to play the game—and how they overcame these
obstacles, discuss the players’ feminist-inspired self-organisation that
finally delivered better, but far from perfect, circumstances for the players
to achieve their sporting goals. Next, Matthew Hawkins and Julia Hang
discuss the socio-historical processes where the feminist agenda has inter-
twined with female athletes’ demands, resulting in the creation of a femi-
nist football political movement in Argentina.
4 J. Knijnik and G. Garton

In the following chapter, Claudia Pedraza Bucio presents an in-depth

study of women’s football supporters in Mexico, pointing out once again
how distinct waves of feminism have affected the political struggle for
space and respect within the football context of the barras. Wrapping up
this section, the team from La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista—Enriqueta Tato,
Jimena Aon, Juliana Roman Lozano, Maria Belén Bramanti, María José
Figueroa, Mónica Santino and Paula Korsakas—analyse the history of
their Community of Practice in Popular Education, Feminism and
Football. They discuss their trajectory within a Buenos Aires villa (i.e., a
shantytown) and the challenges faced to sustain educational momentum
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A relevant point to note in this section is how authors of various chap-
ters employ the critical work of Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire.
They go beyond the mere denunciation of the harsh conditions of the
social and material oppressions lived by the communities they work with;
these authors and football activists are inspired by Freire to support their
groups, within dissimilar contexts, to go through the consciousness pro-
cess as described by Freire, not only to denounce the current unsustain-
able practices and unequal conditions but also to announce a better
reality: the Freirean untested feasibility—a world where another and
more equitable football is possible.
After this influential first section, what follows is ‘Mujeres Futbolistas:
Experiences and Achievements’, a section that looks at a range of achieve-
ments and conquests of mujeres futbolistas (women footballers) across
Latin America. In its first chapter, Sophie Legros, Sarah Oxford and Ana
Margarita Salas de la Hoz discuss how Colombian women have been
affected by the political power and policies that have restricted their
access to sporting practices, specifically football. Moreover, their analysis
also shows the intersectional factors that permeate footballing’s gender
relationships in the country—for example, either furthering or hindering
sporting opportunities for women according to their social class. Next,
Eliana Aguilar Aguilar and Ana Alcazár Campos bring the football trajec-
tories of the karimachus, Bolivian women who dared to challenge the
country’s strict unwritten gender rules to play football, to the reader;
their in-depth look at these women’s life journeys within football is a
 1 Introduction 5

clear portrait of how the sport can be a turning point in the struggle
against deep-rooted prejudices within Bolivian society.
Venezuelan women’s football is the topic of the next chapter. Using a
well-developed argument, Rosa López de D´Amico and Lesbia Verenzuela
show the path that women took from invisibility to being acknowledged
as footballers by the football authorities in the country; thus, they dem-
onstrate how politics and power intertwine with women’s football in that
country and how the game once again empowers women towards free-
dom of movement and action. This fight is also reflected in the following
chapter, where Mark Biram tells the interesting story of the JC Sport
Girls, a female-only Peruvian club, that, despite being able to represent
their country in several major international tournaments, has not been
able to secure funding from their federation to further their football
activities. In this text, the author also demonstrates the limitations of
CONMEBOL policies directed to support women’s football on the
continent.
Next, Ciria Margarita Salazar, Isela Guadalupe Ramos Carranza and
Emilio Gerzaín Manzo Lozano affirm the relevance of semi-amateur
football practices among well-educated women in Mexico. The authors
argue that by playing football, these academic women have not only
found individual freedom and satisfaction but also legitimised female
bodies and all their potential within a highly patriarchal society. Women’s
football in Chile closes out this section, as Miguel Cornejo Amestica,
Carlos Matus Castillo and Carolina Paz Cabello Escudero outline the
achievements of Chilean women in football over the past two decades
and discuss the sexist barriers they encountered and overcame to achieve
more egalitarian conditions within the sport. What draws readers’ atten-
tion in this section is clearly the existing link between all these experi-
ences; although some took place in the North (Mexico) or more in the
South of the continent (Chile), they are all deeply marked by gender
oppression and by the progressive consciousness of women and how they
had to fight for their right to play football.
The third section, ‘Latin American Conversations: pasado, presente y
futuro’, examines the past (‘pasado’) record of women’s football on the
continent, the changes that are currently (‘presente’) in place and contem-
plating on what the future (‘futuro’) holds for the sport. Pablo Ariel
6 J. Knijnik and G. Garton

Scharagrodsky and Magali Perez Riedel start the section with an intrigu-
ing historiography of how media coverage of women’s football during
early twentieth-century Argentina was shaping the feminine ideals that
would prevail in the next decades. The authors argue that, at the end of the
day, such standards would delay women’s participation in football in the
years to come. Next, Giovanni Alejandro Pérez Uriarte presents an exqui-
site study on Alicia Vargas, a pioneer Mexican footballer. By using her
story as a case study, the author presents a comprehensive portrait of the
evolution of women’s football in Mexico within a rigid, male-­controlled
structure.
In the next chapter, readers will be able to get a comprehensive view on
the historical developments of women’s football in Colombia since the
late 1940s, as well as an understanding of the machinery behind their
erasure from the country’s footballing historiography. Gabriela Ardila
Biela, the author, incorporates the voices of many Colombian players
who have helped build this history while challenging the gender binaries
within Colombian society. In the following chapter, Fernando Augusto
Starepravo, Giovanna Xavier de Moura and Felipe Canan offer an origi-
nal interpretation of the new CONMEBOL initiatives to support wom-
en’s football in South America. As the authors present the data and the
outcomes of these policies, they pose the intriguing question of whether
CONMEBOL’s new regulations can be seen as the ‘saviour’ of women’s
football on the continent, comparing it to the initiatives of Title IX legis-
lation in the United States. Jorge Knijnik and Gabriela Garton close the
section and the book with a range of considerations on what is to come
in women’s football on the continent and what the role of social research-
ers should be to sustain this feminist moment within the sport and beyond.
The chapters of this book were written by popular educators, coaches,
historians, teachers and players—in summary, people who are on a foot-
ball field daily, struggling for change even during the COVID-19 pan-
demic. Throughout the conversations we had with the authors while
preparing to write the stories presented here, many questions were asked
as to whether the writing in the language of the coloniser (English) would
advance, or not, the feminist football cause. Finally, a consensus was
reached; as a language, football could also be interpreted as a coloniser’s
cultural product; however—and the chapters of this volume are evidence
 1 Introduction 7

of this—football can also be used and adjusted to serve one’s own pur-
poses. This is made clear across this volume’s outstanding, and many times
startling, accounts. The stories undeniably will provide a comprehensive
insight into Latin American women’s football, from historical advances to
previous and current social challenges, to anyone who reads them.
Additionally, the chapters’ writers will be rewarded if their narratives
can be pedagogically used to instruct and encourage people around the
globe to keep struggling for gender and social justice across Latin
American countries. As shown in every single chapter, the football field is
certainly one of the vital spaces in Latin America that can be used to
build a fairer gender order in countries that are so diverse but share a
strict patriarchal order. The authors’ hope is that this volume can join the
many actions already under way to support a new gender order in Latin
America.

Reference
Caudwell, J. (2011). Gender, feminism and football studies. Soccer & Society,
12(3), 330–344.
 Part I
Football: The Final Feminist
Battleground in Latin America
 2
No nos callamos más: A Turning Point
in Women’s Football and Women’s
Rights in Argentina
Gabriela Garton, Nemesia Hijós, and Verónica Moreira

Introduction
After 12 years without qualifying for a World Cup, in 2018 the Argentine
women’s national football team secured the chance to compete in the
sport’s most prestigious competition. Qualifying for the 2019 Women’s

G. Garton (*)
Gino Germani Research Institute, University of Buenos Aires,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
e-mail: [email protected]
N. Hijós
Gino Germani Research Institute, University of Buenos Aires,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Faculty of Health Sciences, National University of Mar del Plata,
Mar del Plata, Argentina
CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 11

J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_2
12 G. Garton et al.

World Cup (WWC) in France, as well as the squad’s performance in the

tournament, were the team’s most significant sporting achievements,
although these were also accompanied by other collective triumphs off
the pitch. This team played a key role in raising awareness about their
sport and in the eventual (semi-) professionalisation of women’s football
in Argentina. Within the context of the massive growth of women’s
movements both nationally and globally, these players, along with many
others from teams throughout all of Argentina, began to question and
challenge their historic marginalisation from the country’s most popu-
lar sport.
The objective is to analyse this process of change through the theoreti-
cal lens of Paulo Freire’s (2017) notion of ‘conscientização’, complemented
by Nancy Fraser’s (1998) discussion of the dual aspects of social justice
claims and her understanding of gender as a two-sided category. This
chapter begins with a brief discussion of the history of women’s football
in the broader context of sports in Argentina. Although some examples
of the earliest evidence of women playing football are mentioned, the
focus is more on the sport in its last years of ‘amateurism’—although this
period can be better described as ‘marronismo’ (literally ‘brownism’ or
‘illegal professionalism’).
Later, the events and context leading up to the (semi-) professionalisa-
tion of the women’s first division in 2019 are considered to understand
the relationship between this political decision and the organisation and
mobilisation of Argentine female footballers, in an attempt to improve
their physical conditions—demands from earlier years that had gone
unheard of and unattended to—in a context marked by massive demands
for the expansion of the rights of women and malcontent genders in vari-
ous areas of society.

V. Moreira
Gino Germani Research Institute, University of Buenos Aires,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina
e-mail: [email protected]
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 13

‘Conscientização’ and Social Justice

on an Uneven Football Pitch
To analyse the concept of change as a dialectic process, an interaction
between dominant and subordinate groups, we use Brazilian educator
Freire’s (2017) notion of ‘conscientização’ (critical consciousness)—the
idea of ‘learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradic-
tions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality’ (p. 9).
According to Freire, as conscious beings, people ‘exist in a dialectical rela-
tionship between the determination of limits and their own freedom’
(p. 72) because of their awareness of themselves and the world. This con-
cept of limits and people’s awareness of the situations that restrict them,
labelled by Freire as ‘limit-situations’, is key in understanding social
change. By recognizing limit-situations as encumbrances rather than
‘insurmountable barriers’, people can challenge these limits through
‘limit-acts’ and attempt to overcome them, thus creating a new reality
with new limit-situations
Nevertheless, it is important to note that at the same time people are
restricted and denied by limit-situations; others benefit either directly or
indirectly from these conditions. Freire calls what lies beyond these limit-­
situations ‘untested feasibility’, which for oppressed groups represents the
hope of liberation. For the groups who benefit from the existing limit-­
situation, however, ‘untested feasibility’ represents a threat, and thus they
fight to maintain the status quo. This concept of ‘untested feasibility’ was
utilised by Jorge Knijnik (2012) to analyse Brazilian female footballers’
struggle for autonomy and recognition in a country where, like Argentina,
football has historically been considered a ‘man’s sport’.
As one tries to understand the processes of social change, we turn to
Fraser’s (1998) discussion of social justice as two-sided, requiring claims
for both redistribution and recognition. Although these are often consid-
ered separately, Fraser argues that in today’s context, neither is sufficient
on its own, but rather issues of maldistribution and misrecognition are
interconnected. Fraser’s definition of the category of gender is useful to
understand the relevance of these two aspects of justice when considering
women’s sports, which are also two-sided. On the one hand, gender is a
14 G. Garton et al.

basic principle that organises society’s economic structure, defining the

‘fundamental division’ between paid ‘productive’ or unpaid ‘reproduc-
tive’ labour, this second type mainly is assigned to women. Within the
first labour category, there is also a division between manufacturing and
professional occupations, which are higher-paid and male-dominated,
and lower-paid hospitality and domestic service occupations, which are
female-dominated. Thus, the resulting economic structure creates forms
of distributive injustice specifically related to gender.
In terms of recognition, gender also serves as a marker of status by
which norms are constructed that privilege traits related to masculinity
while those considered ‘feminine’ are devalued and disparaged. The con-
sequences of this androcentrism, however, go beyond being looked down
on. When these norms are institutionalised, according to Fraser:

… [W]omen suffer gender-specific status injuries, including sexual assault

and domestic violence; objectifying and demeaning stereotypical depic-
tions in the media; harassment and disparagement in everyday life; and
exclusion or marginalization [sic] in public spheres and deliberative bodies.
(1998, p. 2)

This text examines how Argentine women’s players experience both kinds
of injustice and then considers both aspects of their claims for change.

Methodology
This chapter is part of a larger study on women’s football in Argentina
that aims to consider power and gender relationships in the traditionally
male-dominated context of sport. The data analysed here stems from
auto/ethnographic field work undertaken by the first author towards the
completion of her doctoral dissertation. The research was carried out
between July 2015 and December 2019 during which time Garton stud-
ied the women’s team of Club Deportivo Universidad Abierta Interamericana
de Urquiza (UAI Urquiza, originally from Villa Lynch, Argentina) as well
as Argentina’s women’s national team . While researching the players of
these teams, the first author also played as a goalkeeper for both squads
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 15

and thus used the auto/ethnographic technique of participant observa-

tion, which was also complemented by semi-structured interviews.
By employing the ethnographic perspective proposed by Rosana Guber
(2001) to conceive of ethnography as an approach, method and text, we
attempt to comprehend the experiences and discourses of female foot-
ballers and the leaders within the institutions that regulate the sport. This
methodological instrument helps one understand the meanings, practices
and imaginaries significant to interlocutors by living and experiencing
them ‘in the flesh’ (Guber, 2001). When describing the technique of par-
ticipant observation, considered almost synonymous with ethnographic
field work, Guber (2001) draws a parallel between learning a game by
playing, an image which in the social study of sport appears to be quite
relevant, and learning about a culture by living and experiencing it.
As a player who was not ‘native’ to Argentine football—born in the
United States to an Argentine mother—the first author took on a kind of
hybrid positionality in the field as both an insider as a lifelong footballer
and an outsider because of both her upbringing and her status as a
researcher (Merriam, 1998; Pang, 2019). Throughout her field work she
was able to begin to understand and embody the experiences of playing
elite women’s football in Argentina: the frustrations, disappointments,
celebrations and joys as well as the logics, values, morals and relationships
that organize the social space. Inevitably, she also participated in the
power struggles between players and the institutions which organise and
manage their practice, including the leadership of clubs and the Argentine
Football Association (AFA))—observing and experiencing firsthand the
situations described in later sections of this chapter.

Women and Football: Playing on a Minefield

In Argentina, as in the rest of South America, football has historically
been dominated by men—narrated, governed and played by them
(Archetti, 1994; Alabarces, 2008). Since the sport’s arrival to Argentina
from England in the mid-1800s, women—as players, fans, administra-
tors, journalists and officials—have been almost entirely ignored in foot-
ball’s social imaginary. As football began to be structured as the country’s
16 G. Garton et al.

national sport, it also became a constructor of masculinities, and the

media played a central role in the creation of a football narrative, which
formed a national and masculine identity (Archetti, 1995). Thus, the
presence of women in football threatened this masculine narrative that
remained under construction.
Nevertheless, the exclusion of women from the nation’s traditional
football narrative does not imply their actual nor absolute absence from
the sport. There is evidence of women’s teams as early as the first decades
of the twentieth century (Elsey & Nadel, 2019), and in 1971 the first
Argentine women’s national team participated in an international tour-
nament organised in Mexico independently from the Fédération
Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Football’s international
governing body would not begin to recognise women under its label until
the late 1980s, finally organising the first official Women’s World Cup in
China in 1991 (Williams, 2007).
That same year, Argentina created its first women’s league sanctioned
by AFA. This would appear to be coincidental, but rather it was a response
from AFA to FIFA’s global strategy to institutionalise women’s football.
Through the promise of financial support for the development of the
sport in the form of an annual stipend, FIFA generated an incentive for
its member associations to create women’s national teams and official
domestic leagues.
The first edition of the women’s league of AFA had eight teams that,
according to ‘Las Pioneras’1 (The Pioneers), already competed in unoffi-
cial tournaments organised by the Argentine Women’s Football
Association (AAFF). Nils Altuna is credited with the creation of AAFF,
which already had support from private sponsors to cover the operational
costs of its competitions (Pujol, 2018, 2019; Garton, 2019). The

1
‘Las Pioneras del Fútbol Femenino’ (the ‘Pioneers of Women’s Football’ is a group created by former
goalkeeper Lucila Sandoval who competed in the AFA women’s league from the early 1990s until
her retirement in 2015. The group was founded in 2016 on Facebook and would later generate
face-to-face gatherings of former players and the organisation of events for both ‘Pioneers’ and cur-
rent players. The recent creation of the Pioneers has resulted in recognition from AFA and clubs,
like Racing de Avellaneda, for the players who made up the first women’s national team, which
competed in the non-FIFA sanctioned 1971 World Cup in Mexico. It has also served to reunite the
players who played from the 1970s through to the 1990s as well as to offer a reference point for
contemporary players while establishing a history of women’s football in Argentina.
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 17

pre-AFA stage of women’s football is marked by an amateurism without

aspirations of professionalisation, whether because of its apparent impos-
sibility, the lack of institutional support or the desire not to lose the plea-
surable and ludic nature inherent to unofficial competition (Janson,
2008; Pujol, 2019).
The phrase used as a title by Adolfina Janson (2008) for her book,
‘That game which made you happy has ended’, refers to this time of ‘ama-
teur sport for pleasure’ in which the games were not as regulated and
players felt a certain sense of belonging through encounters on neigh-
bourhood pitches as well as through the typical post-match gatherings
among friends. According to Janson, the creation of AFA’s league and the
institutionalisation of the practice represented the end of the concept of
‘playing for fun’ or ‘playing for the sake of the game’. This shift may or
may not have been as Janson described; however, the foundation of the
league did establish a distinction: the creation of a recognised, regulated,
institutionalised and competitive league for women.
Far from a professional competition, from 1991 until 2019, the league
was classified as amateur, although the level of amateurism varied not
only among the various clubs but also over time. In the last stage, between
2013 and 2019, though for a few clubs before this period as well, it
would be more precise to classify the discipline’s status as ‘marronismo’
(literally translated as ‘brownism’), rather than amateurism. Marronismo
is a concept developed by social historian Julio Frydenberg (2011) in his
work on men’s football’s beginnings in the early decades of the 1900s in
Argentina, prior to the professionalisation of the sport. It describes prac-
tices utilised by clubs as strategies to attract and retain the most talented
players of the working classes with financial incentives, which would cast
progressively more doubt on the amateur regulation in place at that time.
These practices included payments hidden in the form of stipends and
bonuses for winning whereas some players were offered work through
the contacts of club administrators. Private businesses as well as pub-
lic offices would offer part-time work obtained through connections,
and these positions often had little to no requirement for attendance
or had ‘undemanding’ duties (Frydenberg, 2011). These strategies are
comparable to some used by women’s football teams prior to the ­(semi-)
18 G. Garton et al.

professionalisation of AFA’s women’s first division in 2019, though some

clubs continue to employ these practices to varying degrees.
Although FIFA’s first Women’s World Cup (WWC) was organised in
1991, Argentina’s first FIFA-sanctioned international competition was
the 1995 Sudamericano Femenino (Women’s South American
Championship) held in January in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Of the 10 mem-
ber federations associated with the South American Football Confederation
(CONMEBOL), only five national teams participated in this tourna-
ment—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador. Despite a second-­
place finish, Argentina did not qualify for the 1995 WWC in Sweden;
only Brazil represented South America in that edition. Then, in 1998, the
third Sudamericano Femenino was held in the coastal city of Mar del Plata,
Argentina. Even though the competition was organised in Argentina, the
Argentine players remember receiving little to no support from their
association:

They [AFA] do it because they have to do it. One example was when the
National Team went to play in Mar del Plata. They took them 15 days
before the tournament. They had to play a friendly against a local team to
train, but they couldn’t play because the field maintenance staff would not
let them enter because he didn’t want to let them, because the pitch was
damp and he didn’t want them to ruin the grass, and no one could do any-
thing about it. The girls got back on the bus, and they had to go back.
Neither the president of the Argentine delegation nor anybody could do
anything about it. There isn’t support from AFA; that’s the reality. (Interview
of a former Argentine women’s national team player cited in Janson, 2008)

With another second-place finish, Argentina would face Mexico in a

play-off to qualify for the 1999 WWC in the United States, which
resulted in a victory for the Central American team, thus qualifying for
its first World Cup. In an interview with the first author, an former player
of the Argentine women’s national team, Carla,2 told her that, following
the 1998 Sudamericano, the team played a few friendlies in 2000, but
then did not train or play again until late 2002 in preparation for the next
Sudamericano in 2003. Carla explained that, at that time, the national
2
The player’s real name has been changed to maintain her anonymity.
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 19

team only trained sporadically; the weeks they did train, they would do
so in the city of Buenos Aires twice a week at the National Centre for
High Performance Sport (CENARD), where the majority of elite athletes
who represent Argentina in their respective sports prepare for interna-
tional competitions. Only after the players were able to qualify for the
team’s first WWC in 2003—the Sudamericano was held at the beginning
of the same year for qualification—would AFA allow the women’s team
to train at its national training centre in Ezeiza in the Buenos Aires
Province.
Later in the interview, Carla explained that when the team was not
preparing for travel or for a competition, the players who had to travel to
the Capital from other provinces for training received a stipend covering
only a one-way bus ticket and had to find their own accommodations to
stay in the city during the week. They had barely the minimum in official
attire, using mostly hand-me-downs from the men’s and boys’ teams,
which can be seen in the prematch photographs of the team in which
players are wearing uniforms many sizes too large.
Even 15 years later, during the 2018 Copa América Femenina (Women’s
Copa America), AFA continued providing the women’s team with hand-­
me-­downs and outdated attire that the men were no longer using. Garton
(2019) recalls that throughout the tournament, her teammates remarked
on multiple occasions that they were ‘ashamed’ or ‘embarrassed’ to be
wearing that clothing; they felt both uncomfortable because the clothing
was a poor fit and neglected by the federation because some of the cloth-
ing was up to 10 years old, even though the coaching staff was equipped
with the latest gear.
Not only was the women’s team in the early 2000s poorly equipped in
terms of resources and clothing but also in terms of personnel. Carla
explained that their team ‘physician’ was actually a physiotherapist, and
the squad had the bare minimum for a coaching staff with only a head
coach, assistant coach and a strength and conditioning coach. The team’s
only contact with AFA’s administration was through the president of the
women’s football committee who would give them their stipend after the
last training session of each week. According to Carla, many of the play-
ers would stay with family members if they could while only one player
20 G. Garton et al.

received funding from her state government to cover her housing costs,
‘but the rest of us just wandered’.
That generation of footballers made history in 2006 when the team
won the Sudamericano held for the second time in Mar del Plata. It
remains the only occasion that Brazil was not crowned champion of the
continent. There were hopes for things to improve for female footballers
in Argentina following the team’s performance and the achievement of
qualifying for the two most prestigious competitions in the sport: both
the 2007 WWC in China and the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In spite
of these accomplishments, the team still felt unrecognised and unappreci-
ated by AFA with little hope for the situation of the women’s national
team to improve.
Following the China WWC, a group of players tried to fight for better
conditions, more recognition and support from AFA. Nevertheless, Carla
explained in her interview that their efforts were squashed as she and
seven other players, the most outspoken in the struggle, were left off the
team roster for the next year’s Olympics—the first and only time
Argentina has qualified for that competition. The coaching staff told the
players that they had been excluded from the team for reasons related to
their ‘on-pitch performance’, but one of those players had been the highest
scorer over both legs of the 2008 Argentine domestic league. When the
first author asked whether Carla and her teammates had made some sort
of complaint or demand while with the national team, the former player
laughed and explained:

Carla: Oof, you’re walking on a minefield, on a field truly covered in mines.

The truth is that we really suffered, we really suffered […] with respect to
demanding, to the fight, that was always there. If we did it, they would
drop us, and no one would find out. There was no external support. It was
very difficult to demand or ask for things.

When Garton (2019) had her first encounter with the national team
in 2011 and later in 2015, the situation had not changed much from
Carla’s experiences. The stipend had improved minimally (to 50 pesos per
day in 2011 and then to 150 pesos per day in 2015, both sums approxi-
mately equivalent to $10 U.S.), and the players’ accommodations in
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 21

Buenos Aires were now provided by AFA. The team always trained on the
pitches at the national team’s training complex in Ezeiza, but the support
from the association was still almost nonexistent. In 2011, there were
players whose boots (football footwear) had been sown to keep from rip-
ping further because they could not afford to purchase a new footwear.
In conversations on the bus to and from AFA’s football training com-
plex, her new teammates explained that neither their clubs—except for
Boca Juniors that would give its women players one pair per year—nor
AFA provided boots. As in previous years, there was no continuity nor
plans for the team’s future; if Argentina did not have an official interna-
tional competition, the national team would not train and would not
play in any friendlies. In the 2015 Pan-American Games in Toronto,
Argentina finished in last place. After the last match of the tournament,
the players, including the first author, met with the president of the
women’s football committee at the time, Salvador Stumbo, and explained
that they needed more support and continuity in the form of interna-
tional competition to truly compete with the best teams in the world.
The administrator’s response was that they ‘had to win something that
mattered’. Following that meeting and on return to Argentina, the wom-
en’s national team was left without a coaching staff until mid-2017.
Despite the lack of response from AFA, the players’ meeting with
Stumbo evidenced the beginning of their process of conscientização,
because they became aware of their situation and recognised the possibil-
ity of another reality beyond that limit-situation (Freire, 2017). From
that moment onwards, the conscientização process never stopped. The
following describes the continuation of this process and the progress to
collective and individual action by both the national team and local
league players starting in 2017 through the 2019 WWC.
22 G. Garton et al.

‘We want to be heard’: Conscientisation

and Collective Action
In 2017, women’s football attained unprecedented levels of attention in
Argentina, which, even for those who follow the sport’s development
closely, took everyone by surprise. It began to receive media coverage
when the women’s national team announced its first ever strike in
September of that year, condemning the structural sexism of the sporting
industry by exposing the poor conditions in which the players were
expected to prepare for international competition (‘La Selección de fútbol’,
2017; Lichinizer, 2017).
The team wrote an open letter to the president of AFA’s Women’s
Football Committee, Ricardo Pinela, in which they asked for more sup-
port and improvements in order to receive treatment similar to that expe-
rienced by their male peers. The athletes positioned themselves as
protagonists prepared to fight for their rights: respectable stipends, attire
and footwear in correct sizes, adequate training conditions, along with a
long-term plan for training and development. The strike lasted until
training resumed in February 2018 in preparation for the Copa America,
although no agreement was reached between the administration and
players.
Without any major modifications in the work and training conditions
nor changes in the lack of television broadcasting of the team’s matches
(they were streamed live on Facebook), in April the national team trav-
elled to Chile to play in the 2018 Copa América Femenina with only a few
weeks of preparation as a complete squad. Between 2015 and 2018, a few
changes had occurred in the team, notably, some of the key players had
gone overseas to play in the United States, Spain and China. The first
author was no longer the only player exposed to diverse realities in wom-
en’s football; these other players experienced firsthand what it meant to
play in ‘professional’ conditions with adequate medical staff, training and
match facilities, clothing, gear, coaching, nutritional support and finan-
cial compensation. They had seen beyond the limit-situation (Freire,
2017) they had played and lived in for most of their lives; they had seen
the possibility of a different reality while recognising the limits
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 23

constraining them not as insurmountable barriers but rather as hin-

drances to be overcome.
Therefore, during the 2018 Copa America, the players organised meet-
ings in the hotel first among the team and then with women’s football
committee president Ricardo Pinela, communicating not only their
desire for better conditions but also their willingness to sacrifice the pos-
sibility of representing their country, recognising this as a potential risk to
speaking out. There were also external factors that influenced the players’
decision to take a stand, particularly the growth of feminist and women’s
movements in Argentina and the rest of South America (Natalucci &
Rey, 2018).
The players used this moment of international competition to raise
awareness about the team’s claims, and prior to the second-phase match
against Colombia, they posed with their right hands behind their ears, as
a reference to a well-known pop-culture figure in Argentina, Topo Gigio.3
The image travelled around the world and exceeded the coverage received
by the previous year’s strike. On social media and in interviews with the
media, the players criticised the lack of support from AFA, reinforcing
the cultural conception of football in Argentina as a space governed by
and for men. These demonstrations served more than ever as a source of
pressure so club administrators would begin to pay more attention to the
sport, and AFA would begin to discuss the urgent need for a para-
digm shift.
Following the third-place finish in the 2018 Copa América and the
historic WWC qualifier playoff match against Panama in November of
the same year, which had a record-breaking attendance of 11,500 people
at Arsenal Fútbol Club’s stadium, the players’ struggle gained even more

3
Topo Gigio is a mouse puppet in a children’s show on Italian television who first appeared on
Argentine television during the 1970s. This character was emulated in April of 2001 by the
Argentine footballer Juan Román Riquelme as a celebration after scoring for Boca Juniors against
his team’s major rival, River Plate. This gesture also carried a political and economic significance:
the player was fighting for a better personal contract with the club. With his hands behind his ears,
he incorporated Topo Gigio as a sign of protest in Argentine football. In 2018, 17 years later, this
same gesture was used by Soledad Jaimes in her celebration following her second goal in Argentina’s
match against Bolivia during the Copa América in 2018. It was after the forward’s demonstration
that this gesture was taken and expanded by the entire team as a way to ask to be heard—an
emblem of collective struggle (Hijós, 2018).
24 G. Garton et al.

exposure.4 On the local stage, the case of Macarena Sánchez—the former

UAI Urquiza striker who, asserting her position as a worker, sued the club
after she was released mid-season in January 2019—took the discussion
of women in football to another level (Wrack, 2019).
The pressure of their (individual) exposure and the precarious condi-
tions faced by the players (as a collective) had worldwide repercussions
and led to AFA’s president, Claudio ‘Chiqui’ Tapia, alongside Sergio
Marchi, general secretary of the Argentine players association, Futbolistas
Argentinos Agremiados (FAA), announcing the creation of the Women’s
Professional Football League in March, just two months after Sánchez
had implicated AFA in the lawsuit against her former club.
The announcement of the professionalisation of the league, with a few
vague points, arrived at an opportune time: three months before the
WWC in France as an institutional response to social pressures and the
organisation of the players (Garton et al., 2021). Tapia’s discourse at this
event also hearkened back to his speech at the opening ceremony of the
2017 edition of the women’s league, his first year as president of AFA. In
that initial event, two years prior to the professionalisation of women’s
football, he had declared himself the ‘president of gender equality’ while
highlighting his administration’s plans to develop the women’s game
(Garton, 2019).
As pointed out by Fraser (1998), claims for social justice are typically
divided into two main types: material claims for redistribution and sym-
bolic claims for recognition, even though these are frequently seen as
unrelated. In Argentina, however, the players’ demands were, perhaps
inadvertently, a combination of these, demanding both greater recogni-
tion through media exposure and broadcasting of matches, and redistri-
bution of resources for better conditions for training and competition.
The players’ struggle to improve their material conditions and to be
recognised in a country where football is the main sport (Alabarces, 2008)
can be set in a context of a series of demands that began to grow immensely
and attract major media attention following the first ‘NiUnaMenos’
(‘NotOneWomanLess’) protest in 2015, which since then has taken place

4
For more, see Hang and Hijós (2018).
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 25

annually to condemn gender violence.5 The year 2019 was characterised

by the creation of commissions, secretaries and sub-secretaries of gender
and diversity in football clubs and by the resignification of preexisting
spaces to debate violence, rethink masculinities and hierarchies and gen-
erate alliances, which transversally implemented a gender perspective in
these institutions.
Julia Hang (2018) observed that collective organisation allows for the
construction—both from the institution of Argentine clubs and external
activism—of spaces dedicated to the establishment of gender policies,
which exposes the scarce participation of women and dissident genders in
these organisations. According to data collected by the Feminist Football
Coordinator (July 2019), the executive committees of clubs associated
with AFA are composed of only 6.1% women and 93.9% men. This
organisation argues that, in order to guarantee equity and the develop-
ment of women’s football beyond the pitch, it is necessary to ensure the
entry of women into AFA—so that it will no longer be an ‘old boys’
club’—as well as in every space where decisions are made.
This was the period in which feminisms and social movements began
to see football as a territory to be conquered (Hang, 2020). Through vari-
ous strategies, they supported and propelled the demands of the players,
in conditions of inequality, subordination and oppression (Hang, 2020).
It was a significant moment in which some historically marginalised
groups were able to recognise their daily experiences of discrimination
and abuse as a product of a much wider system of power (Freire, 2017).
With varying backgrounds and convictions about feminism, the players
organised themselves, raised their voices and articulated their claims
along with those of other sectors.

5
Another significant event in the feminist and women’s movements has been 8M (March 8th),
which commemorates International Women’s Day, and since 2017 has called for an international
women’s strike with the main objective of achieving equal labour conditions. The third strike was
unique in that it incorporated dissident sexualities and nonbinary gender identities for the first
time. At the same time, throughout this period, there was an ongoing fight for the legalisation of
abortion led by the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion (whose
debates are constructed on those of the National Women’s Encounters in 2003 and 2004). The year
2018 was particularly significant because of the debates generated in the National Congress and the
massive demonstrations in support of the law for the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy.
26 G. Garton et al.

Unlike what had occurred in the past, when, as Carla said, there was
‘no external support’ and ‘it was very difficult to demand or ask for
things’, these footballers were backed by feminist groups, political parties,
the media and diverse sectors of civil society (Hang & Moreira, 2020).
Thus, the sport grew into a scene for expression, discovery and empower-
ment in the fight against the patriarchy and androcentric logic.
Freire’s (2017) concept of conscientização is useful to consider the pro-
cess leading to the Argentine national team’s public protests, after decades
of struggling against but also tolerating negligence from the governing
bodies of their sport. As Freire (2017) explains, this process of conscien-
tização can occur when the oppressed recognise that they are not in a
‘closed world’ with no way out, but rather they exist in a socially ‘limiting
situation’ that can be transformed. Seeing beyond these limiting situa-
tions, which in large part was related to the support and change gener-
ated by the feminist movements in Latin America described in the
preceding, has been key in the events leading up to the professionalisa-
tion of women’s football in Argentina.

Semi-professionalisation as a Response
to the Players’ Fight
What constitutes professionalisation? As part of the agreement between
FAA and AFA (March, 2019), each team in the Primera A Femenina (i.e.,
Women’s First Division) must have a minimum of eight contracted play-
ers. These eight contracts are financed by the association, but if the club
desires to offer more than the minimum—both in terms of salary and the
total number of contracts—the difference must be financed by the club.
It is important to note that not all clubs have committed themselves—
and/or have the same material conditions—to advance the development
of women’s football. So, can one really talk about the professionalisation
of the sport when there remains a minimal percentage of players with
contracts while others still have to pay to play?6 Various groups and

6
This can be through a membership fees or covering the costs of matches in the form of transport,
referees, police and an ambulance.
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 27

leaders have criticised the announcement of professionalisation by AFA’s

president and labelled this measure as ‘semi-professionalisation’.
According to a survey carried out in June 2021 by ‘Pibas con Pelotas’ (lit-
erally ‘Girls with Balls’), a media outlet dedicated to women’s sports, of
the 19 teams in the women’s first division, only 53% of players are con-
tracted (293 out of 542).
Even though there are currently more protections granted to players
with the incorporation of professional contracts and access to the rights
already established by the same collective bargaining agreement used by
men’s football (e.g., the right to a wage and access to medical and legal
services provided by the players’ association) some practices of mar-
ronismo remain, along with the reproductions of precarity (Garton,
2019). In the case of Club UAI Urquiza, football is still not the only
source of income for the majority of players, given that the minimum
wage established in the contracts is not sufficient to cover their cost of
living, and many still depend on the club for part-time employment and/
or housing. The marronismo of the pre-professional period persists, sus-
taining the dependence of the players on the club and maintaining the
precarity of their situation as elite athletes, especially for those who are
not contracted (Garton, 2019).
Nevertheless, UAI Urquiza represents an exception to the rule in the
women’s league as one of the few teams with more contracted players
than the minimum of eight.7 Only Boca Juniors, River Plate and San
Lorenzo currently have their entire squad on contracts, and it is certainly
important to note that these are among the wealthiest clubs not only in
Argentina but also in the rest of South America. The rest of the first divi-
sion clubs face the difficult decision of which players will be offered con-
tracts and which will remain amateurs.
Even contracted players, however, still experience certain forms of pre-
carity. For example, the average length of the contracts is only one year,

7
Unlike the experiences of most female first-division players, UAI Urquiza’s women’s team has
access to the same facilities as the men and also has a full coaching staff with a head, assistant and
strength and conditioning coach, along with the same goalkeeper coach who works with the men’s
senior, reserve and youth teams. As well as a complete coaching staff, there is always a physiothera-
pist present at all training sessions and matches, the team has access to a physician on match days
and a certified sport nutritionist has been working with the team on a weekly basis since 2018.
28 G. Garton et al.

which does not offer long-term stability. Also, many players were unable
to negotiate an exit clause into their contracts if they desired to leave the
club—either to a club in another country or in the same league—before
the contract’s end. In spite of these difficulties, the players mainly
expressed feelings of gratitude and positive emotion in regard to ‘achiev-
ing the dream of signing a professional contract’, a common caption
underneath the social media posts of many players who signed contracts
at various clubs.
In her study of female professional Australian rules football (AFLW)
players, Adele Pavlidis (2020) observed similar attitudes among the ath-
letes to rationalise their low pay and poor conditions: ‘Gratitude and
generosity are entangled in relations of power. Marginalised groups, in
this case women entering into AFLW, relate to the conditions of their
precarity through positivity and optimism. It is their hope to flourish and
experience social and personal power through experiences of adversity’;
however, ‘bones break, passion does not pay the bills, and positivity does
not assure success’ (Pavlidis, 2020, p. 5). As in the case of the AFLW play-
ers, female footballers in Argentina work in a precarious space, their con-
tinuity as professionals is not guaranteed and can be disrupted or ended
by injury, a change of coach or a drop in form.
Their work is undervalued in a space where the men’s game remains
not only the priority but also the standard. It is not insignificant that the
minimum wage of the women’s first division is equivalent to that of the
men’s fifth division (Primera D), which was historically an amateur divi-
sion. As discussed by Fraser (1998), when it comes to issues of gender,
maldistribution and misrecognition are intimately related. For female
players, their financial status is affected by their social status as women;
thus, both injustices must be remedied through redistribution as well as
recognition.
The arrival of professionalism did not generate modifications in regard
to the expectations or requirements of clubs in terms of the conditions of
the practice. If a club desires to offer more or less resources to its women’s
team, this decision is left to each institution’s leadership. In the smallest
clubs, the discipline remains predominantly amateur, or marrón, with
claims about late payments or lack of pay for contracted players, inade-
quate spaces for training—some teams only have access to a pitch one or
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 29

two times per week, insufficient for a professional competition—and the

absence of medical staff or physiotherapists to care for players.
Furthermore, since most of the team is not contracted, players have to
find other work to survive, which can often generate conflicts with train-
ing times and midweek matches.
During the first year of professionalism, the league’s players protested
against the administration of a club in the southern part of Greater
Buenos Aires for the mistreatment of its players. In a meeting with other
players around the league, which was attended by the first author, a player
from this club shared her experiences of abuse at the club. She explained
how, among other things, the eight contracted players were forced to go
to the bank accompanied by a club administrator to withdraw their
monthly wages in cash and give the money to said administrator, which
would later be distributed as a stipend throughout the entire team.
Even though the contracted players did not disagree with the concept
of redistributing their wages to teammates, when the players added up
their ‘stipends’, they never equalled the total amount paid by AFA for the
eight contracts. When they asked the club about this discrepancy, the
administration responded that the difference covered the costs of the dis-
cipline—although the team’s captain stated that she was often asked to
personally pay for the ambulance and/or police presence for matches,
since the club knew that her partner ‘had a well-paid job’. At the meeting,
the player expressed her fear about speaking up about what was happen-
ing at her club because the administration also threatened to drop the
sport entirely or cut players if they ever shared what happened at the club
with anyone outside the institution.
Although this could be considered an extreme example, similar experi-
ences have been shared among members of Futbolistas Unidas Argentinas
(i.e., Argentine Women’s Footballers United), a group composed of first
and second division players. This group was formed in 2019 to discuss
problems faced by footballers in AFA’s women’s leagues, including the
quality of their club’s facilities, the conditions of their practice and even
cases of sexual abuse and harassment. The mere formation of this group,
however, is an indicator of the growing ‘conscientização’ (Freire, 2017) of
Argentine women’s players: their social awareness started with dialogue
and struggle within the national team, and then spread its impact to the
30 G. Garton et al.

domestic league. Local players had seen what collective action had
achieved for the national team as well as the response it generated from
the media and AFA; they were aware of the untested feasibility (Freire,
2017; Knijnik, 2012), which lies beyond the current limit-situation of an
only semi-professionalised first division.
In prior seasons, most players would have endured mistreatment from
their club with a mentality of ‘gratitude’ because they had been condi-
tioned to the discipline and silencing, which has oppressed women his-
torically (Barrancos, 2010), especially considering the experiences of
Carla’s generation. The authors do not intend to romanticise nor exagger-
ate the players’ agency nor the ability to generate change in a space that
historically has excluded and marginalised them; however, a turning
point has occurred and players are aware that they do have more revolu-
tionary power as a collective, with the support of feminist groups (e.g.,
the Coordinadora Sin Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista),8 as well as feminist
journalists and media outlets, which promote sorority and the question-
ing of traditional ways of conceiving football, contemplating how to
build a feminist and popular sport, far from the logic of male fanaticism
(Pierini & Hang, 2019).

Final Reflections
Football, metaphor for war, at times becomes real war.
—Eduardo Galeano, Football in Sun and Shadow

8
The Coordinadora de Hinchas is an organised group of supporters from various Argentinian clubs
to defend the associationist model of sports clubs in the face of the project to transform them into
Public Limited Companies during the presidency of Mauricio Macri (2015–2019). With the
expansion of feminist movements in the region, this collective began to problematise as well gender
issues in a separate department. At the same time, self-organisations and commissions emerged to
work on the implementation of a gender perspective in institutions. This was the impetus for the
creation of the Coordinadora Sin Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista, an organisation that brings together
supporters, members, managers, coaches, but also female football players. The role of these organ-
isations promoted the awareness of women players, and challenged them politically in the fight
against inequalities, for the visibility of women and diversity in sports.
 2 No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women’s… 31

Similar to other cultural practices, football is a battlefield where dis-

putes unravel to install and deconstruct legitimate meanings. The official
history has led one to believe that football is a sport played, narrated,
enjoyed and governed by men. The experiences of the national team,
players in AFA’s women’s league and the pioneers of the 1971 unofficial
World Cup, along with women from the first decades of the last century,
allow for the telling of a different story: a story of play and enjoyment
that has been silenced for many years. According to Carmen Rial (2013)
in the Brazilian context, this mechanism meant a clean and even expul-
sion of women from the narratives of the ‘fatherland’.
The story told today is one of rebellion, in which fights to break down
strongholds on an unequal pitch continue and where power reinvents
itself to maintain hegemony. The political decision to professionalise
women’s football in Argentina was a response to the collective action tak-
ing place on and off the pitch, in the intimacy of a group of footballers in
collaboration with a broader social movement that supported them. In
this context, the demands of the players’ strike in September 2017 became
legitimate claims in 2018 after the national team achieved significant
sporting results: third place in the Copa América and World Cup qualifi-
cation for the first time in 12 years.
In March 2019, the announcement to professionalise the league
offered legitimacy to female footballers but also produced new inequali-
ties. The new league did not disassemble a structure characterised by
abuse, silencing and discipline, rather these mechanisms still exist.
Nonetheless, unlike previous generations who protested in solitude,
today when players say ‘no nos callamos más’ (‘we will never again be
silent’), their words are echoed not only by other footballers but also by a
multitude of women in Argentina and the rest of South America who
continue to fight collectively for equity both on and off the field of play.
32 G. Garton et al.

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ciaciones y agencias en un campo desigual. Revista Ensambles, 12, 2–9. http://
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and-­argentinian-­football-­federation
 3
‘Our football is joy, it’s dissident,
and it’s feminist!’: La Coordinadora Sin
Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista
and Women’s Fight for the Right
to Football in Argentina
Matthew Hawkins and Julia Hang

Introduction: Fresh Air, a New Way

of Living Feminism
When you see the photos of the demonstration from above, the rectangle
of the cancha [football pitch], La Coordi and all the pibas [girls1] around
you, you get a sense of the passion that we bring. Beyond our feminist

1
Piba refers to young women. Pibe, the masculine form, historically refers to young men and in the
Argentine football imaginary, masculine players with a creative rebellious style of play (Archetti, 2008).
To call themselves “las pibas” may be understood as a resignification of a historically masculine concept.

M. Hawkins (*)
Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Hang
Argentine National Council for Scientific Research (CONICET) and the
University of La Plata, La Plata, Argentina

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 35

J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_3
36 M. Hawkins and J. Hang

activism, what really brought us together to go to the marches was football.

Football brought us together; it’s what we love and where most of us started
our activism in the group.
–Caro, representative of San Lorenzo Feminista

Aerial images revealing a small canchita (an informal field) at the steps
of Argentina’s National Congress carved out of the mass of demonstrators
participating in the protests on February 19, 2020, is one of the indelible
images of the progression of Argentina’s feminist movement in its cam-
paign towards the right to safe, legal and accessible abortions. Over the
course of the day-long demonstrations, matches took place between
teams of women playing in picaditos aborteros,2 a form of participation in
protests that has become common place at marches and demonstrations
by Argentina’s feminist movement. Women, lesbians, transgender and
nonbinary people organized into shifts by La Coordinadora Sin Fronteras
de Fútbol Feminista (Coordinator of Feminist Football Without Borders,
referred to as La Coordi by its members) arrived 24 hours before the
demonstration to create and defend the space on the pavement.3
The ongoing claiming of space for football in prominent locations
within feminist demonstrations has marked La Coordi as a significant
organisation alongside established feminist groups in Argentina. The
story of the canchitas draws one’s attention to the creative tensions emer-
gent in the proposal of a feminist football. This chapter unpacks the for-
mation of La Coordinadora Sin Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista, as well as
La Coordi’s roots in women’s activism over decades, to create, promote
and nourish a space to play and be supporters of football and, in turn,
expand on the significance of feminist football in contemporary
Argentina. Giving attention to the contradictions and tensions consis-
tently explored and debated by the activist members of feminist football
reveals its contributions to a more equal and just football culture, as well
as to an increasingly popular feminist movement.

2
A picadito is a regional term for an informal game of football organized in an informal space, often
among friends. Picadito abortero has become the name for the semi-organised games of football
played during feminist and pro-abortion marches and demonstrations in Argentina.
3
The plurality of identities that constitute La Coordinadora Sin Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista should
be noted.
 3 ‘Our football is joy, it’s dissident, and it’s feminist!’… 37

In recent history, Argentina’s feminist movement has regained signifi-

cant momentum and a prominent place in national politics, as well as
being a symbolic referent for feminist movements across Latin America
and the world. Following the femicide of Chiara Paez, the hashtag slogan
#NiUnaMenos was created to convene hundreds of thousands of people
across Argentina to protest femicide and gender-based violence on June
3, 2015. In addition, in support of Argentina’s campaign for legal, safe
and free abortions, the pañuelo verde (green bandana) became an iconic
symbol for women’s rights across the region. The movements have also
expanded the horizons of feminist politics, recognising the rights and
inclusion of transgender and nonbinary people as central components of
ending patriarchy in society. A feminist football has emerged within the
context of a reinvigorated feminist social movement, creating a powerful
dialogue between feminism and football politics and practices.
This chapter is based on ethnographic data from marches and work-
shops, as well as interviews with Caro and Nadia, constituent members
of La Coordi from San Lorenzo Feminista, and Mónica Santino, a leader
in the movement.4 Feminist football connects the right to play and par-
ticipate with the notion of football as a human right and opposes the
patriarchal formation of the sport that has long excluded women, trans-
gender and nonbinary people. Further, as Mónica Santino described,
feminist football is also, ‘fresh air, a new way of living feminism’. Feminist
football articulates a recognition that football can be a feminist practice
and issue.
To make football feminist, activists have developed a praxis that entan-
gles their passion for football with a sisterhood that arises from shared
experiences of exclusion from the sport. In doing so, activists in La Coordi

4
For this project Caro and Nadia were interviewed as members and organizers within San Lorenzo
Feminista and represent San Lorenzo Feminista within the broader structure of La Coordi. Monica
Santino, also interviewed for this project, is a life-long footballer and football coach, and organiser
of the Club La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista in the popular neighbourhood Villa 31, an important
institution that has advanced the inclusion of girls and young women in football since 2007.
Santino has been an activist within the LGBTQ+ community, serving as president of the
Comunidad Homosexual Argentina (Argentine Homosexual Community) from 1994 to 1996.
The researchers have engaged with gender-based activists within the Club de Gimnasia y Esgrima
La Plata, as well as events organised by San Lorenzo Feminista and La Coordi between 2019
and 2021.
38 M. Hawkins and J. Hang

are constructing a new form of feminist football folklore, explored in this

chapter, which includes practices of picaditos, canchitas and cancioneros
feministas against what they consider patriarchal football.

 ecent Feminist Movements in Argentina:

R
To Put Many of the Things That Happen
to Women into Words
Argentina’s feminist movement reinvigorated its presence on the streets
following the first #NiUnaMenos demonstrations in 2015, which had
crystallised the grassroots responses against femicides into a national
movement. The demonstrations marked a turning point in the feminist
movement as a rearticulation of historic feminist demands on social issues
by an expanded plurality of sectors of society by developing new forms of
legitimacy, popular support and transversality within feminist politics.
Although centred on the issue of femicide and violent masculinity, the
#NiUnaMenos mobilisations represented a ‘heterogenous and poly-
phonic’ feminism with a strong emphasis on horizontal organisation and
tactics that required the taking-over and sharing of public space among
diverse constituent collectives (Natalucci & Rey, 2018).
Social media networks also expanded the public visibility of feminist
social demands, adding to the plurality of voices putting feminist
demands onto the political agenda, and for activists to connect their
occupation of the streets with the occupation of other public areas in cit-
ies across the country. Some authors characterize the novelty of this
‘fourth wave of feminism’ as its ability to take feminism to places previ-
ously deemed unthinkable’ (Barrancos, 2014; Natalucci & Rey, 2018).
From Mónica’s perspective, previous iterations of feminism had formed a
distant relationship with football, more broadly reflecting a distancing
between Argentina’s academic feminism and popular culture in Argentina.
For example, mainstream feminism had categorized cumbia villera, a
popular music culture in Argentina as misogynist without reflecting on
women’s experiences of enjoyment and even empowerment (Silba &
Spataro, 2017). Similarly, the world of football, which in Argentina has
 3 ‘Our football is joy, it’s dissident, and it’s feminist!’… 39

been structured as a space ‘by men and for men’ (Alvarez Litke, 2018;
Hijós, 2018) had been largely ignored within dominant feminist politics
as a site for constructive contestation. In part, the fourth wave of femi-
nism in Argentina has seen greater recognition and engagement with sites
of popular culture (e.g., football) as integral parts of a growing diversity
in the lives of women, transgender and nonbinary people.
In recent years, political debates on the legalisation of abortion pro-
vided opportunities to mobilise the feminist movement in massive dem-
onstrations. On March 5, 2018, the National Campaign for Legal, Safe
and Free Abortion presented the Law for Voluntary Interruption of
Pregnancy (i.e., the Law for IVE in its Spanish acronym) for the seventh
time to Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies of the National Congress,
which it passed on June 14 of that year. The Chamber of Senators, how-
ever, voted down the legislation on August 9, 2018. Following this set-
back, participation in the feminist movement continued to develop and
influenced the 2019 election victory of President Alberto Fernandez and
Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who had promised to
present and pass the Law for IVE. Even though massive mobilisations at
each legislative step have provided opportunities for direct engagement
through protest tactics, many people also participated in day-to-day
activism by carrying the now iconic pañuelo verde tied around their neck,
wrist or bag.
For many women who are part of La Coordi, #NiUnaMenos was their
first engagement with feminist activism. Both Caro and Nadia, who rep-
resented San Lorenzo Feminista (an autonomous organisation of fans
and members of Club Atlético San Lorenzo de Almagro)5 within La
Coordi, are part of a younger generation of activists who mobilised
through the #NiUnaMenos and legal abortion campaigns. During an
interview, they described how, as lifelong supporters of San Lorenzo, they
had in some ways not fully recognised how their interactions with foot-
ball had been prefiguring their feminist position. They had developed an
understanding that the ‘football world [they] loved was machista’. Caro
explained, ‘in the stadium, when I’d give an opinion or would talk [about

5
Professional football teams in Argentina are part of multi-sport membership run by nonprofit
clubs that offer a diversity of social, cultural and athletic activities.
40 M. Hawkins and J. Hang

the game], other people wouldn’t listen or pay attention, and they would
belittle me because I’m a woman who couldn’t understand’.
Nadia recognised through reflection that she ‘always had feminist ideas
without knowing it’ but also ‘a mountain of machista ideas because of a
society that drags you into them.’ The #NiUnaMenos campaign is con-
sidered a point of inflection for feminist football activists, and Caro and
Nadia described it as an important ‘before and after moment’ because it
provided them with the opportunity ‘to put many of the things that hap-
pen to [them] as women, particularly in football, into words’. Nadia has
been able to affirm her identity as a supporter of San Lorenzo through
San Lorenzo Feminista. The group provides an opportunity to ‘decon-
struct the club’ and recognise an institution that is much more than men’s
football to emphasise the elements that ‘coincide with [her] values’.
Participation in #NiUnaMenos exposed many activists to the dis-
courses and practices of feminist politics, generating innovative forms of
sociality in football spaces (e.g., organised fan and supporter groups and
clubs) that had previously been absent from feminist politics. Supporting
the Law for IVE, in turn, provided new opportunities to enact feminist
politics and perform feminist football practices during mobilisations,
while carrying the pañuelo verde became a way to symbolically identify as
a feminist.

F ootball in National Women’s Encounters:

What Is Football for You?
There is a long history of feminist activism in Argentina that prefigured
the organising of #NiUnaMenos and the Campaign for Legal Abortion.
The Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres (i.e., National Women's Encounter)
is an annual event hosted in a different Argentine city each year since
1986. The Encuentros (Encounters), which have become the backbone of
the movement, consist of workshops on diverse topics organised by activ-
ists and are based on principles of horizontality and equality. Even though
sports periodically emerged as a topic of discussion during workshops
over the years, football and feminism was only first included in the official
 3 ‘Our football is joy, it’s dissident, and it’s feminist!’… 41

agenda at the 2018 Encuentro in Chubut. In the years prior, Mónica

described how an informal street-football tournament at the 2014
Encuentro in Salta became a space for discussion and reflection.
Similar tournaments became progressively amplified at each subse-
quent Encuentro. By 2018, the tournament in Trelew included 109
teams of footballers, trainers, sports journalists, academics and supporters
from across Argentina with names such as Abriendo La Cancha (Opening
the Field) from Cordoba, Las Martas from Santa Fe, and Boca es Pueblo
(Boca is the People) and La Nuestra from Buenos Aires (Fernándes Fuks,
2018). Activists organised ‘Football and Feminisms’ workshops alongside
the tournament. For Mónica it was a ‘historic achievement’ to be offi-
cially recognised in the program of the Encuentro.
As a young activist in the Argentine Homosexual Community and as
a footballer during the 1980s and 1990s, Mónica felt that feminism was
‘very white.6 [Feminism] belonged to the academics who were very judge-
mental. They told us if something was feminist or not, and football was
not’. Jefferson Lenskyj (1995) conceptualises feminism’s distance with
sport more broadly as ‘sport phobia’. Hang and Garton (in press) argue
that this does not mean that there were not feminists concerned with
sports, or women who, without perceiving themselves as feminists, fought
for female participation in sports. Thus, although it is possible to identify
Trelew as a significant moment in feminist football, many in La Coordi
are quick to recognise the contributions of women such as activists like
Mónica and coach Lorena Berdula who have fought for a feminist foot-
ball over the years and who have otherwise been made invisible by the
patriarchy (Elsey, 2019).
Trelew did, however, mark a coalescing of constituent components in
the ongoing and historic struggle for a feminist football. Mónica explained
that ‘what happened in [Trelew] was marvellous. We made a huge circle
and talked about a simple question: “what is football for you? What does
it mean to play?” [The discussion] opened a series of wounds that for
many hadn’t been healed’. Revelations of shared painful experiences—of
exclusion, inequality and violence—created a foundation for mutual

6
Whiteness in this context refers to the socioeconomic hierarchy and racial-class dynamics in
Argentina.
42 M. Hawkins and J. Hang

solidarity among participants that since has been centred on feminist

football. Emerging from the discussions, participants began working
towards creating La Coordinadora Sin Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista.
La Coordi is an ongoing project of its participants composed of sup-
porter groups from numerous clubs, sport journalists, athletes, coaches,
trainers, researchers and teachers who approach sports from a gender and
feminist perspective. Activists emphasised the group’s horizontal and
polyphonic plurality as emerging through the organising forms of foot-
ball by blending feminist principles of anti-hierarchies and egalitarian
participation with historical practices of making club-based peñas, semi-­
autonomous groups that organise social activities for supporters, whereas
players and coaches have organised grassroots community teams that col-
lect resources to make or take over spaces to play. In part, the horizontal-
ity emerges from the need to recognise and respond to the diverse realities
and challenges faced by women, girls and transgender and nonbinary
people in football in the different regions of Argentina.
Within La Coordi, commissions are organised to handle various func-
tions. A social media commission exposes different situations, such as
gender-based violence and discrimination in the field of sports. Another
commission focuses on activism in the street, occupying space during
mobilisations—to set up the canchas, for example. Another commission
serves as a network for the supporter groups that, as part of La Coordi,
turn towards each other for support when navigating the internal politics
of their clubs. Nadia from San Lorenzo Feminista argues that as support-
ers face the distinct realities in each of their clubs, ‘we give each other
strength. It’s like [our participation in La Coordi] also propels our own
fight in our clubs, that is, our particular struggles that we have every day.
... So we also constantly learn from the struggles of others’. Practices of
solidarity and collaboration between groups from clubs that are other-
wise rivals in sports competition, however, can create tension for mem-
bers of La Coordi, which is explored in the following.
 3 ‘Our football is joy, it’s dissident, and it’s feminist!’… 43

 truggling for a Space to Play: The cancha

S
as a Symbol of Appropriating National Identity
The struggle for space for women, girls and transgender and nonbinary
people to play is not a novel innovation of La Coordinadora Sin Fronteras
de Fútbol Feminista. In many respects, the creation of canchitas as spaces
to play picaditos flows from the gendered history of the space-politics of
the football field. Embedded within the national myth of fútbol in
Argentina is the practice of making do and transforming open space into
a place to play (Archetti, 2008). The need to create places to play has been
a crucial aspect of football’s reality in Argentina, particularly in urbanised
Buenos Aires, since its arrival and popularisation among working-class
players at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth cen-
turies. Space in public parks has always been limited in urban centres and
maintained grass fields are controlled by private clubs.
Football historian Julio Frydenberg (2011) notes that the economi-
cally marginalised men and boys who were ‘excluded from the organized
spaces, took football to the street as a primordial space [to play]. Novices
and enthusiast players appropriated and transformed the streets into
social spaces for men, youth, and children’ (authors’ emphasis, p. 93). In
other contexts, patches of dirt and livestock grazing fields, called potreros,
became rough training grounds and spaces to play a free-flowing and now
iconic style of play marked by guile and creativity. For Archetti (2008),
mythic stories of the potrero as an incubator-space for Argentine-style
football provided powerful images in the entangled narrative construc-
tion of the masculine nation and its territory.
Although these myths and stories revolved around the play of boys and
men, including national icons (e.g., Maradona), women’s role in the for-
mation of football often went unwritten and silenced, contributing to the
hegemonic masculinity over the territory of the football pitch. Given the
significance of football to Argentina’s national culture (Alabarces, 2014;
Archetti, 2016), efforts to silence and exclude the participation of women,
transgender, and nonbinary people from the spaces of football translate
into a patriarchal effort to exclude their participation in the production
of popular culture in general (Elsey & Nadel, 2019; Garton, 2019; Pujol,
44 M. Hawkins and J. Hang

2019). The repression, however, has been continually confronted with

creative resistance, appropriation and transformation of football, includ-
ing the long-standing activism of players like Las Pioneras,7 who repre-
sented Argentina at the first Women’s World Cup in 1971.
The mythic qualities of the cancha encourage a reflection on the entan-
gled significance of feminist football’s practice of occupying space through
feminist actions and daily life, transforming those spaces into a place to
play. British feminist geographer Doreen Massey (1994) recalls passing
the football fields along the River Mersey, filled with young players: ‘then
as a puzzled, slightly thoughtful little girl—that this huge stretch of the
Mersey flood plain had been entirely given over to boys. I did not go to
those playing fields—they seemed barred, another world’ (p.185). Massey
points to this formative experience as the beginning of an understanding
of space as emergent from the multiplicity of dimensions of social rela-
tionships, powerfully including the dimension of gender, that in turn
affects the possible social relationships developed across spaces. Mónica
vividly describes encountering gendered boundaries while growing up,
and how stepping into the boys’ spaces of play transformed her relation-
ships with others:

Mónica: I have strong memories of playing in the street. Strong, because I

remember watching boys playing football. I was seven or eight. And,
watching the boys play in the street from my front door, I wanted to play.
A strong, unstoppable desire to play, to make some passes, to throw away
the embarrassment and the mountain of things that would happen with all
the world watching me. Later, I wanted to be the best I could so that they
would accept me.… I was part of the group. The problems began later, how
the boys looked at me changed, and so did how my family [looked at me].

Faced with exclusion in the gendered construction of spaces to play,

women, girls and transgender and nonbinary people have had to develop
practices of appropriating, repurposing and creating their own spaces to

7
The Pioneras are a group formed by members of the Argentine national team who played in the
1971 World Cup in Mexico. Former goalkeeper, Lucila Sandoval, more recently reconnected with
players from the team to highlight their history, and they have become important symbols for femi-
nism in football (Pujol, 2019).
 3 ‘Our football is joy, it’s dissident, and it’s feminist!’… 45

make it possible to play. Mónica’s early life experiences are representative

of many others who also encountered exclusionary efforts and little insti-
tutional or social encouragement to play. The symbolic placement of the
canchitas for the picaditos on the streets and open park spaces at demon-
strations and Encuentros becomes a powerful political act.
Through a feminist positionality, feminist football activists’ efforts
appropriate and rearticulate the transformative practice of making do
with spaces associated with marginalised men and boys, thus asserting an
inclusive right to play. Similar practices of appropriating and transform-
ing spaces of football can be seen in other actions by feminist football
activists: from taking up space on stadium terraces, entering club admin-
istrative positions, to creating teams and clubs explicitly for girls, women
and transgender and nonbinary people, feminist football groups have
been seeking to reconstruct inclusive spaces in the sports’ institutions.

 ancionero feminista. Nutmegging

C
the Patriarchy and Oppression
On Sunday, October 13, 2019, the banner of La Coordinadora Sin
Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista carried by iconic members of the organisa-
tion led the 200,000-person demonstration at the 34th Encuentro
through the streets of La Plata. There were hundreds of supporters wear-
ing the colours of their clubs, while players and sports journalists marched
behind the banner; it was a massive collective from across Argentina who
had participated in sessions organised by La Coordi. They carried drums
and flags, the folkloric elements of the Argentine football stadium, and
sang songs they had rehearsed the day before while playing picaditos on
the canchita setup on La Plata’s central Plaza San Martin. Lyrics in the
feminist songbook put to traditional melodies from football stadiums
contained verses such as: ‘a dissident field is my obsession, where all bod-
ies can celebrate a goal; nutmegging patriarchy and oppression, you will
see; football will be for everyone or it won’t be; yes, boy, we carry revolu-
tion in our [football] boots’.
46 M. Hawkins and J. Hang

The reappropriation8 of popular football songs and chants by members

of La Coordi enmeshes practices of feminist politics with football cul-
tures, integrating their passion with the core tenets and values of feminist
political organising. Mónica connects the significance of emotions
learned through football to La Coordi’s presence in the feminist
movement:

Mónica: We are called to many political actions because of the force of

emotion we transmit when recovering what is ours but from which we’ve
been left out. … We appropriate part of the powerful masculine identity
that’s in the folklore of football, the part that motivates us to play and
motivates us as spectators. It has something to do with how we experience
football. Our football songs, for example, are genius; songs that are like
anthems are wonderful parts of football in Argentina. If there is a song, you
will start to sing it. And you sing and you sing. It’s like a repetitive prayer,
it doesn’t matter if you are winning or losing, what you are celebrating is
your identity and belonging. I think that every time La Coordi gets together
we are celebrating our identity and belonging to this new little thing we
have: feminist football.

Many of the feminist football songs sung by La Coordi appropriate the

familiar melodies used in masculine football, as well as melodies common
in political mobilisation, in part to generate a shared emotional sense of
belonging during marches, demonstrations and events. Within the sta-
dium, the collective singing of the songs creates an effective atmosphere
that helps to generate a performative and an embodied sense of collectiv-
ity (Hawkins, 2017). According to Javier Bundio (2020), the masculine
football songs of Argentine football’s culture are statements from their
social sphere, of the football stadium and its crowd. Songs are created
through a contrafactum process, which involves changing the lyrics of a
song or poem while keeping the same melody and/or meter. Melodies are
extracted from cultural industries and transformed into part of popular

8
La Coordi intentionally engages in the reappropriation of classic masculine football songs, which
historically have stigmatised women, homosexuals and others by modifying their meaning through
new lyrics.
 3 ‘Our football is joy, it’s dissident, and it’s feminist!’… 47

mass culture through the lyrics that also influence ideas about football’s
identities (Bundio, 2020).
An important condition of football identities is their oppositional
structure. The peculiarity of the Argentine case is that these identities
have been built on the rhetoric of aguante, a native category that denotes
a system of honour and prestige linked to violence and physical confron-
tations (Alabarces et al., 2008). The possession of aguante by supporters
configures a type of hegemonic masculinity, based on tolerance to pain in
physical confrontations, having ‘balls’ and being a man; it is typified by
the practices of organised fan groups colloquially called barra bravas.
Bundio (2020) demonstrates how cheering and singing at a football
match is an antagonistic cultural performance that pits an idealised self-­
image of the group in opposition to an inferior image of the other. Fans
use their performance of songs, relying on masculine ideologies of violent
competition, homophobic or xenophobic lyrics, to construct and reaf-
firm the divide between the two communities of supporters.
Representations about ‘us’ and ‘others’ are built from a logic of dichoto-
mous, exclusive and oppositional representation using the culturally rel-
evant value system of aguante (Bundio, 2020: p.184). Although the barra
brava is its maximum exponent, aguante configures a masculine culture
constitutive of Argentine football.9 For San Lorenzo Feminista, decon-
structing masculine stadium songs has been an important site of reimag-
ining the stadium terraces as inclusive spaces:

We’ve tried to deconstruct and transform the violence that is implied by

the discrimination [in songs against Boca]; it’s very uncomfortable to be in
the stadium when there is a xenophobic song. Coming from feminism we
began to think, ‘no more’; you can’t tolerate these things in the stadium. It
is possible to bring feminism to football and transform what it means to be
a fan, the songs, the folklore. … For example, when we started to go watch
women’s volleyball, it was unbelievable, all the songs were for men.
Everyone was singing [for the players to] ‘play with balls’. No one was liter-
ally thinking ‘play with balls’, but everything we sang had to do with men,
how the macho of the terraces experiences football. It didn’t translate even

9
Aguante transverses into other masculine cultures in Argentina; for example, the rock scene
(Garriga Zucal & Salerno, 2008).
48 M. Hawkins and J. Hang

though we were supposedly there to support San Lorenzo; as a group we

weren’t supporting the girls that were playing volleyball. And the violence
was there. To sing ‘play with balls’ to a woman doesn’t make sense, and we
started to realize it was violent. We needed to deconstruct what we
were saying.

Aguante, however, also is related to the folklore in and around the sta-
diums including drums, flags and songs (Cabrera, 2019; Daskal, 2018).
Aguante has a dimension linked to the performance of the fans in the
stands, which transmits a passion and strength capable of influencing the
outcome of the match (Hawkins, 2017). Feminist supporters question
the macho dimension of this folklore and the violent dimension of foot-
ball rivalries, without necessarily questioning the rivalry itself or the fes-
tive dimension in the stadium. For example, in one of the feminist
football songs, the lyrics construct the other as hegemonic masculinity in
football through the symbolically inferior barra brava:

What happened barra brava,

that the fans are free of machos.
What happened barra brava,
that in the end they were all fachos.10
The years go by, the players and leaders,
What happened to the girls? It’s the question the people have.
As the girls, we take your place:
Oh oh!
In the streets, in the stadiums, and in the beds.
Oh oh!
While the police look after your football,
Our football is joy,
It’s dissident, and it’s feminist.

Engaging in the contrafactum of stadium songs is an opportunity for

feminist football activists to reflexively engage with football culture more
broadly. Naming the barra bravas and machos calls an idea into existence

Facho is a local term form denoting fascist sympathies and is used to refer to supporters of
10

Argentina’s civic–military dictatorship (1976–1983).

 3 ‘Our football is joy, it’s dissident, and it’s feminist!’… 49

that can be opposed; the opposition also helps to define the idea of what
a feminist footballer is. For Caro, it was this:

The folklore that we experience when we get together with La Coordi’s flag,
with the flags of all the teams, of all colours, and we are singing all together,
it’s folklore that we’ve managed to transform, the ability to think with fem-
inism and our passion … it's the power of what it means to be a fan, the
songs and the folklore. The folklore gives us what it means to cheer in the
stadium, the passion, the aguante for your club. But you can transform it,
taking out the violent part that comes from patriarchal football.

In this relationship, feminist football activists appropriate the emo-

tional celebration and popular folklore of the stadium, including aspects
of aguante that include a rebelliousness and anti-authoritarian disposi-
tion, while challenging aspects of the masculine violence of aguante. This
last dimension is embodied by feminist football activists, who resignify it
into feminist folklore. This also is valued by other sectors of feminism: La
Coordi is summoned because they convey emotionality. Emotionality is
anchored in the body, which is at the centre of feminist football activism:
in the songs, the flags, persevering, playing and occupying the field.
The use of stadium songs reflects feminist football’s broader engage-
ment with the passion and emotion formed in the rivalries of Argentina’s
football culture. Rivalries in football are both oppositional and intimately
connected through football matches. Feminist football fans continue to
reflect on the significance of their clubs’ historical rivalries. During field-
work with the women who are part of the gender area of Club Gimnasia
y Esgrima La Plata, Hang (2020) observed that ironic comments about
the rival team were common in meetings, and jokes about their rival’s
stadium or players were told among laughs in private moments. In defin-
ing herself as a Gimnasia supporter, Belen described how she must do so
in opposition to their arch rival Estudiantes de La Plata. While maintain-
ing their rivalries, Hang (2020) showed that feminist supporters of
Gimnasia conduct political work that transforms rivalries through an
idea of sisterhood, which implies a shared recognition of common experi-
ences of oppression and inequality.
50 M. Hawkins and J. Hang

To construct sisterhood without losing the rivalry, otherwise impor-

tant to their identity as fans, requires the subtle work of articulating the
differences between the supporters, often occurring in the small details of
day-to-day actions of enacting a feminist football. Jokes about rivals, for
example, function as a way of differentiating fandoms and maintaining
the team identity within a wider network of feminist fans. When asked
about their relationship to derby rivals Huracán, the first reaction of
activists from San Lorenzo Feminista was laughter: ‘That does not change,
we don’t like Huracán’, Caro and Nadia said. But after thinking for a few
seconds, they continued:

Beyond that, we can even make jokes among ourselves, we shit ourselves
with laughter with all the girls from the other teams, but we transform the
word folklore into really what you see [in La Coordi]. Your head explodes
when you see everyone together; it’s crazy. … You discover that in other
clubs there are many pibas like us, we each see each other, learn from oth-
ers, and we have a lot of the same objectives and shared battles.

Rivalries through sisterhood creates opportunities to develop bonds of

solidarity, while maintaining identities of belonging created through the
folklore of football.

 onclusion: The Emotionality for ‘Recovering

C
What Is Ours’
Throughout this chapter the authors have shown the processes through
which activists from Coordinadora Sin Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista turn
football into a feminist praxis. Vast mobilisations around #NiUnaMenos
and the Campaign for Legal Abortion not only enabled a massive arrival
of feminism to football but also created openings for football to influence
feminism. Within these feminist mobilisations, the long standing but far
too often isolated, struggles of women in various spheres of football were
able to converge around the project for feminist football. Picaditos, can-
chitas and cancionero feminista contribute to La Coordi’s folklore, which
involves its own identity constructed in opposition to the football they
 3 ‘Our football is joy, it’s dissident, and it’s feminist!’… 51

characterise as patriarchal. In turn, feminist football has been engaged in

a process of rescuing emotionality and passion from what are seen as the
violent dimensions of football. In doing so, feminist football is trans-
forming football folklore into a valuable resource for other sectors of
feminism.
Made up of a multiplicity of organisations and activists from various
spaces, feminist football manages conflict at a political level, and football
rivalries are processed in La Coordi under the idea of sisterhood. They
structure their practice on a shared experience of their expulsion and
exclusion from football, a sport that in Argentina was almost exclusively
owned by men. Mónica recognised that the power of feminist football
takes roots in the emotionality transmitted due to ‘recovering what is
ours, but from which we’ve been left out’. The praxis of La Coordi is
structured under the idea that it is not about completely transforming
football, but about the aspects in which macho, homophobic and misog-
ynistic practices are expressed. It is also about recognising the potential of
football as political and capable of mobilising unique emotions towards
mutual solidarity in diversity. The reappropriation of football folklore
reveals how the activism of La Coordi’s members entangles practices of
feminist politics with football cultures, integrating their passionate
engagement with the core tenets and values of feminist political
organising.

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 4
Another ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women,
Feminism and ‘barras’ in Mexico
Claudia Pedraza Bucio

Introduction: Women in the Bleachers

The experience of being a football fan produces identities related to a
nation, region, city, neighborhood or specific social sector. In anthropol-
ogy, sociology and other disciplines, there has been a concern with ana-
lysing these identity experiences of football supporter groups (known as
ultras in international literature) beyond simply enthusiasm (Bairner,
2015; Delgado & Gómez, 2017; Lechner, 2007; Meneses, 2008; Villena,
2002). One such group is the Latin-American barra de fútbol. As an
object of study, barras have generated substantial academic production
for more than two decades, focusing on their characterising practices,
aesthetics, symbols and structures (Alabarces, 2000, 2004, 2005; Garriga,
2005, 2007, 2015; Garriga Zucal & Moreira, 2006; Moreira, 2005).

C. Pedraza Bucio (*)

Universidad La Salle, México City, México
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 55

J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_4
56 C. Pedraza Bucio

Nevertheless, the analysis of female presence in the barras is rare

because of the invisibility of women within these organisations, despite
the growing number of female fans (GEMBA, 2020; Meier et al., 2015;
Pope, 2017). In fact, over the last decade, groups of female football sup-
porters have emerged worldwide (Lenneis & Pfister, 2018; Pitti, 2019).
Particularly, adopting the barra aesthetic, groups emerged in Latin
America seeking to transform sexist male football culture, interconnect-
ing their practices with feminist principles.
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the experiences of women
who created these groups as spaces for feminist action. With this in mind,
the first part revisits the approaches of sociology of sport and feminist
theory to describe the male culture of barras, and subsequently, analyses
the ways in which women are embedded in this culture as fans. Next, the
third section provides context for the emergence of feminist football sup-
porters’ groups in Latin America, including Barra Feminista in Mexico,
which is the chapter’s case study. The fourth section presents the method-
ology used in the semi-structured interviews that allowed the author to
access the experiences of the members of Barra Feminista. To conclude,
the results of the interviews are discussed that revolve around three
notions emerging from the analysis: the gender biases that condition
their relationship with football; the mechanisms of otherness that mark
their experience as fans; and the need to build other forms, practices and
meanings of being part of a football supporter groups like the barras.

 he Male Culture of aguante in Latin

T
American barras
Understanding the emergence of feminist football supporter groups
would be impossible without characterizing the sport in general and foot-
ball in particular as gendered spheres ‘belonging’ to men. The analyses of
various authors (Adams, 2011; Archetti, 2002, 2017; Cabello & Manso,
2011; Hughson, 2000; Tajer, 1998) acknowledge this gendering of sport
on two levels: (1) as a space built by masculinity, where the values, prac-
tices and discourses of the sport are associated with the meanings of
 4 Another ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women, Feminism and ‘barras’… 57

‘being a man’ and (2) as a space that builds hegemonic masculinity with
behaviours, reenactments and interactions for subjects to acquire the
traits that define them as ‘real men’. Because masculinity is the referent
that gives meaning to sport spaces, practices and representations, any-
thing feminine is perceived as the other, the subordinate, the opposite
(Meân, 2010; Pedraza, 2017).
In particular, football spaces reinforce this configuration: coaches urge
their students not to ‘play like a girl’, football chants boast that they will
‘fuck the rival’ and the media talks about ‘la hombrada’1 of winning teams.
Football becomes ‘a scene of socialisation and education in which the men
who participate—footballers, coaches, spectators, fans and media—share
a common experience that allows them to consolidate their masculine
identity or shape new identities (Cabello & Manso, 2011, p. 87).
The football supporter groups, known as barras, are all about this; they
are defined as youth spaces ‘that produce and reproduce identities or
sense of belonging, related yet independent of a football team’ (Aponte
et al., 2009 p. 12). The set of practices exhibited in this sense of belong-
ing can be summarised in the concept of aguante (Alabarces, 2006;
Alabarces et al., 2008; Moreira, 2017):

Etymologically, ‘aguante’ refers to supporting, to be in solidarity. In foot-

ball culture, the category is loaded with multiple meanings, all of which
lead to … putting the body into action. You can ‘use your body’ in many
ways: incessantly encouraging the team, going to the home and away
matches, enduring the discomfort of stadiums and travel, braving the rain,
heat, cold (Alabarces et al., 2008, pp.117–118).

Aguante includes behaviours, interactions and meanings linked to

masculinity (Alabarces et al., 2008; Pedraza, 2017), which are shown in
the following:

[A] narrative exaltation of masculinity and a disdain for what is considered

feminine, as seen in the explicit sexism and homophobia of chants, cheers
and insults against rivals; the desire to show superiority through displays of

1
Translator’s Note: ‘La hombrada’ can be roughly translated as ‘manning up’. It usually is used by
the media to say a team or player(s) behaves bravely, or needs to do so, to defeat a rival.
58 C. Pedraza Bucio

power, even if this means transgressing the order, space and bodies of oth-
ers; the use of violence as a legitimate resource to demonstrate this superi-
ority, resolve conflicts and reaffirm the sense of belonging.

This male culture of aguante explains the limited female presence in

these groups because its practices, discourses and symbols reassert the
otherness of women. The concept of otherness was originally used by
Conde (2008, p. 126) to talk about female fans’ emotional relationship
with football. This concept is revisited here to define the norm of the
relationship between women and the sporting spaces, values and prac-
tices that are not deemed their own. This otherness is reproduced and
maintained in the social imaginary; in media, advertising, journalism and
sport streaming the experiences of women as football fans are dimin-
ished, mocked or erased (Pope, 2011, 2017).
This marginalisation of female fans permeates academic research,
which has typically focused on the importance of sports fandom for men
(Pope, 2017), placing great emphasis on the concept of masculinity (Pitti,
2019). Furthermore, the main ways that scholars have approached the
question of women's representation in sport tend to analyse female ath-
letes rather than supporters (Toffoletti, 2017). In recent years, however, a
growing number of studies have been conducted focusing on women’s
experiences as football fans. In Latin America, there are a few studies that
seek to make women visible in football fandom (Binello et al., 2000;
Conde & Rodríguez, 2002; Cruz Sandoval, 2011; De La Vega, 2012;
Meier et al., 2015; Ramírez & Restrepo, 2018).
Principally, research on the participation of women in barras (or other
ultras groups in diverse regions) indicates that their experiences are
marked by a series of negotiations and resignifications of their identity as
subjects of gender (Jakubowska et al., 2020; Pitti, 2019). Nevertheless,
the ruptures do not entirely transform the gender order because they
occur in a space that is symbolically and materially structured by mascu-
linity, even though women also take part in it.
On the one hand, research acknowledges some identity negotiations in
the relationship between women and the territory, their bodies, their
male peers and their right to enjoyment (Radmann & Hedenborg, 2018;
Toffoletti, 2017). Specifically, for women football fans, being in a barra
 4 Another ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women, Feminism and ‘barras’… 59

implies: (a) gaining access to places deemed as belonging to men (i.e., the
stadium, the streets, a bar) contrary to the closed spaces where female
socialisation usually occurs; (b) a reconfiguration of the relationship with
their bodies from the appropriation of the physical behaviours of aguante,
shown through the intervention, exhibition and risking of their bodies;
and (c) self-knowledge of their right to enjoyment through their football
fandom (Pedraza, 2017).
On the other hand, some other studies highlight the reproduction of
gender roles within barras, where activities (e.g., fundraising, taking care
of collective goods and meal preparation) are the responsibility of female
supporters (Meier et al., 2018). This gendered assignment of tasks dis-
tances them from access to positions of leadership and recognition within
the group (Binello et al., 2000). Additionally, some male football sup-
porters ‘use their female partners to bring knives and other sharp weap-
ons into the stadium because security screenings are less strict for women’
(Clavijo, 2010, p. 56). Thus, not only do women subordinate their
actions to the interests of others but also they are exposed to conflicts
with the authorities, which could result in a permanent ban from the
stadium.
Although the knowledge on the participation of women in barras is
limited, it gives one some keys to approach experiences structured
through places that are different from those constructed by traditional
supporter groups. The author refers to the feminist football supporter
groups in Latin America that, in the past few years, have aimed to modify
the male culture of aguante.

 icking Down the Patriarchy: Feminist

K
Appropriation of Latin America’s Bleachers
Female presence in the bleachers was inevitable given the way in which
football was transformed into a space for the fight for women’s rights. The
increase in women’s participation in several areas (e.g., on the field, in
coaching, management and sport journalism) has led to an in-depth
questioning of the multiple inequalities, discrimination and violence
60 C. Pedraza Bucio

prevalent in football, along with collective proposals to make these issues

visible while preventing and eradicating them.
Notably, the feminist agenda started to gain great momentum in the
Latin American bleachers in 2017. Jeréz and Bustos (2020) noted that
this was possible thanks to the reconfiguration of barras in their struggle
to dismantle the stigma of violence that allows for ‘the emergence of fem-
inist collectives within supporter groups, putting pressure on internal
spaces by questioning aspects of football’s patriarchal culture, which is
widespread both on and off the field’ (p. 40). At the same time, the Latin
American feminist movement was growing and becoming more visible
while leading campaigns for rights, such as the legalisation of abortion
(#MareaVerde), and calling out everyday gender violence (Larrondo &
Ponce Lara, 2019; Laudano, 2018; Montenegro, 2018).
Nevertheless, feminist football supporter groups have existed since the
early 2000s2. The first groups, located in Colombia, are ‘Futbola’, com-
posed of Club Millonarios’ fans; and ‘Fortineras’, a parche3 affiliated with
the group Holocausto Norte Zona 11, a barra of Club Once Caldas
(Fandiño, 2019; Gutiérrez, 2020). Over the following decade, other
women supporter groups of Chilean and Colombian clubs were founded.
Between 2017 and 2020, however, more than 30 supporter groups were
established in Argentina (16), Chile (10), Colombia (9) and Uruguay
(2). In their names, these groups expressed their connection with femi-
nism: River Feminista (River Plate), Sabaleras Feministas (Colon de Santa
Fe), Feminismo Xeneize (Boca Juniors), Sororidad Roja (Independiente de
Avellaneda). Most of the groups were separatists and identified with a
professional football club (Arcos, 2019; Burgos & Bazán, 2021). In their
social media, they spread slogans reaffirming their feminist identity: ‘We
kick down the patriarchy’ (Racing Feminista); ‘The revolution will include
feminism and football’ (Futbola). These slogans go beyond social media;
their collective action repertoire included:

2
This data is taken from ongoing research on feminist football supporter groups that analyses their
social media to record their repertoires of collective action, the content of their public messages on
social networks and their practices.
3
In Colombia, a ‘parche’ (patch) is a subgroup of a supporter group or barra.
 4 Another ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women, Feminism and ‘barras’… 61

a) raising awareness and protests on key issues (campaigns against sexist

language, murals to make women’s participation in football clubs vis-
ible, pañuelazos aborteros 4 and collective demands against hiring play-
ers accused of gender violence);
b) activities for feminist reflection (workshops, discussions and conferences);
c) production of awareness materials and documents for micro and
macro events (the Feminist Anthem Book for the World Cup, the
Machismo-o-meter for the bleachers);
d) actions to benefit women fans (free mammography campaigns or gro-
cery donations for unemployed women).

The groups did not act on their own, but rather they came together as
a network, founding bigger organizations such as the Coordinadora Sin
Fronteras de Fútbol Feminista in Argentina, or the Coordinadora Nacional
de Mujeres y Disidencias del Fútbol Chileno in Chile (Manquepi, 2019;
Torres, 2020).
In this context, the emergence of Barra Feminista in Mexico is quite
interesting. Unlike other collectives, the Barra Feminista does not iden-
tify with a specific club; it is an organization that supports women’s foot-
ball in general. The group has its origins in social media, not in the
bleachers. It first appeared as a group of female fans who shared an inter-
est in exchanging Women’s World Cup stickers in 2019 and later arranged
to go together to the matches of the Liga Profesional Femenil in Mexico.
They appeared publicly in March 2020 during a historic match of the
Liga5, drawing the attention of the media and other fans alike (Chavira,
2020; Santiago, 2020).
Barra Feminista has established multiple pillars to achieve their objec-
tive of eradicating sexist culture in football, to ensure safe spaces for
women (Barra Feminista, 2020):

4
Translator’s note: A type of protest where women wear green bandanas, a symbol of the pro-choice
movement to legalise abortion in Latin American. The name comes from the bandana itself, which
is called a ‘pañuelo’ in Spanish.
5
It was the first match that the Pumas women’s team played in a professional stadium, a place previ-
ously reserved only for men’s football.
62 C. Pedraza Bucio

a) In the bleachers and on the field where women’s teams play, Barra
Feminista ‘hack’ chant by changing the lyrics (as do some other female
barras in Latin America) in order to make inequality visible, to trans-
form the sexist narrative in barras and to show sorority with female
players;
b) through social media, publishing data, dates and statements by female
players, as well as other initiatives in favour of women’s football;
c) through collaborations with different organizations, in events such as
panel discussions, workshops, and conferences, where they reflect on
the need to reappraise the feminism of women’s football fans, making
it visible.

For these reasons, it is relevant to retrieve the experiences of the members

of barras who desire to turn the bleachers into a space of political action.

Women’s Experiences
as a Methodology Principle
Patricia Castañeda noted that feminist research identifies the facts of
social and personal life that can boost real changes in the generic organ-
isation of the world, for which the recovery of experience constitutes an
epistemological and methodological principle (Castañeda, 2008, p. 7).
Joan Scott (2001) defined experience as a process, where social subjects
are located in the world; she proposed to analyse it not as evidence that
gender subjects are different but to explain how these differences are con-
structed. This implies recovering the narratives through which women
have resisted, negotiated and resignified the patriarchal structure in which
they live, recognising their independence. Returning to the discussion of
football as a masculine space, where the presence of women is marked by
otherness, the experience of being a female fan entails these processes of
resistance, negotiation and resignification.
To recover this experience, semi-structured interviews were used for
data collection. With this technique, there is a previously designed guide
of questions or issues but that gives space and flexibility to the conversa-
tion between the research subjects since its content, order and
 4 Another ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women, Feminism and ‘barras’… 63

formulation are entirely in the hands of the person conducting the inter-
view (Blazquez Graf & Bustos Romero, 2008, p. 52). Thus, eight semi-­
structured interviews were conducted with members of the Barra
Feminista on three issues: (1) identification of gender biases in their expe-
riences as football fans, (2) milestones in their relationship with football
and (3) milestones in their relationship with feminism.
The ages of the interviewees ranged between 22 and 32 years old and
all hold bachelor's degrees from public universities. They live in Mexico
City although three members are originally from other cities. Their
employment situation was diverse: there were students, journalists, activ-
ists, teachers and so on. All of them were single and without children.
Most worked with other feminist groups, not necessarily related to foot-
ball or sports. None of them had actively participated in a barra
before although they did identify themselves as fans of a particular club.
To arrange the interviews, the barra coordinators were contacted to
request volunteers. Each volunteer was informed about the purposes of
the interview, asked for informed consent, which was recorded, and pro-
vided with a question guide with two options: to conduct a virtual inter-
view (synchronous, which was the choice of four interviewees) or to
record the answers to the questions on audio (asynchronous, which was
the choice of the remaining four). Both the virtual interviews and the
audio recordings lasted approximately one and a half hours.
For the analysis, the responses were organized in meaning matrices,
which served to establish links between categories or themes (Hernández
Collado & Baptista, 2010). In this research, the author recovered the
proposal of Higuita and Restrepo (2017), who suggested analysing the
interviews by aggregate matrices (i.e., grouping common testimonies
under the same topic), iterative matrices (i.e., grouping divergent testi-
monies) and finding matrices (i.e., with emerging testimonies not related
to the initial categories). From this analysis of matrices, three relevant
axes of their experiences were identified: the gender biases that condi-
tioned their relationship with football, the mechanisms of otherness that
marked their experience as fans and the need to build other forms, prac-
tices and meanings of being part of supporter groups. To present the
testimonies of these matrices anonymously, the interviewees have been
coded with the letter ‘I’ and the interview number (e.g., I1, I2, I*n).
64 C. Pedraza Bucio

Changing the Meaning of Football Fandom

As a starting point for the interpretation of the results, it was necessary to
situate the feminist training and praxis of these women (mainly through
university professors or activist groups). The initial supposition was that
this feminist approach motivated them to form the Barra Feminista and
denounce the inequalities evident in professional women's football (e.g.,
unequal salaries, sexist media coverage and lack of institutional support).
Yet, the testimonies show the contrary: by reaffirming the feminist watch-
word of ‘the personal is political’, it was the identification of the preju-
dices lived through their experience as fans that generated the need to
create a feminist space. First, this space had a personal impact, construct-
ing a safe space for them; then it had a structural impact, modifying the
male culture of the barras; and finally, in relation with the political, it
became a space of struggle.

Gender Bias in the Introduction to Football

A first finding that stands out is that the initial relationship with foot-
ball—men’s football since it was the only one that was visible in their
immediate context—establishes the first marks of otherness. Regardless of
whether they come from a football family environment (or not) or
whether they have developed an identity as fans of a team (or not), the
testimonies showed that their initial introduction to football was marked
by the sexual division of spaces, gender roles and differentiated practices:

I3: When we got together as a family to watch a game, the women did not
watch it, as though it were not interesting to them, so rather they dedicated
themselves to other things. While the men are in the living room watching
the game, the women are in the kitchen, cooking or talking about other
things and it has always been that way.

Most of the interviewees shared experiences in which it was evident

that the role of women is only as guests in football fans’ spaces. This result
confirmed what authors, such as Pope (2017), observed about how
 4 Another ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women, Feminism and ‘barras’… 65

family gender roles shape women’s involvement in sports. This shaping

occurs: (a) through female roles dedicated to other non-football tasks
(i.e., cooking, cleaning, serving food) while matches are being played or
(b) through their relationship with male figures who become their refer-
ence for fan behaviour: ‘brothers, fathers, uncles. They are the ones who
teach you, who explain these football things to you’ (I2). Even when
there are women football fans in their family experiences and family con-
texts that encourage them to participate in the sport, the sexual division
that establishes football as a masculine space remains.
Scholars agree that the male figures play a decisive role in the socialisa-
tion of the meanings of fandom, marked by the male ethos, which women
accept, reproduce and perform (Binello et al., 2000; Mewett & Toffoletti,
2011; Pfister et al., 2018). Some authors, such as Jakubowska et al.
(2020), indicated that although women do not participate in all forms of
performance imposed by this male ethos, they do not always perceive the
gender biases as a problem. Nevertheless, our interviewees did recognise
the gendered socialisation, the imposition of male rules and the existence
of sexist practices that make it difficult for them to fully appropriate the
bleachers, which can even become a factor of rejection:

I3: The stadiums are full of macho dynamics. … Every time I had been to
the stadium, with my father, with my brother, I came across with those
dynamics that I didn’t like. I think that’s why it didn’t become a habit for
me to go to the stadium.

Other studies have shown that women are welcome as football fans if
they follow the rules set by men (Binello et al., 2000; Pitti, 2019). Our
findings complement this by demonstrating that when female fans do
not want to follow the male dynamics, their first option is to move away
from fan practices.

Mechanisms of Otherness for Female Fans

In recent years, the literature on women's participation in football sup-

porter groups points out that there are no differences between male and
female fans in terms of the ways they show their passion and devotion to
66 C. Pedraza Bucio

a team, but they also underline how women face a more hostile environ-
ment, derived from male fan culture (Jones, 2008; Mewett & Toffoletti,
2011; Pitti, 2019). This hostility, in line with our findings, is related to
three mechanisms that mark the otherness of women as fans: the stigma
of oddness, the dismissal of their passion and the attacks they face in
football spaces once they are involved as supporters.
The stigma of oddness is caused by the established belief that women
‘are not interested’ in football, produced in part by the effects of the sexual
division of space mentioned in the first section. Thus, women who express
their love for this sport are identified as strange, rare or out of the norm:

I1: For example, at a family gathering, it is normal for men to go watch the
game and move away from the traditional family gathering, but if a woman
does it, they say ‘how weird!’. … So, I learned to restrain myself from wast-
ing that passion because it doesn’t ‘look good’ on a woman.

If, as Cabello and Manso (2011) indicated, football gives men a shared
experience that allows them to consolidate their masculinity, for women
the sport is articulated as a space that puts the desirable model of femi-
ninity in stress. Interestingly, although being passionate is something
women can demonstrate in other areas, being passionate about football is
a male prerogative. Binello et al. (2000) observed that within the groups
of supporters, women who are passionate (or passionate ‘like men’) are
rejected because of the belief that they are performing a simulated repre-
sentation. This is consistent with what other authors have found in more
recent research on ultras groups in Europe, where women’s performances
are considered counterfeit or fake (Jones, 2008; Pope, 2011; Meier et al.,
2015; Pitti, 2019).
This is directly related to a second mechanism: the dismissal of wom-
an’s interests and knowledge of football through trivialisation and con-
stant questioning:

I5:If my brother comes and says ‘I cheer for Pumas’, people say, ‘Oh, that’s
great’. But when I say that, they ask endless questions like: ‘If you like it so
much, tell me the five best players of all time,’ or ‘Surely, it is because you
 4 Another ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women, Feminism and ‘barras’… 67

like some players’. … It’s a bit annoying that you have to keep proving that
you only like football for football itself.

On trivialisation, scholars have pointed to the stereotypical assump-

tions that women’s interest in male sports is motivated primarily by
attraction to male athletes, which reproduces heteronormativity
(Esmonde et al., 2018). Along with this is the constant questioning,
which naturalises football as a male field of knowledge. As one of the
interviewees points out, ‘When a man expresses his interest or opinion on
a football topic, he is not questioned’ (I5) whereas women are the ones
who must demonstrate their knowledge (Hoeber & Kerwin, 2013). In
fact, more than half of the research testimonies describe an explicit deci-
sion not to talk about football with men in order not to be questioned
or mocked.
The third mechanism is manifested in aggressive behaviours that seek
to remind women who the symbolic, physical and material owners of the
space are:

I5: Sometimes I go to where barras are because of the carnival, but I have
to be accompanied by my cousin, my brother, my father, because they
come to harass you or say things that are not so cool.

Like other public spaces, stadiums have been experienced as condi-

tioned spaces, where, through different situations, women are told that
they cannot occupy any place, they cannot be noticed, they cannot go
alone. This differs from the results of other studies showing that women
increasingly perceive the stadium as a safe space, mainly because of safety
regulations preventing clashes between rival fans (Jakubowska et al.,
2020). Still, in the findings here, there is a perception of latent risk
because of not only the fights among fans but also the bullying and
harassment, the expulsion from certain areas by men as well as the aggres-
sive chants and insults. The fear, insecurity or discomfort when going to
the stadium expressed by the interviewees confirms the permanence of
the mark the otherness in the bleachers.
68 C. Pedraza Bucio

Another barra Is Possible: Hacking the Culture

of aguante
From these experiences of otherness emerges the need to create a space
where women are not singled out as odd for showing their passion for
football, where they are not questioned about their interests and where
they feel safe. As mentioned earlier, some studies have focused on the
strategies through which women negotiate their presence in these sup-
porter groups, showing that they tend to accept and reproduce the mar-
ginal and ancillary position accorded to them by men (Binello et al.,
2000; Jakubowska et al., 2020; Pitti, 2019).
In contrast, the recognition of the male culture in barras reported by
the interviewees makes it difficult for them to accept the rules of belong-
ing to these groups. In fact, none of the interviewees expressed an inten-
tion of joining the traditional barras, even if they were very fond of a
team. Although they recognize the spectacular nature of the barras’ carni-
val, the perception of these as violent, masculinised spaces with no female
participation was enough to diminish their enthusiasm for joining.

E5: All barras are male spaces, if there are women in barras, they don’t have
a leadership role; for example, you don’t see women playing the drums or
in the band … they just let you stand with the barras but without taking
you seriously.

Thus, for women, another option is to create female supporter groups,

a trend that has been described in the literature not only as an alternative
but also as a form of resistance to male domination (Lenneis & Pfister,
2018), as well as to openly challenge the sexist and misogynistic cultures
of the bleachers (Pitti, 2019). Contrary to the findings of Jakubowska
et al. (2020), women in these groups do propose their own forms of sup-
port. Particularly, the experience shared with other women at the stadium
positions them against the practices of masculinity of aguante as the only
form of ‘being a real fan’. Therefore, with the creation of the barra, the
purpose is to change this culture in three ways: (1) transforming the
 4 Another ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women, Feminism and ‘barras’… 69

explicit sexism and homophobia of chants, cheers and insults against

rivals; (2) eliminating the discourse of superiority; and (3) rejecting all
kinds of violence, even those that are legitimised as a form of demonstrat-
ing aguante:

I1: Instead of chanting misogynistic cheers, we will chant for the respect of
the player’s work, for them to gain enough money to be full-time football
players, for them to have work rights, for them to be treated like profes-
sionals by the media.

So, through this change of narratives, practices and meanings, the

barra becomes a place where personal experiences, through the feminist
perspective, articulate a feminist struggle, turning it into a space to make
a political statement against inequalities, discrimination and violence
against women in football. Still, the need to create a safe space for them-
selves and others remains at the core where female fans can exist ‘without
being judged or criticized, because with the barra we can normalize the fact
that women like football’ (I1). Contrary to what other studies have
observed, where female fans claim to be recognised and accepted as ultras
‘despite being women’ (Pitti, 2019), these findings highlight the demand
of the groups to place women at the centre, arguing that sport is a gen-
dered space and that gender does matter.
This is what makes it possible, in the first instance, to think of these
spaces as challenging the masculine culture of the barras. A couple of
decades ago, Binello et al. (2000) asserted that the absence of symbolic
struggle, as well as of other forms of conflict between genders, seems to
indicate that the appearance of women in the football universe is not
presented as a challenge that implies the possibility of modifying the male
culture of barras. Nevertheless, what our results showed is that these fem-
inist supporter groups now articulate this symbolic struggle while object-
ing to being recognised ‘just like the men’. They question the gender
biases that male culture has impregnated in the meanings of ‘being a fan’,
proposing to resignify barras, maintaining their aesthetics and their car-
nival but without the marks of otherness.
70 C. Pedraza Bucio

Concluding Thoughts
As Pope (2017) points out, female fans largely have been marginalised in
academic research. Nonetheless, the rise of female sports fans forces one
to look at the ways in which they are appropriating the bleachers, beyond
the acceptance and reproduction of models imposed by male fan culture.
Specifically, it was noticeable that the feminist appropriation of foot-
ball bleachers is a growing trend among young female fans in Latin
America. The presence of these groups makes one think about the possi-
bilities for women to live their love for football without reproducing the
male culture previously cited. Particularly, while considering the entry of
members of Barra Feminista to football, the mechanisms of a relationship
with the sport from a position of otherness became evident, conditioning
their presence in the stadiums (and other football related spaces) from a
place of hostility, discomfort and insecurity. In this regard, personal expe-
riences become political fuel for women to create their own spaces in the
bleachers. Therefore, the hegemonic state in which football fanaticism
has been built is being hacked, the codes, chants and forms are tapped to
understand aguante.
The results here show that the feminist perspective among groups of
female fans allows them not only to take the bleachers to feel safe but also
to transform them into spaces where they can speak out politically against
inequalities, discrimination and gender violence. The creation of these
spaces goes beyond being recognised as fans, but rather it is about chang-
ing the set of practices, values and meanings that condition their experi-
ences of otherness.
With this initial research on feminist football fan groups and barras,
some edges emerge for further analysis. For example, the author has yet
to map the collective actions made in and out the stadiums or to follow
the immediate and structural effects that they provoke. Thus, the final
challenge is to keep watch over the actions generated by women and the
ways in which the feminist praxis can change the meanings, dynamics
and structure of football.
 4 Another ‘barra’ Is Possible: Women, Feminism and ‘barras’… 71

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 5
La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista: A Social
Experimentation and Learning Territory
Enriqueta Tato, Jimena Aon, Juliana Roman Lozano,
Maria Belén Bramanti, María José Figueroa,
Mónica Santino, and Paula Korsakas

For centuries, theoretical, academic and activist feminism dismissed

games and sports as practices of the hegemonic and traditional male
world. Now, in Argentina and in many South American countries, we are
experiencing a popularisation of the women and diversities’ movement
where feminism is fully understood as a political tool that enables us to
fight against all historical oppressions on our bodies, leisure spaces and
desires. This is why it is impossible to think of a fairer football without
feminism and even more difficult to approach popular education without
using a feminist lens.
La Nuestra seeks to expand the field and to continue producing knowl-
edge and transformations, tending towards gender equality within a sport

E. Tato • J. Aon • J. Roman Lozano (*) • M. B. Bramanti • M. J. Figueroa •

M. Santino
La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista, Buenos Aires, Argentina
e-mail: [email protected]
P. Korsakas
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP/Brazil), Campinas, Brazil

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 77

J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_5
78 E. Tato et al.

traditionally built from hegemonic masculinity (Goellner, 2005; Knijnik,

2015). Football is the most important sport on our continent and the
bearer of multiple meanings and cultural representations (Alabarces,
2003; Guedes, 2002, 2009). Looking at and playing football from a fem-
inist perspective are thus immediate political acts to transform realities
and advance the fight against gender-based violence.
In 2020, to reflect pedagogically about this political activity and to
revisit coaching practices, the Community of Practice in Popular
Education, Feminism and Football (CoP) was suggested by Paula, a
Brazilian coach, educator, facilitator of the CoP and coauthor of this
chapter. We—La Nuestra and Paula—first met in early 2019, when she
visited our football field and led a workshop on Sport Pedagogy and
Popular Education organised by Nike and the Laureus Foundation
Argentina. The very questions from this meeting awakened the desire to
investigate how we coach football, and the CoP was the plan we designed
in late 2019 during Paula’s second visit.
This chapter shares the journey of the CoP and the individual and col-
lective values created from it as a social learning space (Wenger-Trayner
& Wenger-Trayner, 2020) in which we have paved our route to integrat-
ing popular education, coaching and feminist practices.

Initial Considerations About Participating

in This Book
First, we introduce each of the authors and our positions about writing
this manuscript in English.
My name is Enriqueta Tato, and I was born in the city of Azul in the
Buenos Aires Province. When I was 17 years old, I moved to Buenos
Aires to study physical education. I have played soccer since I was little
and, in Buenos Aires, I did so in several teams. For me, La Nuestra is a
space where I find happiness, companionship and a lot of learning. In the
organisation, I have found a space where I build myself as a person every
day, coaching older girls and adult women.
 5 La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista: A Social Experimentation… 79

I am Belén Bramanti; born in 1994, I grew up in Junín, Buenos Aires.

In 2013, I moved to the capital to study what would become my voca-
tion. I am a physical education teacher and, within this very comprehen-
sive profession, I chose football as a means of activism in educational and
political spaces. In 2019, I joined La Nuestra to coach young girls, where
I found an inexhaustible source of learning, challenges and the abrazo de
una manada.1
I am Jimena Aon; born in 1979 in Avellaneda, Buenos Aires, I was
raised at a shoe manufacturing company, which is my current occupa-
tion. In the 1990s, I fought neoliberalism with the Dario Santillan
Popular Front. I have studied popular education at the Universidad
Madres de Plaza de Mayo (2001), where I researched workshops in ter-
ritorial social movements. Since 2014, I am a member of La Nuestra,
where, through coaching young girls, I can put into practice the knowl-
edge acquired on this journey
I am Juliana Roman Lozano, feminist, football player and immigrant
woman from Colombia. I was born in Bogota, and since I was very
young, I have been migrating around the world. I am a documentary
filmmaker, national football technical director and anthropology student.
I have been with La Nuestra for 11 years, and here I have found my place
in the world. Here, my social battles are articulated and my passion for
militancy, learning and knowing is nurtured while coaching older girls
and adult women.
I am María José Figueroa, born in Santa Cruz, Argentina, raised in
Cordoba, and have been living in Buenos Aires for the past 11 years. I am
studying for a degree in Sports at the Universidad de Avellaneda and
want to become a football coach. I am a feminist, football player and
have participated in some gatherings in horizontal and collective spaces.
I have been a member of La Nuestra for some years, where I coach teen-
age girls, and it has become a space for co-learning and personal growth.
I am Mónica Santino, born in Buenos Aires in 1965. I am a physical
education teacher, sport journalist, football technical director and former
football player. I have worked in several women’s football community
clubs and took an active part in the Argentinian Homosexual Community

1
A ‘group hug’ in English.
80 E. Tato et al.

(1989–1996). I played football for the All Boys in the Argentine Football
Association’s (AFA) Women’s League from 1996 until 2000. Since its
inception, I am a member of La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista, where I coach
teenage girls.
I am Paula Korsakas and was born in São Paulo in 1976. I am a former
youth basketball coach, sport scholar, consultant and activist for the right
to play sports. I came across La Nuestra in 2019 while working as coach
educator in South America.
The invitation to participate in this book coincided with the launching
of CoP. We acknowledged the chance to systematise the experience as a
valuable opportunity; however, despite our excitement to document the
learning journey, we also felt uncomfortable because the text was to be
written in English. Most of us do not speak English, and those who do
lack fundamental linguistic resources to fully express ourselves.
Additionally, as a book aimed to present the historical perspectives and
social challenges of football practiced by women in Latin America, we
could not help but feel confronted by the fact that precisely those accom-
plishments and challenges, which are lived, fought and endured in lands
where Spanish, Portuguese and more than 420 different indigenous lan-
guages are spoken, only had a publishable voice in English.
The history of women and diversities in Latin America and our strug-
gle for spaces of participation and development in sport is permeated by
power (Goellner, 2021; Moreira & Garton, 2021). Among the infinite
ways in which power oppresses is communication, which frequently
results in structural advantages for the dominant language. Language is
both an intimate and external phenomenon, a tool to express individual
feelings and thoughts, as well as our collective ideas and political con-
structions (Freire, 2013a). Language is personal, viscera and powerful. It
is linked to our lands, struggles, pains and bodies.
Therefore, it seemed relevant to point out the need to create opportu-
nities to express ourselves in a language to fully transmit the depth, tex-
ture and matrix of our ideas, our collective knowledge. The marginalisation
of nondominant languages, especially in ‘international’ academic con-
texts (Phillipson, 2016), is so widespread and normalised in most cultural
contexts; it is easy to see it as ‘the way things are’ rather than as part of the
 5 La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista: A Social Experimentation… 81

architecture of an experience and, therefore, something open to criticism

and revision.
English, like Spanish and Portuguese, are colonising languages in the
contexts where they dominate. As Paulo Freire once affirmed, ‘it is impos-
sible to think of language without thinking of ideology and power’,
although he also asserted that grasping the dominant language was a right
and a means for the oppressed to make their voices and discourses heard
(LiteracyDotOrg, 2009). With Freire’s words echoing in our bodies, we
wrote this text, originally in Spanish and Portuguese, to then be trans-
lated into English by Isabel Lugones, to whom we are grateful.

Nosotras2
Villa 31, our territory, is the oldest settlement in the city of Buenos Aires,
located between the Recoleta and Retiro neighbourhoods, with its origins
as early as 1932. Migrants who worked in the port or were left unem-
ployed began to inhabit the first tin houses in the area. The State also
offered housing in empty train cars.
By the end of the 1950s, the Federation of Shantytowns and Emergency
Neighbourhoods was created. Villa 31 was soon characterised by its
organisational power, and it became a standard-bearer of the informal
settlement movement in the city of Buenos Aires. The communist party
and the Peronist resistance to the dictatorship of those years are the most
important political signs of struggle against injustice and vulnerability. In
1974, Father Carlos Mujica, a fundamental social leader in the history of
Villa 31, was murdered by the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, also
known as Triple A, a far-right death squad founded in Argentina in 1973.
Mujica’s death left a deep pain and void in the neighbourhood. By the
1978 Men’s World Cup in Argentina, the neighbourhood had endured
and resisted an eradication attempt by facing off against the bulldozers of
military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla. In the 1990s, once again in times of
democracy, another attempt to eradicate the settlement occurred.

2
Nosotras is the Spanish word for ‘Us’, and we chose this term to name this section to represent
the work of the first five authors of this text in La Nuestra.
82 E. Tato et al.

According to the 2010 census, Villa 31 has 40,000 inhabitants origi-

nating from various Latin American communities and Argentine prov-
inces, giving the community an immense diversity and cultural richness.
Currently, the neighbourhood finds itself in a process of urbanisation,
which began in 2009 when the Buenos Aires Legislature passed the Law
of Urbanisation. This process has been characterised by a lack of essential
services, precarious housing and the inadequate quality of the materials
used in improvements as well as by the State’s complete lack of a gender
and diversity perspective in the allocation and distribution of housing.
As La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista, we have been walking the streets of
Villa 31 for 14 years, passing the ball to each other and constantly learn-
ing, to build and maintain a safe space for football practice, while reflect-
ing on our actions, lives and identities from an intersectional feminist
perspective. We deliver football training sessions two days a week, educa-
tional workshops on social and political themes one day a week and dif-
ferent cultural activities for more than 150 women (i.e., young girls,
teens, youths and adults) and members of the LGBTIQ+ community
throughout the year. All these activities are freely accessible, separated
into four age groups3 and conducted by a coaching staff composed
entirely of women and members of the LGBTIQ+ community. Our
practice is based on an affective pedagogy of presence and popular educa-
tion oriented by a community and feminist approach (Davis, 1981;
Bidaseca & Laba, 2011), rooted in a particular territory as a permanent
space for debate and action. The territories—popular neighbourhoods—
are characterised by exclusion, abuse and a permanent feeling of a need to
survive at all costs.
When establishing links with the people who inhabit these spaces, we
adopt a principle of Liberation Theology practiced by the Priests for the
Third World: permanent presence generating solid and indestructible
bonds over time is the tool that enables trust. This pedagogy is developed
in, with and for the community, in coordination with other organizations
and groups, to promote cross-cutting actions. It is a horizontal relation-
ship woven between peers, never from a top-down position of hierarchy.

3
LN activities are divided into four age groups: mini minis (from 5–8 yrs), minis (from 9–11 yrs),
cadets (12–14 yrs), youth (16–18 yrs) and seniors (older than 18 yrs).
 5 La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista: A Social Experimentation… 83

In this way, we conquered the field. Our presence does not disappear
under any circumstances. This footprint for generating ties is also present
in our way of playing football.
From this place of safety, sport is a space of support, reflection and
expression of those who make up La Nuestra. A point from where we
build our own language, our own distinctive identity within feminist
football: a platform from which we can experience and forge new mean-
ings and paths, beyond what is strictly known as sport. One of the La
Nuestra players once said: ‘I stand tall on the field as I stand tall in life’.
It synthesises part of the work we do, in which participants are not simply
recipients but rather protagonists. Collectively, we are shaping this proj-
ect we consider to be ‘our place in this world’, nuestra manada4 (Alvarez
Litke, 2020b).
Our motto, ‘La cancha es nuestra!’ (‘The field is ours!’), asserts that the
football field belongs to women and gender dissidents as well. It states
that Güemes, the field in Villa 31, is nuestra cancha—our field. Holding
training sessions on the most in-demand playing field in the neighbour-
hood, which is also a public space, despite the multiple battles and obsta-
cles faced, represented the first resistance to oppression. When we first
came to the field 14 years ago, we were denied our right to play and
inhabit the public sphere as football players, but now Güemes is known
in the neighbourhood as ‘the women’s field’. Increasingly, younger women
and families began to claim their right to play, acknowledging the safe
and caring space offered, as a result of the visibility of our occupation and
resistance on the field. The girls who claimed their rights 14 years ago
have now become role models for the youngest. In 2007, 12 young
women participated. In 2021, more than 150 players and nine coaches
make up La Nuestra. We took for ourselves what also rightfully belongs
to us after having persistently been denied access by the patriarchal system.
At the same time, we realised that our practice held an enormous res-
ervoir of knowledge, moving us to build ties with other groups and
organisations to expand the cartography of football played by women
and the LGBTIQ+ community. In recent years, we have made a joint
effort to produce theory from practice, systematising our experiences and

4
Our (wolf or dog) pack.
84 E. Tato et al.

continually reflecting on our collective knowledge, theory ‘absorbed from

lived practice’ (Freire, 1997, p. 22). From this arose the need to generate
new networks and, since then, we have carried out football tournaments,
health and cultural activities, national and international festivals and
workshops that put the spotlight on the transformative and dissident
power of feminist sport from a critical and intersectional perspective in
society in general, but particularly in hegemonic feminism5 (Alvarez
Litke, 2020a).
As citizens with multiple subordinate identities (Muñoz, 2011)—
Latin American women, migrants, lesbians, blacks, youths, girls, nonbi-
naries—who struggle to play football in particular ways in the face of
innumerable and simultaneous structures of oppression and violence, we
have turned the field into our battleground, from which other projects
led by the members of the organisation have grown.6 Currently, the lead-
ership of La Nuestra is marked by emerging voices of teens and young
adults, in which the assertion of the villera7 identity converges with the
appreciation of their identity as footballers and feminists.
Along this journey, tacit knowledge of popular education built from
the participation of some of us in social movements was an auxiliary
guide to our work, but after a process of systematisation of our praxis
through popular education in 2013, it became a foundation for our daily
work (La Nuestra Fútbol Femenino, & Co.Co.In, C., 2018). It revealed

5
Since 2013, we have been participating in the National Gathering of Women (ENM) co-­
organizing the National Gathering of Football Players. In 2017, a workshop on Football and
Feminism was included in the ENM grid and the Feminist Football Coordination Without Borders
was born, bringing together organisations, gender and diversity commissions, activists, journalists,
players, coaches and football leaders from all over the country.
6
‘Abrir el Juego’ (Open the Game) is an example in which we created three booklets with tools to
prevent gender-based violence in sport with contents stemming from our territorial background
and highlighting the importance of the participation of community-based organisations in the
construction of public policies. La Nuestra TV is our television program, which produces counter-­
hegemonic narratives to transform football. Finally, Cartografiando Nuestro Tejido Villero
(Mapping our Villero Fabric) is a project that arose when we asked ourselves about the history of
football in Argentina and the history of Villa 31; by locating the protagonists and defenders of
human rights in our territory, we were able to break away from the historical invisibility and silenc-
ing of girls, women and diversities.
7
Referred to as the people who inhabit informal settlements. It was originally used as a derogatory
term but, currently, to be named as villeres is a vindication of the place where we are born, live and
from the place where we think about ourselves and create our narratives.
 5 La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista: A Social Experimentation… 85

the chance to construct our own theories anchored in libertarian prac-

tices. Democratising speech, bodies and meanings is our path and our
political conviction to build a fairer world. Taking popular education to
training sessions on the football field to make sure that our pedagogy is
embedded with our collective political view has been a constant challenge
as coaches, but this is also the driving force of the CoP.

 he Community of Practice in Popular

T
Education, Feminism and Football
Belonging to a social group and sharing knowledge is a collective learning
process and the essence of a Community of Practice (CoP), ‘groups of
people who share a concern, a set of problems, a passion about a topic,
and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting
on an ongoing basis’ (Wenger et al., 2002, p. 4). In a CoP, learning is situ-
ated in the interaction of people with the social world as an ‘act of know-
ing’ that generates meaningful knowledge through reflection on concrete
experiences that are collectively shared (Wenger, 1998). It values the
exchange of tacit knowledge in informal learning situations that, com-
bined with explicit knowledge, generates new knowledge.
A CoP is a learning partnership with three essential characteristics:
domain, practice and community (Wenger et al., 2002). Domain defines
the identity of a community based on a common interest or shared
inquiry; in our case, the search for a praxis as football coaches, guided by
popular education and feminism. Community refers to the bonding and
relationships nurtured between members that create a sense of belonging,
something that is already present and strengthened during the experi-
ence. Practice relates to the innovations and practical transformations
that arise from the learning we share here.
CoPs have favoured more horizontal learning relationships, breaking
with the traditional vertical ‘top-down’ transmission of knowledge
(Wenger, 2010). Likewise, they have been explored in the sport context
as a strategy for coach development, valuing practice as an historical and
social action that gives meaning to what coaches do and who they are
(Culver & Trudel, 2008). It was precisely because of these characteristics
86 E. Tato et al.

that the CoP approach was chosen because it would offer a learning space
for us, ethically and politically aligned with La Nuestra’s way of (re)exist-
ing in the world.

The Meetings

Our CoP was originally planned to take place in 2020, combining virtual
meetings and a review of recorded coaching practices. Yet, because of the
Coronavirus pandemic, it began when sport activities were already sus-
pended in Argentina. In total, we held 13 virtual meetings (each approxi-
mately two hours long) between March and December of 2020, with the
intention of producing pedagogical guidelines for La Nuestra.
To prepare for the CoP, as La Nuestra coaches and popular educators,
we shared individual questions organised into three thematic axes and
generated the guiding question on how to merge popular education and
feminism in our coaching practices. Thereafter, the meetings entwined
various sources of knowledge, such as academic readings, our practical
knowledge as women and sport coaches and the social reality of the pan-
demic. The meetings also varied in nature; some were more theoretically
oriented while others more on applying learnings in practice, both equally
important for our praxis (Freire, 2013b). Paula kept a diary of the meet-
ings on a shared online document, and we communicated using a mobile
chat app in between meetings.
By the end of the meetings, we reflected individually and collectively
on our learnings and the meanings (values) created along the process,
based on the Values Creation Framework (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-­
Trayner, 2020). In the following, we share reflections and learnings in a
nonlinear narrative as a way to make (new) sense of the whole experience.

‘La cancha es nuestra!’: The Football Field

as an Insurgent Feminist Territory

We started exploring popular education through the lens of Argentinean

social movements seen as insurgent territories, geographic but also sym-
bolic spaces in permanent resignification and dispute, places to deploy
 5 La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista: A Social Experimentation… 87

political agency and to reinvent social systems (Aguiló & Wahren, 2014).
By reflecting on socio-territoriality, we recognised La Nuestra as an insur-
gent territory where we act politically and pedagogically for the emancipa-
tion of women by living direct democracy and deconstructing patriarchal
practices. In this process, we became aware of our diverse experiences with
social movements, feminism and popular education and how those learn-
ings culminated in what is now La Nuestra. We also reflected on the idea
that popular education, as a way of knowing from political practice,
should be the foundation of feminist pedagogy, in content and form, by
building new relations between women to co-educate us all as feminist
agents for political transformation (Silva & Godinho, 2017).
From the dialogues on popular education and feminism, we reflected
on when and how football was oppressive. The challenge was to build
more horizontal relationships between coaches and players and to break
with traditional authoritarian practices in sport (Korsakas & De Rose
Junior, 2002). Questions were centred around decentralisation of power
while still generating technical, tactical and physical improvement. In
popular education, knowledge emerges from dialogue while in sport, dia-
logue takes place within the body; we are bodies in dialogue on the field.
Football is language. ‘The first language is the language of the body’
(Freire & Faundez, 2012, p. 73). With that in mind we involved our-
selves in coaching football through more dialogic sport pedagogies
(Knijnik et al., 2019), reaffirming a feminist and libertarian football for
all possible bodies, where repetition and imitation leave the field to make
room for creation and emancipation (Korsakas, 2009).
Still, the pandemic raised doubts about our certainties.

La Nuestra’s Identity in Movement

Unfamiliar challenges arose with the suspension of training sessions, a

drastic break from our daily work as coaches. Not being on the field,
somehow, was not recognising ourselves in what was already part of our
identity for many who have been there week after week for years.
Furthermore, the distancing from the players and Villa 31 families, who
were highly vulnerable to COVID-19 because of the precarious living
conditions in the territory, was another source of distress.
88 E. Tato et al.

Suddenly, the power of occupying the football field was weakened by

the impossibility to act. Impotence gave rise to doubts about our role
with the families and the political meanings we were generating given the
emergency. We asked ourselves how to avoid assistentialism. By experi-
encing this dilemma, we realised that this adversity strengthened the
bonds and affection between us because, despite not being on the football
field, our actions positively impacted peers and the community.
The actions we carried out were, among others, the organisation of a
solidarity campaign in collaboration with feminist networks and friends
of La Nuestra. This allowed us to provide, for more than six months, a
weekly delivery of bags of food and basic goods for more than 80 fami-
lies. Furthermore, we were able to make a video of recommendations to
prevent COVID infection and another video with formal and informal
resources to access test facilities, isolation spaces offered by the govern-
ment and useful advice to get through isolation. Finally, we made a book-
let of games and activities for children, considering that many were
enduring the pandemic without Internet access; they were kept away
from school and other support spaces, often experiencing overcrowded
conditions. Players and families felt cared for and, more importantly,
demonstrated a tremendous capacity for autonomy and conflict resolu-
tion in this adverse situation as political agents in their own territory.
This moment of fragility and revisiting ourselves as a political–educa-
tional collective turned into a new force. When everything was put to the
test, we remained faithful to La Nuestra’s principles, putting into practice
what we have always stood for. Thus, the desire emerged to incorporate
that strength when football could return. Pure frustration became an
impulse to plan ahead: How could we resume training sessions
post-pandemic?
It became necessary to get one more playing field in Villa 31 to guar-
antee compliance with health protocols, which was also an opportunity
to improve the quality of the sport experience by increasing space and
playing time. Beyond adding a field, we also located an office, a head-
quarters to store materials, hold meetings and offer a bathroom for every-
one. We resumed training sessions in late October of 2020, having
everything planned in advance for the first time.
 5 La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista: A Social Experimentation… 89

L a Nuestra Theories: What Does Libertarian Feminist

Football Coaching Look Like?

We assert that playing football is a right and lay claim the occupation of
the field by women and diversities. We refute, however, the discourse of
sport as a mere tool for women’s empowerment. For us, being able to play
libertarian feminist football is an end in itself; it is self-realization, lived
citizenship (Korsakas et al., 2021).
Sport is a place in which diverse bodies confront the binary hegemonic
ideas of what a female or male body should be (González et al., 2018). We
believe sport has the power to bring out the active and transformative
character of bodily practices. While providing a safe environment to
embrace all bodies and identities, feminist sport practice offers the possi-
bility of living different subjective experiences as bodies and enables bod-
ies to confront, resist and create alternative experiences to what appears to
be culturally imposed (La Nuestra Fútbol Femenino & Co.Co.In., 2018).
In this sense, La Nuestra’s game model represents our effort to express
the football we want to coach and play. If, traditionally, the design of
game models represents game concepts and expected player behaviours,
placing the tactical dimension at its centre (Casarin et al., 2011), in our
case, we articulate sport and political dimensions to communicate our
game identity—a strong, organised and solidary football that passes the
ball to all possible bodies welcomed onto the field.
After drafting our game identity, we moved on towards the identity of
each of the age groups, culminating in the Curriculum of La Nuestra, a
long-term development plan that organises sport, politics and history; it
has intertwined developmental axes according to which we recognise
experienced peers as a reference for the youngest, favouring the sharing of
knowledge. The sport axis informs the technical, tactical, physical and
psychosocial aspects of training and also embraces learnings related to
body self-knowledge and identity as players. The historical axis focuses on
the preservation of memories of the struggle for the football field and its
protagonists as a means to nurture a sense of belonging and our collective
identity. The political axis is devoted to the principles of playing feminist
football and living direct democracy.
90 E. Tato et al.

The very game of feminist football is liberating. The provision of a

good sporting experience and its democratization; for us, this is a politi-
cal act, and sport explored as a metaphorical language of life fuses it with
political education (La Nuestra Fútbol Femenino & Co.Co.In., 2018).
On the field, libertarian feminist football has been translated into coach-
ing practices (e.g., active listening spaces built for and by players, player
leadership in training tasks and learning activities that make room for
player creativity), valuing their tacit knowledge and promoting self-­
management. These are coaching practices that bring theories to life,
devoted to promoting individual growth of girls, women and gender
diversities as players as much as political agents of social transformation
(Korsakas, 2009).

Our Learnings: The Values Created

The Values Creation Framework suggests that values originated in social
learning spaces (e.g., CoPs) unfold in different ways, starting from the
immediate value the experience generates for participants to the potential
value residing in the learnings of each person and the whole group and
continuing on to more concrete cycles of transformations (e.g., applied
and realized value), related to what participants did in practice, what they
learned and the effects this generates in the real world (Wenger-Trayner
& Wenger-Trayner, 2020). Participating in the CoP during the pandemic
was meaningful per se (i.e., of immediate value). It was an important
time and space during an atypical year; everything we gained in commu-
nication and joint reflection compensated for the distance from the com-
munity that we had never experienced before. Affectively, the CoP meant
a moment of care and support to think about peers and ourselves. It was
a safe and delightful space to express opinions, to listen and to see how
each of us experienced the process.
The CoP was a social space to build on tacit knowledge and gain new
insights on popular education (i.e., of potential value) as we ‘critically
revised and put our collective knowledge(s) in order’, we ‘put it into
words’’. We theorised our practices. It prompted us to ‘de-automatise
teaching and think about it critically’, ‘to break with the linear and think
 5 La Nuestra Fútbol Feminista: A Social Experimentation… 91

of more participatory dynamics, placing more emphasis on games and

circles where everyone can put their voice and body and where we can
reflect as a group. … Being able to bring that political stance into the way
we design a drill is very enriching.’
Although documentary production could be understood as a potential
value ‘because it has yet to prove useful in practice’ (Wenger-Trayner &
Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p. 88), we acknowledge La Nuestra’s game model
and curriculum by their applied value because planning is part of coach-
ing, not something dissociated or prior to action. The action of planning
consequently affected our work on the field. The active participation of
girls in suggesting activities, learning football skills from game-like activi-
ties, using problem-solving sport tasks inspired by the question’s peda-
gogy (Freire & Faundez, 2012), exploration and dialogue between players
as a means of searching for an effective sport skill—these are all examples
of how learnings were embodied and lived on the football field.
Despite the limited on-field training time because of the pandemic, we
identified qualitative leaps in our practice (i.e., of realised value). Giving
more importance to dialogical spaces in training sessions improved com-
munication between us and the players. Players welcomed questioning
and are more talkative and comfortable to express what they think and
feel. Making sport practice more creative and playful awakened more
interest from the players. We believe that the more powerful environment
of enjoyment and agency that we have been developing together has con-
tributed to the exponential growth in the number of players who have
recently joined La Nuestra.
Another positive effect is that La Nuestra as a whole has been strength-
ened. We grew collectively and discovered a grand capacity for work and
reinvention, for tightening bonds with the community, and greater polit-
ical clarity about what we do, how we do it and why we do it. We faced
situations that arose in a more orderly and robust manner. New paths of
inquiry, projects and leadership also have emerged.
In Freirean terms (Freire, 1997), this whole reflective process, lived
within the pandemic context, confronted us with a ‘limit-situation’,
extreme conditions that, through praxis, could be overcome. We had rec-
reated ourselves by building a new level of collective consciousness that
enabled La Nuestra to generate ‘untested feasibility’ and create new ways
92 E. Tato et al.

to critically intervene in reality. Among the challenges remaining are the

cultivation of this affective learning space by guaranteeing formal
moments to continue generating new reflections and ideas while also
sharing with new coaches what was built and how we did it because it can
become a guide for how to theorise practice. Finally, creating this text
together through dialogic writing triggered the latency of the CoP itself,
which, although formally finalised in December 2020, was revealed to
still be alive, nourished by the feeling of belonging, the desire to meet
again and our shared love for what has already been lived. Participating
in the CoP, we realised that, in essence, La Nuestra is a potent, living
social learning space.
In the same way that we break down walls on the field, tearing down
prejudices, we also became stronger by putting our liberating, transfor-
mative and collective empowerment processes into words. It is a starting
point from which to grow. It by no means ends here. This is what football
poses as a game and experience—to risk, make mistakes, recover, learn
with others and celebrate passes as essential for goals. The questions we
will continue to ask ourselves are the basis for future victories. They will
allow us to tie together all possible feminisms so that the right to play
sports continues to be guaranteed in the form of a ball accessible to us all.

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 Part II
Mujeres Futbolistas: Experiences
and Achievements
 6
Power, Policy and Priorities:
The Experiences of Colombian Women
Playing Football
Sophie Legros, Sarah Oxford,
and Ana Margarita Salas de la Hoz

Introduction
Colombia remains one of the most unequal countries in Latin America;
citizens are segregated and excluded along class, gender, race and ethnic
lines. A history of geographical fragmentation, colonial legacies and
uneven development processes has shaped regional differences in socio-
economic conditions and cultural practices across Colombia (Safford &
Palacios, 2001). Economic and social relations are undergirded by

S. Legros (*)
London School of Economics, London, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Oxford
School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine, Monash University,
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
A. M. Salas de la Hoz
University of Magdalena, Santa Marta, Colombia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 97

J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_6
98 S. Legros et al.

structural racism and economic inequalities, with high concentrations of

wealth and land ownership.
In addition to these regional inequalities, the class system also struc-
tures social life within regions. Colombia’s Public Service Law 142,
implemented in 1994, assigns class number through residential property,
resulting in neighbourhoods identified by stratum. There is little social
interaction and much less integration or movement among the six class
groupings, which predominately are visually marked by skin colour. The
class system evolved into a method to solidify socioeconomic subcultures.
Rodriguez Pizzaro and Ibarra Melo (2013) noted that a Colombian
woman’s socioeconomic positioning affects her ‘living conditions, obsta-
cles, opportunities, knowledge, and choices’ (p. 27). The reach of these
social markers is profound because they become a complex (re)produc-
tion of culture, embodied and reenacted through everyday interactions.
Although there is variation, male-centric, heterosexual domination is
the pillar of social organisation, and the hegemonic performance of mas-
culinity and femininity is intertwined with individual and family reputa-
tion (Sanabria, 2007). Adhering to a strict gender binary based on a
hegemonic masculinity that ignores or subordinates women is a critical
aspect of Colombian socialisation (Viveros & Guttman, 2005). Gendered
socialisation includes sports, where females do not have the opportunities
and rewards afforded to males, especially in traditionally masculine sports
(Oxford & McLachlan, 2018). Girls and women participating in sports
associated with masculinity, however, are nonconforming and thus chal-
lenge the gender binary.
Nevertheless, advancements in women’s football in Colombia in recent
decades include increasing girls’ participation in the sport in schools and
academies, the creation of a professional league and positive international
performances by the women’s national team. Furthermore, local govern-
ments, community organizations and international nongovernmental
organisations (INGOs) have implemented numerous sport for develop-
ment and peace (SDP) programmes with the objective to foster inclu-
sion, develop life skills of youth or promote peace in conflict-afflicted
communities (Parnell et al., 2018). The combination of these visible
achievements has resulted in an increase in social acceptability for girls
and women to play football.
 6 Power, Policy and Priorities: The Experiences of Colombian… 99

In what follows, we analyse the various developments of sport policies

across Colombia. To understand how this progressive policy space and
varied institutional services translate for girls and women on the ground
across regions and social classes, we examine women players’ experiences
in three vignettes (Blodgett et al., 2011). The vignettes were constructed
by the authors from their individual research conducted in Colombia
about female participation in football between 2015 and 2020. Each
author selected an interview participant who demonstrated a mainstream
story with women’s participation in sport within a respective social class
and developed a vignette of the player’s trajectory based on the interview
transcripts. The vignettes are narratives used to present female athletes’
stories, with an emphasis on their own words to bring out women’s voices
in the analysis.
The first and second authors were raised and studied in the Global
North and conducted their PhD fieldwork in Spanish in Colombia; the
third author is Colombian and is conducting her honours thesis research
in Colombia. All three authors played football competitively at the col-
legiate level and in various professional capacities, in France and the
United States (first author), in the United States (second author) and in
Colombia (third author). In the discussion, we draw on the work of
Crenshaw (1989) to explore the importance of an intersectional perspec-
tive in debates on the effects of women’s participation in football and in
grassroots sports interventions, calling attention to the varying challenges
and achievements for Colombian women from diverse backgrounds.

Policy Analysis
The evolution of sport policymaking in Colombia echoes the country’s
broader historical, political and socioeconomic developments.
Historically, sport has played several roles in Colombia’s development
trajectory. Early sport policies promoted it as a symbol of progress, using
it as a tool to promote ‘modern’ values and activities, advance the well-­
being of the nation and cultivate world relations (Ruiz Patiño, 2017).
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, policymakers made
efforts to introduce sports in school curricula. Female athletes first made
100 S. Legros et al.

their appearance in the public sphere in the 1920s, in sports (e.g., tennis,
horseback riding, golf, or basketball). Their participation was accompa-
nied by concerns about preserving female athletes’ femininity, and bas-
ketball was the only sport allowed for girls for physical education classes
in schools (Cano, 2020).
Until recently, sport was mainly restricted to the wealthy, elite and
light-skinned, largely accessible through private clubs or schools. Private
sports clubs emerged following economic growth and sociocultural trans-
formations in the first half of the 1900s. With the increase in popular
cultural consumption in the 1930s, access to sport activities was extended
to some members of the middle and lower classes to promote the idea of
a ‘cultured’ society. Sport policies also were used in campaigns to extend
healthy lifestyles and culture to working classes (Muñoz, 2009). Sport
acquired a dual significance in Colombian society, reflecting hierarchies
of value among the population. Higher class athletes were regarded as
successful leaders and entrepreneurs living out their aspirations whereas
for the lower classes, sport was to be a tool of intervention used to civilise
the population and promote moral and physical values (Ruiz Patiño,
2017). This moralising aspect of sport was part of the broader ‘whitening’
processes in society (Munera, 1998; Wade, 1995).
In the second half of the twentieth century, mass sporting events
became more widespread. In 1948, the first men’s football league popula-
rised the sport, which became a source of national identity and solidarity
for a fragmented society (L’Hoeste, 2015; Watson, 2018). From the
1960s onwards, the State has taken a more active role in sport policies. In
1968, COLDEPORTES, a sport entity separate from the Ministry of
Education, was established, and Colombia’s participation in several inter-
national events (e.g., the 1971 Pan-American games) increased interest
for sport policymaking to foster elite performance (Morales Fontanilla,
2020; Sheinin, 2016).
Although there are records of women players since the 1950s, com-
petitive women’s football emerged in the 1990s in a formal capacity.
Women’s football grew significantly in the 1970s and 1980s through
informal regional leagues and teams owing to the activism of pioneering
female athletes. They provided the impetus for Difútbol, the
 6 Power, Policy and Priorities: The Experiences of Colombian… 101

organisational body responsible for amateur and youth football develop-

ment, to officialise national tournaments for women in the 1990s.
In more recent years, further institutionalisation of the sport sector has
taken place. The 1991 Constitution led to inclusive laws and policy
reforms that promote universality, inclusion and a ‘sports-for-all’
approach. It recognises the rights, equality and diversity of women and
minorities in Colombia, and the State’s responsibility in ensuring these
principles are respected. The establishment of entities aimed at promot-
ing sports at all levels, together with sport development plans, has led to
improvements for female performance athletes and ensuring the rights
for all—at least on paper. In 2015, the women’s national team qualified
for the first time for the FIFA Women’s World Cup. A women’s football
federation (in 2016) and professional football league (since 2017) also
have been established but there remains a lack of female representation at
the administrative and decision-making levels (Cadavid & Pareja, 2001;
Cadena, 2017; Saldarriaga & Sánchez, 2016).
A proliferation of social programmes implemented by a wide variety of
actors aims to enact these ideals in practice to increase sport’s accessibility
in marginalised communities. They include sport interventions address-
ing peace-building or targeting urban youth as well as local government
initiatives to promote physical activity and mobility for all (Cardenas,
2016; Hills et al., 2018; Oxford & McLachlan, 2018; Torres et al., 2013).
With high urbanisation rates characteristic of the Latin American region,
sport policymaking also became a part of urban planning. Building sport
spaces was a key part of Medellín’s ‘social urbanism’ approach (Drummond
et al., 2012; Echeverri & Orsini, 2015), where top-notch infrastruc-
ture—from libraries, outdoor gyms to synthetic sport fields—was built in
underserved urban areas, increasing access to sporting facilities (Parnell
et al., 2018). This model has since been replicated in other cities in
Colombia.
Some democratisation of sports has thus taken place. Women’s football
has become more visible, and, despite negative stereotypes about women
players, there has been a shift in attitudes with a greater demand for
women’s football teams and an expansion in public and recreational
spaces available to women. Nevertheless, female football players lack sta-
ble and secure financial support, and the women’s football league is
102 S. Legros et al.

lacking in resources. Despite discourses of nondiscrimination and inclu-

sion in policy documents, female athletes face persisting constraints to
full participation.
Policies are designed by policymakers who understand social problems
based on their visions of the world and biased understanding of social
groups’ experiences. Feminist theorising about the policy process under-
scores the assumptions that define the policy process (Cornwall et al.,
2008). Examining the policy process through a feminist lens encourages
one to reflect on how the problem is represented, how that representation
has come about, who is unheard and who has a say in this representation
(Baachi, 2009).
The next section links macro-level policies and structural factors with
women’s lives and experiences. Starting from women’s personal descrip-
tions of their achievements and challenges can increase understanding of
their actual experiences, attempting to increase the ‘interpretive power’
(Cornwall et al., 2008) of female football players regarding their own
trajectories. This can lead to distinct policy insights and priorities.

Vignettes
We selected three women born into differing classes and from several
geographical regions: one from the upper (five or six), the middle (three
or four) and the lower (one or two) classes to analyse their experiences
playing football in Colombia. The data comes from interviews collected
for various projects. These vignettes illustrate the array of women’s experi-
ences in Colombia’s unequal and class-based society.

Case Study 1—Maria. Upper class, mid-thirties: María’s initiation into

football was inevitable: football has been played, watched, analysed and
discussed at her family reunions throughout generations. As is custom in
traditional wealthy families in Antioquia, weekends are spent at the fami-
ly’s finca (farm)—a secondary home in the outskirts of Medellín. On
Fridays after school, she would go to the finca along with her cousins. As
the second granddaughter among many grandsons, she had to play what
the older boys wanted to, and football was the preferred sport.
 6 Power, Policy and Priorities: The Experiences of Colombian… 103

María’s parents educated her about the importance of sport; she tried
many sports, including playing football with friends in the gated apart-
ment building where she lived. There were few opportunities for girls to
play competitively. She attended an all-girls religious school, and the nuns
did not consider football appropriate for girls.
Negative comments, name-calling and stereotypes discouraged many of
her eager female friends from playing. Her parents clarified the negative
comments to her and explained that football was acceptable for her like
barbies were acceptable for her brother.
She learned the rules of football by watching games and casually playing
in the streets. Her role models were male football players like Faustino
Asprilla, Alexis García or Andrea Pirlo. Without cable television, she did
not know women’s football existed at the global level. Her first reference in
women’s football was Mia Hamm; she admired her attitude in interviews
in addition to her football skills, how she navigated questions that were
uncomfortable or biased.
When she arrived at a private university to study civil engineering, the
opportunity arose to live out her passion for football to the fullest. She
advocated in the university’s sports department with a small group of
attracted students to create a female league within the university. They
selected the best players and started practicing with the men’s team’s coach
during a trial period to assess the women’s commitment and discipline.
After three months, the university hired the first female coach, and the
team started competing in a university tournament and in the region’s foot-
ball league. The university provided them with new equipment and balls.
They also supported players with transportation costs, food and authorisa-
tions when travelling for tournaments. The university regarded them as a
legitimate team representing the institution. Maria played on the team for
nine years while she completed her university degree, her master’s and one
more as a visiting member. In 2009, they won the national university tour-
nament in Armenia.
Through football, Maria learned values, such as discipline, compassion
and dedication, that helped her develop. She considers her university team
as family. She cherishes her opportunity to compete at the university level,
particularly the experiences of setting goals and pursuing ambitions col-
lectively. Nowadays, she plays twice a week recreationally with friends,
renting her university’s synthetic turf fields for an hour in the evenings
after work.
104 S. Legros et al.

Maria believes that the stigma around women’s football that she experi-
enced as a child does not exist anymore. She asserts that now if a girl wants
to play football, her dad will buy her shoes, a ball and sign her up to a team.
She considers that things started changing about ten years ago when
Colombians became more aware of women’s football at the global level and
when football academies and schools began incorporating women’s foot-
ball in their projects. Today, even the nuns at her primary school have come
to terms with the sport—the school has an intercollegiate girls’ team. Girls
no longer have to wait until university to be able to compete in an official
tournament.
Case Study 2—Camila. Middle class, early twenties: Camilla liked
football ever since she was little; she always saw her brothers play and
claimed that she could too. Early on, she began to play with her cousins
and brothers on her neighbourhood’s streets in Santa Marta. She didn’t
know of other female players; she didn’t even know that women’s football
existed. Her family always supported her. At first, when there were no
female teams, her mother did not want her to play with boys. When wom-
en’s football initiatives started in her city, her mother gave her uncondi-
tional support.
Camila’s football journey was not always easy. She faced social barriers
because football was considered a ‘man’s sport’. People commented that
football ‘attracts lesbians’ and she often heard people refer to female players
in derogatory ways. This never stopped her, and because of her family’s
support, she did not care about what other people said or thought.
When she started playing football, economic and material resources
were very scarce. The players had to pay for uniforms, travel costs and the
coaches’ salaries, even when they played in tournaments to represent their
region. Camila’s perspective about football began to change following the
emergence of the first women’s teams in Santa Marta and the integration of
new regional teams in national championships. When she started, she had
considered it a temporary hobby, but with these new opportunities and the
excitement she felt playing football, she started considering it her life
project.
When she was 13, Camila started taking football seriously and training
regularly, which led her to be selected for youth teams at the regional and
national level. Following the creation of the women’s league in 2017, she
had the opportunity to play for the Magdalena Union club and afterwards
with another professional team when Magdalena Union dropped out of
 6 Power, Policy and Priorities: The Experiences of Colombian… 105

the league. These experiences played a part in her selection for the
Colombian U17 national team, which she considers her biggest achieve-
ment so far. This event established football as a genuine life project for her,
making her realise that she could pursue everything she wanted in her own
country—playing football and studying at the same time. Previously, she
thought she would have to leave Colombia, moving to Spain, for example,
to continue playing football.
Football has had a positive impact in Camila’s life. It contributes to her
emotional and personal growth; it makes her happy and motivates her to
improve every day. Through football, she has met people who inspire her
to set new goals and achieve them. Although not substantial, football
became a source of economic support that allows her to pay for her univer-
sity studies and contribute to her brother’s studies, alleviating her mother’s
financial responsibilities as the family’s principal earner while her dad
works in the informal economy as a motorcycle taxi driver.
Camila believes that there is still much progress to be made for women
football players in her city. From conversations with some of her team-
mates from other parts of the country, most notably those from the ‘inte-
rior’ (central cities like Bogotá or Medellín), she realised that many had
received some form of financial support to cover expenses to participate in
selections and had access to more resources than were available in her region.
That being said, she highlights that there are now noticeably more girls
who dare to play football. The female player that she most admires today is
Daniela Montoya, who has been advocating for better labour conditions in
women’s football. Camila believes that getting involved in football will still
be a difficult path for future female players, but that it is worth fighting for
what they love.
Case Study 3—Yuliza. Lower class, early twenties: Yuliza loves foot-
ball. She started playing at eight years old with her brothers and male
neighbours in the dirt streets near her concrete uninsulated tin-roof house.
Her house is in a neighbourhood defined by the Colombian government as
an informal settlement, represented on the news as violent, and called
home by thousands of Colombians internally displaced because of conflict.
She began to take football seriously at 12 years old when she joined
GOALS, an SDP organisation. GOALS closed, but before it did, an
employee suggested she join another SDP organisation called VIDA. Around
the same time, a VIDA employee gave a presentation to her church congre-
gation about it’s methods. At church, Yuliza’s father learned about VIDA’s
106 S. Legros et al.

methodology to teach kids football, lessons about values and social support
offerings. Her father thought it sounded like a great idea; he signed her and
her little sister up. Her mother was less committed to her daughters’ play-
ing football but could not stop them.
The fields where VIDA operated included government-funded projects,
such as a paved court with metal fencing taller than the houses and a grass
field where cows roamed. When the government reallocated the grass field
for an infrastructure project, VIDA changed locations to a fenced-in grass
field provided by the catholic church. Field options and playing spaces near
Yuliza’s home were minimal.
As a child, Yuliza saw girls watch her play with interest and heard the
girls’ mothers refuse their requests to join. As a teenager, she listened to her
female friends explain they wanted to play too. Their parents denied their
participation because either an SDP organisation did not exist near their
homes or their parents’ rules limited their movements to walking to school
and back.
When Yuliza played on the street with her brothers, people called her
derogatory names, such as tomboy and lesbian, which made her feel bad.
She did her best to ignore them. Her love for football was more important
than bad feelings. At VIDA, girls and boys played football together. After
she joined VIDA and improved her skills, she did not hear those bad words.
Furthermore, instead of putting her down, her community discussed her
impressive football abilities, which made her proud.
As a teenager, Yuliza began mentoring younger kids at VIDA after
school. Also, she played in girls’ football and futsal tournaments in her
neighbourhood on the weekends. Sometimes she would travel by a combi-
nation of walking and riding on a public bus to play for an elite team that
practised in a slightly wealthier area across a mega-highway located on the
edge of a big city. A donor, organised through VIDA, paid for her to par-
ticipate on that team.
Yuliza believed that football and VIDA changed her life. Before she
joined, she angered easily and was physically aggressive with other kids.
Her formal position with VIDA as a mentor led her to feel respected. She
then wanted to be a positive role model. Football became her passion; it
occupied her time. Yuliza experienced much stress in her life, but she noted
that all of her stress disappeared when playing football.
Only 10–20 percent of VIDAs participants are girls depending on the
field and day. Yuliza believed that change to girls’ inclusion in football was
 6 Power, Policy and Priorities: The Experiences of Colombian… 107

happening in her neighbourhood. She highlighted that she does not hear
the derogatory names anymore and that at VIDA girls playing football is
normal. A normality, she argued, that is being extended to her broader
community and throughout her neighbourhood.

Discussion
The trajectory of women’s football and sport policies should be under-
stood in the context of broader societal change influencing women’s
rights and autonomy. These include the advancement of women’s educa-
tion, the role of the feminist movement’s mobilisation and progress in
women’s labour-force participation and political representation, and how
these are partially offset by continued constraints to women’s empower-
ment in a context of gender discrimination, economic and social exclu-
sion and sustained levels of violence and internal conflict (Bradshaw
et al., 2019; Domingo et al., 2015; Iregui-Bohórquez et al., 2020; UN
Women, 2018).
In recent years, female players and activists have taken a stand to con-
demn the unfair treatment that women players experience and the exist-
ing gender inequalities in football. In 2019, members of the women’s
national team denounced experiences of sexual harassment and inade-
quate economic compensation. As a response, the football authorities
suspended the women’s football season. The 2020 coronavirus outbreak
further laid bare the precarious conditions with which women players are
confronted.
The vignettes illustrate differences and similarities between the wom-
en’s experiences, revealing intersecting inequalities. Despite the emer-
gence of relatively progressive sport policies and institutions noted in our
policy analysis, inequalities in football persist, suggesting a difference
between formal equality and equality in practice. In this discussion, we
apply a gender and intersectional lens to sport policy analysis. This
involves considering the multiple and intersecting power relationships
that shape women’s experiences because multiple social identities can lead
to experiences of inequality that combine, overlap and amplify each other
(Crenshaw, 1989).
108 S. Legros et al.

Despite differences in contexts, all three women demonstrated a resil-

ient mentality, a deep and committed passion for the sport and benefitted
from some form of family support. These shared characteristics were
essential as they made room for themselves in a traditionally masculine
space to navigate stigma and negative social sanctions. All three pursue
acts of activism and resistance according to their resources and social
position—from mentoring other children in their neighbourhoods to
advocating for the creation of the first female team at their university.
Their stories demonstrate the importance of role models and seeing a
critical mass of women playing the sport at the local and national level,
which has been facilitated by an increased policy space and community
interventions for women’s football in Colombia. Although from a higher
class, Maria did not have the same opportunities as younger players today
because she grew up in a time when formal female teams and leagues did
not exist for young girls. Generational differences also interact with social
class to shape female players’ football trajectories.
Nevertheless, contrasts between the three experiences can be drawn as
sport policies interact with underlying inequalities. Opportunities and
constraints are not just distributed differently along what might be con-
sidered the ‘metropole’ and the ‘interior’. Geographical location and
social positioning within a particular area can compound in a variety of
ways and one might experience greater disadvantages in a marginalised
community in a major metropolitan city because of urban segregation;
this could include long and costly commuting distances and limited
opportunities because of structural conditions (e.g., unemployment, job
precarity and a lack of access to higher education).
Furthermore, Afro-Colombians and indigenous communities tend to
be concentrated in peripherical regions with fewer resources or govern-
ment support—as is the case for the Coastal or Amazonian regions—and
in marginalised communities within urban centres, especially those with
a high number of internally displaced populations. This has profound
implications for how policies are applied. Regions, such as the Caribbean
coast, have historically been abandoned by central authorities or their
social context and local needs neglected in government interventions
(McGraw, 2007). This is evidenced in Camila’s story, when she expressed
the lack of institutional support and that the development of the sport
 6 Power, Policy and Priorities: The Experiences of Colombian… 109

initially had to be sponsored by players themselves, uncovering how sport

policies are implemented differentially. Dark-skinned female athletes
thus can be exposed to multiple forms of discrimination because of racial
divisions and institutional neglect in addition to their status as women
and their social class.
Also revealed in the women’s stories are various opportunities to be
competitive in the sport, to develop not just life skills but to be fulfilled
by aspiring to and working towards ambitious goals. Social class shaped
their aspirations: all three worked to improve and reach new echelons,
but what echelons are achievable depends on their context and the local
authorities’ decisions and policymaking. Among them are the repurpos-
ing of sport spaces for other political interests (e.g., education, infrastruc-
ture, housing and so on). As their stories show, aspirations are dynamic
and respond to structures of opportunities and constraints.
Finally, we note differing perspectives of change. Yuliza’s point of refer-
ence was her own neighbourhood, Camila focused on comparisons with
other regions of Colombia, and Maria framed her trajectory with relation
to women’s football at the global level. Their perspectives on the evolu-
tion of women’s football are indicative of their distinct realities, the vari-
ous spheres in society in which they operate, and how they position
themselves within Colombian society.
The potential impact of football policies on women and girls’ lives is
thus mediated by their social position. The vignettes and the discussion
illustrate how underlying inequalities condition women’s ability to take
advantage of progressive sport policies. Intersecting inequalities limit
opportunities, but they also mediate the extent and ways players can ben-
efit from participation in sport or the meaning football might have in
their lives. Both the positive consequences of playing football (e.g., eco-
nomic compensation or the friendships built) and the negative sanctions
(e.g., the stigma connected to homosexuality, gender stereotypes and
material costs) will matter more or less to various women and girls. For
example, economic aspects might heighten the difficulties for players
with fewer economic resources, or they might expand the perceived ben-
efits of the sport compared to other players. Attention to women’s life
stories provides insights into how sport policies actually are lived out by
female athletes ‘on the ground’, and how policies can have distinct
110 S. Legros et al.

consequences depending on the institutional context and women’s social

position within that same context.

Conclusion
In this chapter, we argued for an intersectional perspective in sport policy
analysis. First, we demonstrated that an understanding of the class and
gender system is pivotal in understanding the historical development of
sport policies and their implementation in Colombia. Second, through a
focus on women’s experiences in the three vignettes, we examined how
the impacts of sport policies can vary for women in various contexts and
social positions. Feminist scholars have categorised programmes and pol-
icies into those that are discriminatory, gender-neutral, gender-aware or
gender-transformative, according to the degree to which the policy or
programme reinforces, neglects or purposes to tackle upfront gender
inequalities and remove barriers towards greater equality (Cole et al.,
2020; Fernandez, 2016).
Although a programme may not be outright discriminatory, it might
even be inclusive of diverse social identities, it could still disadvantage
women and girls depending on the local context (Oxford & McLachlan,
2018). Underlying conditions (e.g., safety, gender norms or risks of sex-
ual harassment) can discourage girls from using outdoor sport places.
What might appear to grant free and universal access also depends on
local power dynamics and control of spaces.
From our review of sport policies in Colombia, many appear universal
or gender-neutral; others are targeted towards specific populations such
as at-risk youth or indigenous populations, aiming to be inclusive. The
problem to be addressed through sport is often represented as one of life
skills and moral values or as one of access—a lack of infrastructure or
organised sport activities. Sport policies rarely aim to tackle the broader
structural conditions that influence gender inequality and youths’ aspira-
tions (e.g., unequal gender norms, poverty, insecurity, lack of decent jobs
or uneven development).
Furthermore, we consider what is missing in sport policymaking. The
literature is often concentrated on interventions in Bogotá and Medellín,
 6 Power, Policy and Priorities: The Experiences of Colombian… 111

the country’s two largest cities. Certain regions do not have local sports’
offices or strategies, much less infrastructure, especially where State pres-
ence is lacking. As mentioned earlier, these often correspond to regions
with higher concentrations of Afro-Colombian and indigenous commu-
nities, which have historically been marginalised, discriminated against
and racialised. The lack of case studies coming from these regions is infor-
mative and calls for more diverse settings in future research on Colombia’s
sport for development programming. As the vignettes illustrate, sport
policymaking could benefit from a richer analysis and an intersectional
lens, paying attention to the broader areas of female players’ lives and
how they interact to shape their participation in sports.

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 7
Bolivian Women as Professional
Footballers: The Voices
and the Feminism of the karimachus
Eliana Aguilar Aguilar and Ana Alcazár-Campos

First Half—Introduction
As in many other Latin American countries, football is part of Bolivian
society. Rinke (2006) argues that football is practically part of the Latino
identity. Even though football did not originate in South America, it
became popular quickly. As Galeano (1995) mentions and Rinke (2006)
confirms, Latin American footballers have allowed the world to redis-
cover Latin America, see it beyond the conquest, with distinct eyes. In
Bolivia, people enjoy the sport and support the nation’s footballers even
though it is last in FIFA’s South American ranking. Taking this into
account, when Bolivians talk about football, there is an automatic

E. Aguilar Aguilar
La Salle University, Bolivia, La Paz, Bolivia
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Alcazár-Campos (*)
University of Granada, Granada, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 115
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_7
116 E. Aguilar Aguilar and A. Alcazár-Campos

association with men’s football, by the force of the order that dispenses
with justification (Bourdieu, 1998). Men’s practice in most sports became
the ‘neutral’ and normalised version, so it became necessary to add the
feminine adjective to refer to women’s sport practice.
Unfortunately, football also reflects a macho society in which women
do not have the same opportunities as men (Hernández, 2014; Ruiz,
2011). The presence of women on the field challenges the masculine
hegemony within the football context, where women have been prohib-
ited from entering, breaking heteronormative expectations (Aguilar,
2014). Football does not discriminate, but those who manage it do. In
Bolivia, the football federation has always been led by men who have
prioritised men’s football, until 2018 when FIFA regulations called for
the promotion of women’s football with the risk of sanctions against asso-
ciations that did not comply (FIFA, 2018). Thus, in 2019, departmental
leagues were quickly set up to avoid FIFA sanctions, but several factors
(e.g., spaces to play or players’ ages) were not considered. Currently in
Bolivia, there is only one all-ages category in the women’s league. In
2019, in a match in La Paz, a 13-year-old footballer played against women
who were twice her age, some even older (Aguilar, 2020).
The obvious differences between women’s and men’s football (e.g., the
lack of competitions and opportunities to engage in competitive matches,
absence from media coverage and economic gaps) prompted the authors to
look at the country’s social history of women’s football. We started to ask if
any Bolivian football lovers and supporters knew about female footballers,
such as Maitté Zamorano, who was the top goal scorer in the 2013 and
2017 Women’s Copa Libertadores, or Zdenscka Bacarreza, former head
coach of the Bolivian women’s football team. As a child, Bacarreza had to
pretend to be a boy with the name Marco Antonio to be able to play foot-
ball and hide herself from being judged by La Paz society (Calatayud, 2020).
When we started researching Bolivian women footballers, their story
appears to begin very recently, but in fact, Bolivian women have been
playing football for many years. Reviewing newspapers, we found photo-
graphic evidence from as early as 1983 (Gutierrez, 1983); however, there
were no studies or official data available. The Bolivian Football Federation’s
(FBF) website includes limited information about women’s football and
only from the last three to five years. Nevertheless, the Bolivian women
footballers of the 1990s changed the course of their sport in the country
 7 Bolivian Women as Professional Footballers: The Voices… 117

while opening doors for future generations of female players, breaking

gender taboos and supporting younger girls and women to find their way
within the sport. This chapter attempts to understand how these women
built and negotiated their femininity while they achieved professionalism
in Bolivian football. The experiences of these footballers from various cit-
ies offer one the opportunity to know which barriers and impediments
they encountered along the way while giving voice to those historically
relegated to the margins of football.
Bolivian society has various myths associated with women’s football
because the traditional roles of women, especially as housewives, carers
for their elderly parents or family members and caregivers of children, are
still important for society, particularly in rural areas (Yapu, 2010).
Bolivian women who did not follow these traditional roles were called
karimachus1—the Quechuan word for tomboy (Castro, 2008).
To analyse the current orthodox gender order in Bolivia and its impli-
cations on the football field, we employed the theories of Simone de
Beauvoir and especially Betty Friedan. Friedan (1963) describes how the
role of a good wife, mother, and housewife created the notion of the
‘feminine mystique’. At the same time, she demonstrated that boys do
things to prove that they are boys, while girls learn they are girls by avoid-
ing acting like boys, thus denying their masculinity (Friedan, 1963). In
the early 1990s in Bolivia, being a woman within the public sphere of
football, either as a spectator or player, was considered unfeminine in
social narratives, so one could be called a karimachu. Ana Huanca, a
player who participated in this study, confirmed that people constantly
used to yell at her: ‘Playing football is for men. The karimacho is playing!’
In this study, the authors intend to start building Bolivian women’s foot-
ball history and try to uncover the voices of players who for several decades
were left in obscurity. Thus, we employ feminist research methodologies to
uncover their stories and, while doing so, shape new meanings for Bolivian

1
The word karimachu underwent changes, like many other words in Quechua, because of internal
migration in the country and the imposition of the Spanish language. For this reason, nowadays
the term can also be written as karimacho or carimacho (Zuna, 2017). It is important to consider
that karimacho refers to an effeminate man and warmimacho to a manly woman, but the word
karimacho later became popular to refer to homosexuality or to those who do not follow traditional
gendered social roles (Opinión, 2009).
118 E. Aguilar Aguilar and A. Alcazár-Campos

football history, showing how women have contributed across the country
to build a powerful popular football culture. Next, after presenting the
methodological background and procedures used in the research, we tell
the karimachu’s stories. By listening and analysing their voices, it is possible
to demonstrate how their resistance can be considered a feminist struggle
that gives new meaning to being a Bolivian, a woman and a footballer.

Halftime—Methods
Qualitative research was the method that best allowed us to collect the
voices of women footballers, but it was not enough to complete this
research. For this reason, we use feminist epistemology because it allowed
us to overcome the positivist and patriarchal objectivity that underpins
science, putting participants, the players, at the centre of the study; this
helped us to challenge our initial understandings and access a more in-­
depth version of the participants’ world (Haraway, 1991). As Marta
Luxán and Jokin Azpiazú (2016) argue, subaltern experiences allow one
to have a more complex perspective than those of a position of social
privilege. At the same time, as Sandra Harding (1996) observes, feminist
epistemology goes beyond simply adding women to research; as Donna
Haraway (1991) states, feminist epistemology is a responsibility of which
one must be aware from the beginning of an investigation while recognis-
ing that the production of knowledge is always a political act.
Our research included interviews with 11 current players from various
cities across Bolivia (i.e., La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Tarija).
They were chosen according to their accessibility and experience.
Subordinate knowledge and subaltern voices are a way of confronting the
androcentric ideal of science and hegemony in football. Four of them,
Janeth Morrón, Ana Huanca, Maitte Zamorano and Luzdana Rivera,
have been part of the Bolivian national football team in several call-ups,
all currently work as physical education teachers or head coaches and are
still playing in championships and tournaments in their cities. On other
hand, we interviewed Zdenscka Bacarreza, the head coach of the Bolivian
women’s national team at the time of the interview, although she still
plays football in seniors’ championships.
 7 Bolivian Women as Professional Footballers: The Voices… 119

Bacarreza is the first woman to coach the women’s national team

(Calatayud, 2020). Three players interviewed (I,e., Marta Poma, Nieves
Condori and Irene Tolin) are cholitas; Chola paceña or cholita are terms
that refer to mestizo women from the Bolivian highlands characterised by
their use of the traditional costume of the city—a long skirt that they do
not take off even to play. They play in various amateur tournaments,
almost always crowning themselves as winners. Finally, the other three
women (i.e., Viviana Rojas, Amancaya Barreda and Katherine Gallardo)
used to play football as amateurs. Although they wanted to reach the
professional level, they had to stop playing for several reasons and cur-
rently continue to play football as a recreational activity.
We conducted semi-structured interviews in Spanish with all 11 play-
ers. These interviews were later translated from Spanish to English by the
authors. Most of the interviews were face to face, but four were online
because of restrictions in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We always respected the idea that the interviewees are the ones who have
the knowledge as well as the practical and embodied experiences of play-
ing football. Van Dijk’s (1999) theory of discourse analysis was employed
to understand their conversations as emotional narratives that formed
memories within each individual participant about events that occurred
at the social and collective levels. Their responses were then analysed and
thematically organised into three broad categories: (1) how they became
footballers, (2) how they entered the public sphere of football and (3)
how they have continued in the sport.
Van Dijk (1999) maintains that everything learned—body move-
ments, even the way we express ourselves—is in social memory. Likewise,
we believe it is important to value this while giving space and voice to
subordinate knowledge to better understand the lives and social realities
of the trailblazers of Bolivian women’s football.

Second Half—Results and Discussion

This section initially discusses how the research participants became foot-
ballers for which they were labelled as masculine karimachus, but they
brought new meanings to the word karimachu. Then, we explore how the
120 E. Aguilar Aguilar and A. Alcazár-Campos

footballers occupied a space from which they were systematically

excluded. Finally, we intend to show how they resisted and persisted in
the field and which strategies they used to continue playing football.

Karimachus

‘Playing football was like an illness and a shame for the family’, says
Luzdana Rivera. This footballer’s words reflect the stories of many
Bolivian women who wanted to play football during the 1990s and found
themselves trapped in a hegemonic and macho structure. Sylvia Burrow
(2016) discusses the notion of a double bind in sport that constrains
women; there is a possibility of marginalisation if a woman decides to
play a sport deemed onlly for men. This was the case for Bolivian women
who were categorized as karimachus when entering the public sphere of
football during the 1990s.
Irene Tolin told us: ‘When I enter the field, I forget everything, the
stress of home and work. … I don’t even think about people because
people always call us “karimachu” or other vulgar things’. It is interesting
how the word karimachu has been used to pigeonhole and discredit
women who are passionate about football; thus, instead of simply being
called ‘footballers’, they were labelled karimachus. Although there are 36
other native languages in Bolivia, the word karimachu has been used
throughout the country, regardless of a player’s cultural background, to
discriminate against women footballers.
At the same time, labelling women footballers as karimachus has been
a way to protect men’s place in football spaces as the only ones who can
play and enjoy the game. Moreno (cited in Hernández, 2014) argues that
the various insults used against women in football are for being both
feminine and masculine at the same time. Marta Poma, another foot-
baller interviewed said ‘people used to say about us, these women aren’t
going to be able to play’.
In the Bolivian case, our participants mention how their footballing
bodies have been labelled as ‘masculine’. Thus, a concept arises about a
straightforward link between ‘masculine’ postures and gestures and sexual
preferences outside the heterosexual norm (Moreira & Garton, 2021). Yet,
 7 Bolivian Women as Professional Footballers: The Voices… 121

the idea of stigmatising women who play football as homosexuals is not

only an issue in Bolivia but also internationally (Moreira & Garton, 2021).
Footballer Viviana Rojas recalled: ‘My friends used to ask me: are you a
lesbian?’ Amankaya also explained: ‘A lot of people thought that I had a lot
of lesbian friends just because I played football’. We can see that society
continues expecting women to be, as Friedan (1963) described: a porcelain
doll, sensual and feminine enough to fulfill men’s heterosexual desires.
Katherine remembers: ‘Nobody said anything to me face to face, but it
was in people’s discourse that the girl who played football, I mean, I was
the karimacho’. Nevertheless, the footballers followed their dreams, they
put all the insults behind them and continued playing because they
understood that football has no gender. ‘Football is for everyone, men,
women, children and us cholitas’, affirmed Nieves Condori. It would have
been easy for them to stop playing football to avoid comments, but
through their examples and perseverance playing football, they managed
to resignify and adopt a new meaning of being a karimachu. As Viviana
Rojas explained: ‘People knew me because I was the girl who played foot-
ball; they always told me that it was not for girls and because of that I was
a karimachu, and that made me feel better, thinking that I was special’.
This is how they continued to play football, some of them alone or
supported by their families, but against society’s expectations. ‘I was lucky
that my family loves sports… my father motivated me to play; he was
with me all the time, at all my matches, and always took me to the field’,
Maitté Zamorano said. Luzdana also remembered: ‘There was no wom-
en’s football tournament for me to train. In a street tournament, my
brother and dad spoke because in the invitation there was no prohibition
for girls to play. They [the tournament organisers] made my dad sign a
document to take responsibility for me. This is how I started playing’. For
these women, playing football in their childhood gave them more oppor-
tunities than those girls subjected to the traditional roles associated with
the feminine mystique (Friedan, 1963).
The beginning of this path was very hard and lonely for the players
interviewed, but nowadays, the word karimachu is not heard as fre-
quently. Nevertheless, the tendency to associate the term with women
who do not do something typical of ‘a woman’ still persists. According to
Ana, ‘Sometimes karimacho is still heard, but less now than before’.
122 E. Aguilar Aguilar and A. Alcazár-Campos

Voices of the karimachus: Occupying

a Masculine Space

One of the main problems faced by Bolivian women footballers is that

the only body allowed to play football is the idealised image of a virile
man’s body (Knijnik, 2014). Rojas (2002) mentions that in a globalised
society, football is a performance of the male gender and the attributes of
the masculine condition. Thus, a hegemonic masculinity is (re)produced
that excludes women from football. At the same time, women continue
to be challenged by expectations of traditional femininity (Friedan,
1963), considered ‘complementary’ to hegemonic masculinity, according
to which any other body that does not comply with the established
parameters is considered a ‘transgressor’.
For many years, these players had to live and get used to hearing peo-
ple call them karimachu, but that didn’t stop them from doing what they
wanted—playing football. Luzdana Rivera recalled: ‘

When I started playing, I was the only girl around boys. I thought I was the
only female footballer in the world. There was no internet, no social net-
works to connect with other women like now. I was happy when I saw
more women a few years later’.

It is interesting how finding another woman who plays football gener-

ates joy for the player. She does not see other players as her rivals, but
rather uses sorority as a fundamental value or as a strategy to continue
playing football in such a hostile environment. One of the most impor-
tant values in football, fraternity, was adopted from the motto of the
French revolution because, for many authors such as Galeano (1995),
football was associated with war. Beauvoir (1949) states that fraternity, as
understood by the French revolutionaries, has a clear masculine charac-
ter. Men are free and equal and establish fraternal relationships; they are
friends who collaborate with each other, but women are not their ‘broth-
ers’ (Beauvoir, 1949). Fraternity did not exist for women in Bolivian
football during the 1990s, so meeting other women who played football
was an opportunity to create a new and different bond.
 7 Bolivian Women as Professional Footballers: The Voices… 123

It is important to highlight that the practice of football adds another

meaning to the female body, adopting new ways of feeling and being on
the field (Hernández, 2014). This new social representation of women’s
bodies on the field helps change the collective imagination, subverting
the macho structures of football while leaving behind the myth that
Friedan (1963) calls the ‘eternal feminine’—the idealised woman as mys-
terious, magical, virgin, martyr, lover, mother. It even challenges society’s
idea that women’s bodies appear helpless and as the negative, while men
represent the positive and neutral (Beauvoir, 1949).
Even the uniform in football is an important issue to discuss. All
Bolivian women must wear men’s shirts and uniforms. One of the foot-
ballers, Katherine, asserted that: ‘The uniforms were never made for our
bodies, we used men’s ones; there was only one size adapted to a male
body. In that sense, the lack of women’s uniforms serves to maintain male
hegemony within football and keep the association of football with the
male body in the social collective.’ As Connell and Messerschmidt (2005)
argue, hegemonic masculinity promotes the dominant social position of
some men and the subordinate social position of women and other ‘infe-
rior’ men. Likewise, this is an issue that came to light years ago in various
feminist discussions because of the declarations of Joseph Blatter in 2004,
the ex-president of FIFA, who insisted that women footballers’ shirts and
shorts should be different from men’s but should accentuate their figure
to attract more male attention (Hidalgo, 2017).
The belief that women’s bodies belong to someone else is part of the
sexualisation of them in football and has always been present. Moreira
and Garton (2021) argue that since the beginning of the practice of foot-
ball, women have experienced the stigmatisation, silencing and disciplin-
ing of their bodies. During the 1990s, the hyper-sexualisation of women’s
bodies had been the most accepted way for women to enter this public
space as amateurs, as an adornment of the game, as in the Olympic
Games of ancient Greece, to satisfy and please the male gaze (Macías, 1999).
It is worth clarifying that the masculine image as the only idealised and
permitted body in football leans on the discourse of biological disadvan-
tage and enters the collective imagination of society in childhood (Díaz
& Martinez, 2017). Biological difference is constructed from the moment
in which, during children’s games, girls’ physical development is limited
124 E. Aguilar Aguilar and A. Alcazár-Campos

in the ‘feminine’ games because of the expectation of delicacy connected

to ‘being a woman’, while boys have the opportunity to use their bodies
to play and develop greater physical ability to help them play sports
(Hernández, 2014). In this way, if women try to follow the feminine
mystique, they will not have freedom of choice (Friedan, 1963).

Resistance and Persistence on the Field

Friedan (1963) states that society wants women to adapt into a culture and
believe that if they adapt, they will be happy and achieve full realisation of
themselves; but Friedan found that this does not necessarily allow for a full
realisation of a person’s being. For this reason, every person should find
how to be in the world and not just follow society’s expectations. Femininity
has been a construct supported by numerous experts (most of them men
describing a reality other than their own) that largely went unchallenged
until feminism appeared and questioned the nature of ‘being a woman’
(Scott, 1986; Butler, 1990; Lamas, 1996). Friedan (1963) mentions that
she started enjoying being a woman when she stopped chasing the idea of
being feminine. Bolivian footballers resisted and persisted on the football
fields, even though society considered them unfeminine because they
found personal fulfilment in football, far beyond cultural expectations.
The players’ statements seem to reaffirm a feminine ideal related to
tradition. Janeth Morrón explained: ‘Regarding my femininity, I don’t
feel anything out of the ordinary, the fact that I play and love football
doesn’t change anything, only the clothing changes’. Yet, in practice, by
occupying spaces and participating in activities considered masculine
(e.g., playing football), these women are revolutionising what it means to
be a woman in the Bolivian context.
Thus, the strength of the karimachus on the football field has helped
break with the notions of femininity and the fragility of women in a con-
text where they did not stop facing obstacles. Zdenscka declared: ‘My
generation was stopped by nefarious leaders! We could not compete for
10 years and we could not be part of a Bolivian team because the require-
ment was to be in a club that plays in the association, and we didn’t have
an association in the city’.
 7 Bolivian Women as Professional Footballers: The Voices… 125

Friedan (1963) argues that when women go outside of the feminine

mystique searching for a new and more liberating life, they will usually
pay for it with various types of violence and resistance from macho social
structures. De Beauvoir (1949) adds that many women continue to be
trapped by conventional values because change implies discomfort, fear
or loss of a privileged situation, requiring a painful pathway.
Likewise, the players interviewed considered that they have managed to
consolidate and strengthen their femininity through the practice of sport,
taking into account and respecting the way each one conceives of the con-
cept of femininity while not abiding by what social norms stipulate about
‘being a woman’. Although people have been led to believe that there is a
femininity conceived within the parameters of the feminine mystique, the
reality is that when a woman steps outside of this heteronormative idea, she
can understand that the structure of femininity is personal, cultural and
political. This depends on the diverse narratives and bodily experiences that
each woman encounters daily. Femininity is not unique. According to
Judith Butler (1990), women perform it every day, and playing football
introduces one more possibility of ‘being a woman’.
As Janeth Morron asserted, ‘I do not feel more masculine by playing
football, as I do not feel less feminine…I just feel myself, a normal person’.
Amankaya built on this idea, ‘On the field, you can see me be aggressive,
effusive, all you want, and off the field too’. The interviewed players live
their femininity as they feel fit, sport does not take away their femininity.
De Beauvoir (1949) mentioned that leaving traditional roles could deprive
a woman of her attractiveness, losing her power, if she ever had it, because
traditional beauty has a submissive component; this is where the idea of the
complementarity of hegemonic masculinity and femininity comes into play.
Similarly, the disadvantages that women could face when playing foot-
ball were compensated by their discipline and work ethic. They all admit
they worked very hard to achieve their football objectives. Ana Huanca
described her typical routine: ‘

I work every morning in a school as a physical education teacher; three

afternoons a week, I work as a football trainer and the other two afternoons
I practice by myself. If I have a call up for the national team, I train at
night, but it is very tiring’.
126 E. Aguilar Aguilar and A. Alcazár-Campos

Now, there are more women on the field, but equality within football
is far from being achieved. Some authors maintain that one way to
achieve equality in football would be through equal wages while other
authors defend the idea of coed football to break paradigms (Pereira,
2019; Hernández, 2014). Aguilar (in Hernández, 2014) states that equal-
ity in football between women and men will not be easy to achieve. The
reality is that there are many obstacles and barriers that make it impossi-
ble for women to become professionals. One of the main barriers is the
macho mindset of football institutions; however, the constant presence of
Bolivian female footballers on the field since 1990 allows new footballers
to be more visible today.
Another major barrier is that women footballers do not earn money
from their sport like men, which is why they must have other jobs to
both achieve their football objectives and sustain themselves. As seen in
Ana Huanca’s statement earlier, it can be seen that footballers strive to
achieve their goals, giving up various activities that do not allow them to
concentrate entirely on their game, which is mentally and physically
exhausting and can affect their on-field performance.
In 2018, FIFA presented a strategy to increase women’s participation
in football, but the agenda does not cover the basic needs of women nor
does it mention gender pay gaps and maternity, a main concern for
women (FIFA, 2018). As Zdesncka Bacarreza points out, ‘I told myself:
You cannot play anymore! You have a daughter! Although I did want to,
I thought I didn’t have time’.
As a result of FIFA (2018) regulations, most Bolivian cities today have an
association and organise women’s tournaments. Women can play football
without facing as much discrimination as in the past, and they also have
more options to demonstrate their ability and play in various tournaments
or on the national team. Ana observed, ‘Now there are many opportunities;
I did not have them, but if I had, I would have left the country to play …
sometimes I think it’s unfair’. Similarly, Amankaya stated, ‘If this league
thing had come up earlier, when I was in school or university, I would have
given it my all! And I have several teammates who say the same thing’.
Today, almost all the players who were interviewed are still connected
to football in some way. From wherever they are, they work towards
equality on the field. For example, in 2014 Zdenscka and a friend,
 7 Bolivian Women as Professional Footballers: The Voices… 127

Carmen Pozo, opened the first football academy for women, ‘Las Super
Poderosas’ (Calatayud, 2020), which allows for the consolidation of the
idea that Bolivian women can play football in the country’s collective
imagination. Now, most of the football academies in Bolivia train both
women and men.

Extra Time—Conclusions
The patience and strength of Bolivian footballers during the 1990s helped
challenge the stereotypes of the feminine mystique that were part of Bolivia’s
narratives. Friedan (1963) mentions that when women can use their full
strength, their full ability will be able to destroy the mystique. Although
they have had to endure being called karimachus, and in some cases, other
kinds of insults (e.g., lesbians, little men and tomboys) as an attempt to
keep them off the field, silencing their voices and making them invisible,
Bolivian women footballers have built a new way of being on the field.
These women are the ones who can best describe the reality of Bolivian
football because they have experienced it. They are the reason why it is
now possible for girls to play football and why it is even possible to find
football academies for them; this has helped normalise female football in
the country. At the same time, new concepts have been resignified in the
collective imagination, which was built according to male hegemony.
Women can leave a position of subordination to change the relational
logic with which they have lived until today, expanding the possibilities
for the construction of alternative femininities. These women, with their
presence in the public sphere of football, are not committed to the femi-
nine mystique, but rather through football they have found the liberating
and emancipatory path that Friedan describes—a new way to personal
fulfilment, well-being and happiness. They are breaking with the norm,
creating a new way of living femininity through football.
Today, the daily work and silent effort of these 11 footballers, and
many other Bolivian women who play or have played football, must be
recognised and made visible. They broke down the barriers; they rede-
fined the word karimachu. It is no longer a woman who does men’s things,
but rather a karimachu is a powerful and brave woman who goes after her
128 E. Aguilar Aguilar and A. Alcazár-Campos

dreams, who builds her life day by day, no matter what people think or
say to stop her, because she believes in herself. Women could develop
many other meanings for the term karimachu. This is why we dare to say
that karimachus could become feminist icons.
At the same time, footballers’ experiences help one analyse the football
agenda presented by FIFA in 2018 and understand how far we are from
equality in the sport. The governing body’s agenda should focus on taking
into account women’s real needs (e.g., gender pay gaps, equal opportunities
in training, equal rights), as well as issues of violence and sexual harassment
while taking motherhood into consideration instead of firing players or
prohibiting maternity in their contracts. For these reasons, women’s foot-
ball needs to go against the system of extractivism, creating a space where
women and men can work together to reach equality, for it will be neces-
sary to have a feminist perspective to fight for equal rights in football.
Taking Simone de Beauvoir’s words to the football field: ‘One is not
born a football player, but rather becomes one’. Although not all inter-
viewees had played for the national team, each one had faced the same
macho structure, no matter where they were from. Each footballer con-
tributed from their place to make Bolivian women’s football visible
around the country. Even though they were labelled karimachus, these
women’s experiences, resistance and perseverance might ensure that
future generations of Bolivian women who are interested in football do
not have to suffer what these women have experienced. These players, by
their example, have changed life for many Bolivian women.

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 8
Socio-Political Dynamic of Women’s
Participation in Football in Venezuela
Rosa López de D’Amico and Lesbia Verenzuela

Introduction
In Venezuela, more women are participating in women’s football, break-
ing barriers, limitations, prohibitions and stereotypes in a quest to achieve
gender equality. Yet, there is a dearth of research or critical review on
women and football in Venezuela. Women have always actively partici-
pated in the construction of society; female participation in the eco-
nomic, social and political arenas has been acknowledged throughout the
past decades. The same cannot be said, however, about sports. The great-
est obstacle that women’s football has is the sport’s continued manage-
ment by men with a patriarchal generative perspective (Hinojosa, 2016).
A cultural change in football institutions and the educational sector is

R. López de D’Amico (*)

Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador, Maracay, Venezuela
L. Verenzuela
Universidad Nacional Experimental Politécnica de las Fuerzas Armadas,
Cagua, Venezuela

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 131
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_8
132 R. López de D’Amico and L. Verenzuela

necessary to make the presence of women visible in a sport in which

males have historically maintained hegemonic control.
Despite the disadvantages surrounding women’s claims in Venezuelan
football in its various roles, there is a history of women and football, a
history of challenges and triumphs, needs and absences, exclusions and
continued defiance. Perhaps, these realities guide its most significant
development phase. In addition to the sport itself and the physical ben-
efits of participation, women’s football empowers women; their participa-
tion is a form of activism that breaks barriers and challenges obstacles.
The idea is not to go against the system, but for society to understand the
value of women. Clearly, it is not enough only to allow women to play
football, rather they should be empowered through this sport. More
female voices and viewpoints that refute the patriarchal discourse and
show other forms of gender identity in football should be presented.

Venezuelan Football
Football in general is a space that has great social and cultural relevance,
but there are aspects that need to be addressed to consolidate a scenario
that promotes equal opportunities and development for all, particularly
for women in the sport. This chapter seeks to answer the following ques-
tion: What are the socio-political elements present in women’s football in
Venezuela?
In Venezuela, by the mid-1970s some women’s competitions were
organised by the Minor Football League (LFM) but were not recognised
by the Venezuelan Football Federation (FVF). In 1991, Venezuela par-
ticipated in the first South American Women’s Championship, which the
FVF considers the starting point for women’s football in the country. The
first Women’s Football World Championship, organised by FIFA in
1991 in Canton, China, represented the global promotion of this disci-
pline. This event pushed the South American Football Federation
(CONMEBOL) to organise a women’s South American championship
for its teams to compete for qualification for the world championship.
Venezuela was absent from the 1995 edition of the South American
Championship but participated again in 1999. Some of the pioneeering
 8 Socio-Political Dynamic of Women’s Participation in Football… 133

women in those years were Teodora González, Josefina ‘Pita’ Rodríguez

and Milagros Infante, among others. These women were the first in
Venezuela to struggle for women’s recognition in this sport, which had
been socially considered a male domain (Dunning, 1992). Women’s foot-
ball became a way to challenge for gender equality.
Since then, Venezuelan women’s football has advanced. The creation of
the Female Super League (i.e., professional women’s football champion-
ship) in 2017 initiated the professionalisation of the discipline in the
country (Requena, 2017). According to the FVF, through the Department
of Women’s Technical Development, the following are the statistics on
women in football as of 2019: 24,247 total players of which 11,473 are
older than 18, 12,684 are under 18 and 338 are registered with profes-
sional contracts; there are 269 female football clubs, 240 female coaches,
120 female referees, 92 teams in youth leagues for girls under 14 and 157
teams in youth leagues for girls under 16. Of the 109 employees of the
FVF, 48 were women. Beyond this data, there is limited information
about women, football and gender in Venezuela.

Literature Review
‘Gender’ refers to the socially structed roles, behaviours, activities and
attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men
(Council of Europe, 2014); gender equality can be defined as the result
of the absence of discrimination on the basis of a person’s sex in opportu-
nities, allocation of resources, benefits or access to services and equally
valuing the responsibilities and roles of women and men (UN Women
Turkey, 2021). Concepts of gender mainstreaming, gender equality, gen-
der equity and women’s empowerment have been identified as key drivers
for promoting women’s quality of life and sustainable social change.
Prioritising gender as an element of social change involves implementa-
tion, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs central to
achievement of gender equality (Kluka et al., 2013; United Nations,
2020). Thus, it is important to have data or studies to carry out the
respective analysis.
134 R. López de D’Amico and L. Verenzuela

Other concepts used in Latin American literature that are important to

define are the terms ‘patriarchy’ and ‘chauvinism’. In this study, a patriar-
chal society or system is one in which men have all or most of the power
and importance (Valdivieso, 2007). Male chauvinism is the belief that
men are superior to women; in this text, the authors use it to refer to the
belief or attitude that women are naturally less important, intelligent or
able than men (Hernández, 2014). It is essential to keep in mind that
sport and gender are both social constructs (Connell, 2009).
Valdivieso (2007) indicates that feminism is a social theory, a socio-­
critical theory, a political proposal built on the questioning of the patri-
archal structure of human existence; it is a concept created from the
resistance and conflict with the domination imposed by the hegemonic
establishment. Castells (1996) explains feminism as all persons and/or
groups, reflections and attitudes oriented to eliminate subordination,
inequalities and women’s oppression and to achieve, therefore, emancipa-
tion and the construction of a society in which there is no place for dis-
crimination by sex or race. Feminism promotes social transformation in
favour of human rights and women in all sectors of society. Feminist
theories are related to the knowledge, respect and interpretation of the
new relationships that women develop with sport and in particular with
football.

Feminism and Sport

Feminists in sport are the men and women who seek to eradicate gender
discrimination (Ordoñez, 2011). Feminism in sport represents the strug-
gle of men and women for women’s access to traditionally male activities,
and football is one of these (Ordoñez, 2011). This chapter examines the
socio-dynamics of women’s participation in various roles in football and
considers the issue of equal access. Football in the global context has
started to provide a platform for women’s participation and has the
chance to change from being part of the problem to being the solution.
Gallo and Pareja (2009) indicated that families were the institutions
that most questioned girls’ inclusion in boys’ games and conditioned
them to other roles and occupations they considered appropriate for girls.
 8 Socio-Political Dynamic of Women’s Participation in Football… 135

Later, however, girls no longer just wanted to accompany their brothers

to play a small-sided football match, suddenly they were also on the field
running alongside them (Pimentel, 2018).
‘Football’ has been defined in the male discourse as a sport that
demands virile strength and is a representation of machismo or patriar-
chal inspiration (Hernández, 2014). According to De Certeau (1986),
football is a space that allows for an understanding of society because it
provides a space to observe popular culture and understand how people
use this stage. Football is more than a game; it is a phenomenon that
allows for the study of modern culture and new societies from multiple
perspectives. This sport has become a global mass phenomenon and a
source of cultural identity with distinctive cultural, economic and politi-
cal effects that have been legitimised with its own tradition and history.
Nevertheless, football is the team sport most practiced by women
around the world, and many countries have professional leagues
(Chavisnan, 2018). Female football represents a social space, a path to
empowerment that opens the door to gender equality (Verenzuela &
López de D’Amico, 2018). Women’s football has evolved significantly in
the last 40 years; however, until 1970, it was only played by a minority
and was even forbidden in some countries, such as Germany and England
(Weeks, 2015). Currently, more than 30 million girls and women play
football all over the world in 209 FIFA-member associations
(Williams, 2011).
In Latin America, Hinojosa (2016)—based on her research with
women players from Argentina, Costa Rica and México—concluded that
gender inequality will not be solved by including more women in foot-
ball. Rather, inequality is related to the cultural marginalisation and
unequal economy that contributes to the notion that football is a sport
made by and for men, which creates difficulties for women to develop
professionally.
In Ecuador, McCann (2016) observed that women’s football has faced
certain challenges in competitive sport, but if women can continue play-
ing, football can provide lifelong mental benefits and abilities that could
help women succeed in the world and challenge a system with patriarchal
and chauvinist values. At the 2014 Women’s Copa America in Ecuador, a
study about social representation found that women players’ femininity
136 R. López de D’Amico and L. Verenzuela

and sexuality are put into doubt through a biological perspective that
questions their capability and abilities to perform this practice tradition-
ally considered just for men (Martínez & Goellner, 2015).

Methodology
The socio-political view of women in football from a gender perspective
in Venezuela was approached with a blended quantitative and qualitative
methodology. Hermeneutics was used to interpret socio-political reality,
with various opinions organised by categories. ‘Hermeneutics’ is the
action of interpreting a text; it is a method applicable to interpretation
science (González, 2007), so it reveals meanings that are part of what is
evident and explicit.
A sample of 10 women was selected for interviews. The following cri-
teria were used for the selection of the participants: participation in foot-
ball as a player, coach, referee and/or administrator; at least two years of
experience in each one of the roles; and availability to participate in the
interview. The interviews were conducted in several contexts and on aver-
age lasted 45 minutes each. Four of the interviewees were abroad at the
time of data collection while the others were in four different states. The
main focus of the study was on the in-depth interviews regarding wom-
en’s experiences in football. The interviewees’ responses were analysed in
the light of hermeneutic theory and the literature reviewed.
A survey also was carried out with the purpose of gathering the opin-
ions of the audience, those that attends women’s football training sessions
and matches, about women’s participation in the sport in Venezuela. This
social technique of data collection helped to get to know the voices of the
audience and their position regarding Venezuelan women’s football. The
survey was made up of 13 questions and was distributed during training
sessions, football camps, matches and a workshop session. It was a non-­
intentional sample with no other requirement than to be present as part
of the audience. Answers from a sample of 100 people were collected.
The respondents were 75% female and 25% male; participants were sepa-
rated into two age groups—the first between 36 to 50 years old and the
other 51 and older. Participants (i.e., mothers, fathers, grandmothers,
 8 Socio-Political Dynamic of Women’s Participation in Football… 137

grandfather and others) attended women’s football training sessions,

tournaments, camps, and/or workshops.

Results
Through the analysis of the in-depth interviews and the survey results,
seven categories emerged. The first category is the ‘Introduction to and
interaction with women’s football through the game with males’. When
most of the interviewees started to play football in the 1980s, they played
with males and on male teams. Some indicated that they started referee-
ing because of a friend’s influence. There was a positive and motivational
interaction, in which passion and love for the discipline made it part of
their daily lives as players, coaches, referees and leaders; however, wom-
en’s presence in football was not easily accepted.
In the beginning, many faced resistance from a parent because it was
not considered a sport appropriate for girls or women. They often
attended training sessions secretly; nevertheless, in general, their families
supported the interviewees’ participation in football. In most cases, sup-
port was influenced by an inclination towards the sport in the family
group. Despite the progress of women’s football around the world, this
has not been mirrored in Venezuela because more women players,
coaches, referees, manages and leaders still need to be incorporated into
the sport.
The interviewees credit the development of women’s football in the
country to the recent export of Venezuelan players to professional teams
around the world. At the same time, some women referees have emerged
with opportunities to officiate in international competitions. Still, they
acknowledge that a chauvinist culture persists in society that has condi-
tioned the practice and mass expansion of the sport. Consequently, this
culture impacts the political agenda, which shows little to no interest in
the development of women’s football, leading to a lack of credibility,
sponsorship, institutional support and promotion of it. The interviewees
indicated that women saw sport, and particularly football, as a powerful
means to carry out their struggle for equal rights and opportunities.
138 R. López de D’Amico and L. Verenzuela

The number of female referees is increasing, and women are beginning

to have opportunities to earn a living in the sport and thus defend wom-
en’s position in football even though they have been subjected to insults
and abuse from fans. Nevertheless, they hope that the position of women
in Venezuelan football will improve as FIFA promotes initiatives specific
to women. Similarly, the rise of new talented players and their contribu-
tion to the national team’s success will raise the sport’s profile in society.
The second category is the ‘Influence of family support on women’s
football’. According to the interviewees’ testimonies, many initially were
prohibited from playing because football was considered a waste of time
or inappropriate for women. In other cases, their families embraced foot-
ball because other family members played the sport, so they allowed the
girl(s) to play. The literature reinforces that parents should support their
children’s choice of sport and guide them but never use their bias to influ-
ence what the child wants to do during their time of leisure (Comellas,
2007). Family plays a key role in the creation of habits and autonomy
(Comellas, 2007) and can influence the shaping of sport practices, par-
ticularly during the early stages of life (Ruiz & García, 2003).
The third category is ‘Women’s presence in female football’. Women’s
football in Venezuela has grown significantly in recent years, but even
though society has been evolving and the stereotypes associated with
male and female spaces should be a thing of the past, the latter has not yet
been accomplished. It is true that female participation has increased, but
levels are still low. In the office, in positions of management, on the field
and in the stands, football has not achieved gender equality. According to
Alfaro (2012), in the sport sector, statistics are often used as a smoke-
screen to hide the real problems faced by women; these include male-­
dominant sport structures, minimal budget allocation, lower quality
resources, less media coverage of female success and activities and
restricted access to decision-making roles. Nevertheless, there is hope as
FIFA president Gianni Infantino in 2016 indicated that female football
is a priority for the organisation and that there is much more potential for
growth in women’s football than in the men’s game (Galán, 2020). Also,
the memorandum between FIFA and UN Women established the impor-
tance of gender equality (ONU Mujeres, 2019).
 8 Socio-Political Dynamic of Women’s Participation in Football… 139

Category four is the ‘Socio-cultural prevalence of women in football’.

Women are active in the sport and to become involved they have had to
overcome discrimination, rejection, social exclusion, continuous ques-
tioning about their physical capacity and doubts about their gender iden-
tity and sexual orientation. Nevertheless, women’s presence in the sport
has contributed to eliminating myths and socio-cultural barriers that
have kept women at a disadvantage in relation to their male counterparts.
Peña and Jaramillo (2001) highlight other kinds of discrimination faced
by women who play football: social strata, poor access to training spaces,
lack of sponsorship and chauvinist attitudes of their family and fans in
the stands.
‘Unequal opportunities for women in football’ is category five. The
football world is still unequal, not just in economic terms but also his-
torically, symbolically and culturally (Elsey & Nadel, 2016). The number
of female athletes has grown, but they still receive unequal treatment,
particularly because of the belief that some sporting behaviours are not
feminine. Although women’s competitions are emerging, there is no
comparison with salaries earned by male athletes. These differences are
because of a devaluation of cultural roles attributed to women. If female
players are provided with better working conditions, it is very likely that
the number of players in teams and leagues will increase and the quality
of the game also will improve. Most of the reasons for the oppression and
subordination of women in sport are related to the use of power and
privileges (Janson, 2008).
Category six is ‘Discrimination against women in football’. Interviewees
described situations of discrimination or exclusion, indicating that they
experienced bitter situations, mistreatment, a lack of adequate spaces to
practice and develop along with poor salaries and working conditions in
professional football compared to male players. A major obstacle for
women’s football is that it is still administered by men who do not value
women in sport and maintain a patriarchal generative perspective. In the
world, there are few female coaches, so women’s football is often not per-
ceived through the needs and specificities of female players, coaches, ref-
erees and leaders. Women are in a male space and are constantly faced
with discrimination, exclusion and prejudice in their daily routine, par-
ticularly in their practice. As Tamburrini (in Marugan, 2019) said, sport
140 R. López de D’Amico and L. Verenzuela

is the last bastion of machismo. It is not enough to have more female

football players; more voices and perspectives are needed to refute the
patriarchal discourse and begin to display other gender identities in
football.
The last category is ‘Football and women’. To a certain extent, women
have been included and participate in this sport. There is, however, still a
long way to go and many obstacles to overcome. There is great hope
because the success of the national women’s team has brought pleasure in
spite of the difficulties they have faced. In addition, there are now official
competitions under the guidance and management of the FVF as well as
tournaments organised by CONMEBOL and FIFA. The interviewees
suggested that women’s football could be a helpful tool to promote equal-
ity in society and contribute to improving women’s experiences in sport.
They see it as a step towards achieving real equality between men and
women, eliminating gender stereotypes, promoting inclusion and diver-
sity, integrating a gender perspective in business and politics and contrib-
uting to the improvement of public health.
The interviewees’ careers in football have been difficult and full of
obstacles, and although the sport will not change immediately, recent
data is optimistic. Nevertheless, more financial support and opportuni-
ties for development are needed for all girls, teenagers and women who
want to pursue a career in any role in this sport. Peña and Jaramillo
(2001) have indicated that football represents a kind of social empower-
ment for women, in which there is an emancipative act that frees them
from social ties. Historically, football has been monopolised by men, and
all forms of monopolisation create inequalities and subordination. Thus,
women’s struggle in football is one of gender equity and an attempt to
overcome the resistance of male power in football.
Regarding the survey results, the majority surveyed (86%) expressed
that they had a relative in the session. When asked about their relation-
ship to the player, they indicated: daughter (79%), sister (15%), niece
(4%) and friend (2%). The number of daughters is significant because it
suggests that their parents have decided to support their right to play
despite negative stereotypes.Of them, 63% indicated that women have
managed to be empowered through Venezuelan women’s football whereas
37% believe that empowerment has not yet been accomplished.
 8 Socio-Political Dynamic of Women’s Participation in Football… 141

Those who believe that football has empowered women relate this
empowerment to the international success of the national team and its
players. Nonetheless, women’s football at the grassroots level is also grow-
ing. The under-17 national team has achieved significant levels of recog-
nition after having qualified twice for the world championship (2010,
2014), achieving fourth place in 2014; they also won the South American
title in 2013 and achieved third place in 2010. In general, the presence of
women in Venezuelan football has grown, and despite ups and downs,
their presence has been made known and they continue to fight for more
space in the sport. Nevertheless, 73% of those surveyed strongly believe
that there is still discrimination against women in the sport, 13% believe
there is some form of discrimination and just 12% believe that maybe
there is no discrimination; however, no one denied that there is
discrimination.
Regarding the perception of women’s participation in Venezuelan
football today, the respondents believed that 61% are players whereas
only 10% are believed to be referees. Women’s inclusion in refereeing has
not been easy, and it has been tough to break the old structures of society
and sport. Respondents perceived that just 15% are present as coaches,
which is still a low number. Women only coach female teams, and the
number is ironically contemptible. In leadership positions, only 20% are
perceived to be active in women’s football. In terms of the women’s pres-
ence in the stands for women’s football, the response was 100%. Their
agreement with the statements is shown in Table 8.1.

Table 8.1 Social Views about Venezuela Women’s Football

Percent
What is your opinion about women’s football in Venezuela? (%)
It is a discipline that has advanced in the last years. 78
It is perfect for women’s development in society. 83
It brings health benefits. 62
It allows women’s qualities in sport to stand out. 30
It is a male space, but women have gained respect with lots of 100
dedication and effort.
It is a sport that has provided a future for women in the world in 92
their sport through quality exportation.
It is a challenge for women in the fight for gender equality. 71
142 R. López de D’Amico and L. Verenzuela

The survey results demonstrate poor promotion of women’s football in

Venezuela. Just 12% indicated that there is a push, but 88% indicated
that there is no promotion of women’s football. Therefore, more invest-
ment and dissemination are needed to encourage women to build an
identity of female football, creating its own image and language, which
could allow women in various roles in football to see themselves as being
part of this sport.

Final Remarks
The socio-political dynamic of women’s football in Venezuela indicates
that its practice has grown because of important factors such as family
support, particularly motivation or interest that parents provide to the
girls and women who play football regularly. Still, parents’ concern
regarding their daughters’ practice of a male sport is conditioned by the
cultural belief that football is a boys’ game that does not encourage femi-
nine behaviour. In this study, the nuclear family and their sporting habits
influenced the decisions of the interviewees; the barriers, limits and pro-
hibitions implemented by parents were circumstantial and based on the
typical belief that ‘football is not for girls’. Even so, parents thought that
playing football gave their daughters confidence and optimism.
Women’s representation in football has increased, but it is yet to equal
that of men, which was evident in the survey results. The interviewees
pointed out that there are some female figures who have reached signifi-
cant managerial positions even though this is perceived as a male space.
There are also women in administrative positions at the FVF, such as
Milagros Infante, former head coach of the women’s national team and
current CONMEBOL instructor. Although there are initiatives (e.g., the
offering of courses through FIFA, CONMEBOL and the FVF) to
increase the number of women referees and coaches, these actions are still
not enough.
The findings of this study in the Venezuelan context agree with the
literature on women’s football around the world, especially in terms of
women’s struggle to enter this space. It is necessary for more women to be
involved in all areas of the football system. For example, football needs
 8 Socio-Political Dynamic of Women’s Participation in Football… 143

more female journalists in the media who could bring a critical view of
female amateur and professional players; more female referees to lead the
development of the sport; more commentators who could impose their
style when narrating a game; and more female leaders in the institutions
that organise and propose changes in football. In general, we need more
female voices and insights to challenge the patriarchal voices and provide
new possibilities not only for women but also for the sport itself.

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 9
Invisible Champions: An Ethnography
of Peruvian Women’s Football
Mark Biram

Introduction
JC Sport Girls is an amateur women’s football club formed in Lima, Peru,
in 2003 by women keen to promote the sport in the metropolitan Lima
and Callao region of Peru. Driven by enthusiastic volunteers, the club
began recruiting players at open trials, solidifying a reputation as a place
where women, systematically excluded from the country’s national sport,
could participate and thrive. The JC denotes juventud comprometida (i.e.,
committed youth) and comes from feminising the name of long-standing
Callao neighbour Sport Boys—that was formed in 1927.1
From humble beginnings holding trials for local amateur players, the
club quickly gained momentum, attracting promising young players

1
Sport Boys Women joined the women’s league in 2019.

M. Biram (*)
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 147
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_9
148 M. Biram

from across the country. In the absence of sustained efforts from many of
the country’s professional clubs (excluding perhaps Club Universitario),
the stated ambition of becoming a leading club in Peruvian women’s
football was quickly attained—they have four national championships as
of 2021. For this reason, they have represented Peru four times at the
Women’s Copa Libertadores, the same number as the aforementioned
professional club Universitario.2 These achievements have not gone
unnoticed, and the club has an excellent reputation in their local barrio
(neighbourhood) Miraflores. Despite changes across the continent hint-
ing towards an increased agency through football for women (Wood,
2018), findings from this chapter indicate a significant lag in the case of
Peru in even starting to dislodge the meanings of hegemonic masculinity
that football continues to signify (Panfichi, 1999, 2014; Ruiz Bravo, 2000).
This lies in stark contrast to incursions that have been made in other
areas. For example, Afro-Peruvian women came to embody the nation as
successful volleyball players in the 1980s (Wood, 2012, p. 15) while
women surfers have also enjoyed considerable success (Wood, 2009).
Comparatively, the profile of women’s football in Peru remains extremely
low. Indeed, many of the JC Sport Girls’ players commented to the
author that it saddened them that no one back home even knew that they
were competing in the 2018 Women’s Copa Libertadores in Brazil.
I met the team on several occasions in the Amazonian city of Manaus
at the aforementioned tournament held in November and December
2018. Here, I got a feel for the situation of Peruvian women’s football
with a clear comparison with teams from other countries at the tourna-
ment. It is far from coincidental that after this tournament they have not
represented Peru again at the continental showdown. It owes much to the
paradigm shift that women’s football in South America is currently
undergoing. In particular, it can be traced to a flagship CONMEBOL
policy colloquially referred to as obligatoriedad, which (quasi-)obligates
professional clubs into having a women’s programme by denying them
entry to any CONMEBOL-sanctioned international men’s competition;
this would include the Copa Libertadores as well as the Copa

2
Sport Girls won the Peruvian Women’s Championship in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2017.
 9 Invisible Champions: An Ethnography of Peruvian Women’s… 149

Sudamericana—a less prestigious continental competition like the

Europa League—should they resist.
For the purposes of this chapter, the focus is on how a paradigm of
top-down changes is blind to effects on smaller independent clubs like JC
Sport Girls. This case study notes how the accumulated cultural capital of
such clubs has been in some sense disparaged with the onset of obligato-
riedad, posited by institutions as a year-zero, marking the start of profes-
sional women’s football. Moreover, for the players, obligatoriedad is
bittersweet. Peruvian players felt that obligatoriedad would probably trig-
ger more opportunities to earn an income from playing, but this alone
does not afford the women’s game the dignity, social standing and sup-
port that it needs. In an increasingly marketised polity, by focussing solely
on well-known (men’s) clubs, the longer and more substantive contribu-
tion of smaller, independent clubs has been decisively marginalised.
In a cold economic sense, the larger brand-name clubs are best placed
to offer the physical infrastructure necessary to advance the women’s
game. Clearly, the pull of brand-name clubs is not purely economic—it
is also derived from the accumulated cultural capital of clubs like los tres
grandes (the big three): Alianza Lima, Universitario and Sporting Cristal.
Men and women players alike have grown up supporting these clubs and
thus want not only to earn salaries and benefit from the conditions and
infrastructure of brand-name clubs but also to become part of those tra-
ditions. It is important to consider all the factors involved rather than
simply to understand the situation within the framework of a familiar
economic reductionism.
First, this chapter argues that in the absence of any concrete support
from the Peruvian Football Federation (FPF), clubs like JC Sport Girls
have been influential over the last 18 years in challenging the deep-rooted
societal prejudice that has sidelined women from the game. Indeed, such
has been the institutional neglect that the first Peruvian Women’s
Championship organised by the FPF only happened in 2019, after this
fieldwork had taken place. Nonetheless, the inherently limited role of
amateur independent clubs is acknowledged. Without significant finan-
cial support, the profile of JC Sport remains relatively low outside and
even within Lima. For this reason, it is important to acknowledge that
150 M. Biram

the challenge the club extends to a highly gendered sporting identity is

largely symbolic.
Nonetheless, women’s football finds itself at an important juncture
where affirmative action is required from football policymakers to ensure
the contribution of pioneering clubs like JC is recognized; JC is far from
being an isolated case. Prior to the incursion of the brand-name clubs in
each country, there are several clubs that have made a largely unacknowl-
edged but significant contribution to women’s football in their respective
nations. Just a few representative examples, without the intention of
excluding many others’ outstanding work, include Formas ĺntimas in
Colombia; Kindermann, São Jose and Ferroviária in Brazil; and
Estudiantes de Guárico in Venezuela.
This author argues that, with sufficient institutional support, these
clubs could provide an important counterweight to the large male clubs,
where dislodging hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 2005) to any mean-
ingful extent is challenging. With the accrued cultural capital of these
clubs in their local regions, it is reasonable to assume each could be capa-
ble of attracting significant home-match support, as has been proven by
a number of cases of popular women’s teams in Brazil.

Methodology
This chapter brings into dialogue the results of four semi-structured
interviews with club directors with the results of an anonymised survey
and follow-up semi-structured interviews carried out with all 22 players
of the JC Sport Girls squad at the 2018 Copa Libertadores in Manaus.
Taking advantage of my stay in Manaus, I also was able to meet the other
teams present in the city for the three-week tournament. Using this
opportunity, I could attend teams’ training sessions and matches, includ-
ing those of JC Sport Girls, talk to players more informally and carry out
a standardised survey and follow-up interviews with them.
This method, known as ‘convenience sampling’, involves drawing sam-
ple data from a target group who is close at hand at a given time (De
Vaus, 2013; Fowler Jr, 2013). This allowed me to collect a wide range of
comparative data that shed light on the various positions of women’s
 9 Invisible Champions: An Ethnography of Peruvian Women’s… 151

football across the continent. The tournament was comprised of 12 teams

in total: There were 10 national league champions (one from each mem-
ber association of CONMEBOL), an extra team from the host country
(Iranduba of Manaus) and the defending continental champions, Audax
(formerly Corinthians-Audax from São Paulo). JC Sport Girls was pres-
ent at the tournament as Peruvian national champions.
The survey was self-administered through group administration; the
rest of the club delegation left me for half an hour to first explain the
survey to players and then allow them time to carry it out. Group admin-
istration normally results in a higher rate of response (Fowler Jr, 2013,
p. 65) although it was clearly explained to players that participation was
entirely voluntary. In this case, all players were keen to participate, safe in
the knowledge that their participation would be anonymous. Similarly,
information from follow-up interviews has been anonymised.
The survey was explained using simple short words to ensure a consis-
tent meaning to all respondents and to minimise any possibilities for
ambiguity (Fowler Jr, 2013). Moreover, piloting was carried out in Bristol
prior to fieldwork and questions both for the survey and semi-structured
lines of inquiry were adapted according to feedback and suggestions
kindly offered by native speakers. Once again, it is fair to note that those
piloting were academics who were unaware of the lived realities of women
footballers. This turned out to be particularly apparent during fieldwork
when it became clear that answers to certain questions were skewed by
the wording in subtle ways. For example, there is a significant difference
in asking if the gender of a team manager is important or asking whether
players would prefer a female manager. In response to the first question,
players, as might be expected, said that competence was the more impor-
tant factor whereas, in the second instance, players often responded that
they did prefer a female manager.
The possibility of carrying out follow-up interviews allowed me to
clarify any such ambiguities and probe further in more nuanced ways to
represent players’ opinions as well as I could. Moreover, the diverse reali-
ties of women footballers in Brazil, where the majority of the research was
carried out and where the sport is on a comparatively stronger footing;
and Peru, where at the time of doing the research, women’s football
152 M. Biram

remained heavily marginalized. This was also abundantly clear when

meeting with the JC Sport Girls.
The survey largely respects the conventions of survey research insofar
as the majority of questions were of a closed nature to guarantee the com-
parability of data from which to draw meaningful conclusions (Fowler Jr,
2013, p. 93). Considering the dearth of information available on the
subject matter, at my own discretion I added five more open questions to
produce qualitative data. The survey also touches on the role of the media
and on allowing players an opportunity to suggest how future improve-
ments ought to be made.
These results were brought into dialogue with material from semi-­
structured interviews with directors of JC Sport Girls, which were carried
out in the early months of 2021 to supplement the earlier material col-
lected in Manaus in late 2018. Owing to the ongoing COVID-19 pan-
demic and to practicality, the more recent interviews were carried out
using Skype. These interviews explored the same broad themes contained
within the survey, albeit with the inevitably looser structure afforded by
one-to-one interviews. For both the follow-up interviews with players in
2018 and the more recent interviews carried out with institutional fig-
ures, the length of the interviews varied between 20 and 40 minutes. This
depended entirely on the level of detail offered by interviewees as well as
on the direction of the questioning. The data this chapter draws on
underwent full ethical review at the University of Bristol in September
2018 prior to commencing fieldwork.

Context
When carrying out the initial survey with the Peruvian players, a number
of them pointed out immediately that much of the phrasing of my ques-
tions pertained more to countries like Brazil where, in many cases, play-
ers could already earn a full-time living from the game and where national
league games appeared, at least sporadically, on cable or public television
channels. Similarly, they pointed out that there was an enormous dispar-
ity in terms of the length of the women’s football season and that even
 9 Invisible Champions: An Ethnography of Peruvian Women’s… 153

speaking of a season for women’s football in Peru was often not appropri-
ate or—at best, a stretch.
The case of Peru was clearly stages behind the current struggle in Brazil,
where women’s football was trying to incorporate itself into a masculin-
ised invented tradition (Biram, 2021). The breach between the official
rhetoric and the lived reality of women footballers at the time of the
fieldwork was much greater in the case of Peru. Indeed, it made a particu-
larly compelling case study because it took place in the final days of ama-
teur clubs representing Peru at the continental competition.
The first mentions of gender equality (watered down to inclusion)
appear in the FIFA Statutes in April 2016 (FIFA, 2016; Soares, 2019). It
can be speculated that this shift towards official recognition at a global
level has triggered the domino effect that caused CONMEBOL, the
South American football governing body, to initiate the aforementioned
policy of obligatoriedad. In this way, the potentially progressive and trans-
formative moment of women’s football in the country (and on the conti-
nent more generally) mirrors the wider deliberative moment in Latin
American politics and society; that is, insofar as there is an ever-present
danger of widespread street protests and social pressure neutralised by
nominal concessions that are not matched by lived reality. This disjunc-
ture is one familiar to Peruvians and thus colours many of the interac-
tions I had with players and directors from Sport Girls.
In other areas of civil life, Peruvians are accustomed to lofty rhetoric
falling short in practice. For example, the influence of the great Brazilian
educator Paulo Freire is present in Peruvian Ministry of Education policy
documents (Ramírez, 2018). The discourse promising critical emancipa-
tory pedagogy is not matched by the threadbare and traditional positivis-
tic ethos of state education (Espinal, 2021, p. 370). This gulf between
rhetoric and reality is present in the players’ views. As one player suc-
cinctly summarized: ‘para nosotras, lo que dicen es puro cuento, no se siente
acá en Perú todo eso de inclusión y la política de obligatoriedad’ (for us,
everything they say is just hot air, all the talk of inclusion and obligatorie-
dad is not felt here). Their view of the present and future is framed by a
scepticism rooted in lived experiences of hollow rhetoric. The following
section considers some of the recurring themes during my interactions
154 M. Biram

with the club hierarchy of JC Sport Girls and subsequently the view-
points of players themselves.

Discussion
The Club Hierarchy

JC Sport Girls runs four categories, an under-12, under-14 and under-17

team in addition to the senior side which is generally dominated by play-
ers in their late teens or early twenties looking for a springboard towards
playing for larger clubs. Each year the club brings in large numbers of
new players at all levels with the goal of developing them. Prior to obliga-
toriedad, the club provided several players to the Peruvian women’s
national team, although the club hierarchy emphasised a shift towards
the selection of players from brand-name clubs.
Without entering into great detail about the policy of obligatoriedad,
from the perspective of a club like JC Sport Girls, tying the growth of
women’s football to an economic sanction against brand-name clubs, the
sole focus of which generally has been men’s football until the onset of
the policy, is problematic. The economic clout of larger men’s clubs means
they are likely to dominate women’s competitions despite having done
none of the foundational work to get the women’s game off the ground.
Moreover, the number of teams realistically likely to reach the men’s
Copa Libertadores, a tournament for the highest positioned teams in
each country, reflects the ever-decreasing circles of a stale development
model. The financial rewards for participation in the men’s Copa
Libertadores have increased greatly in recent years—meaning those who
qualify frequently have pulled away from the rest, mirroring the global
trend of subdivisions within national leagues. Peru is a prime example of
this, with clubs (e.g., Alianza Lima, Sporting Cristal and Universidad San
Martin) now embracing women’s football to maintain their position at
the continental table in the men’s game.
The incursion of these teams to the women’s game has brought long
overdue financial recognition for players. Nonetheless, well-informed
 9 Invisible Champions: An Ethnography of Peruvian Women’s… 155

sources told this author that at present monthly payments fell between
200 and 1000 soles (between US$52 and 260 as of May 2021). At pres-
ent in Peru, the legal monthly minimum wage is 930 soles a month.
These stipends, concentrated largely at the lower end of the scale, are
insufficient for players to dedicate themselves solely to football and are
also clearly ridiculous relative to monthly earnings reported to fall
between 16,000 and 32,000 soles ($4000–8000 as of May 2021) for
first-team male players at the same clubs (AS Peru, 2019). Furthermore,
these salaries are only available to the better-known players—those who
have represented the women’s national team; have competed at interna-
tional events, like the women’s Copa Libertadores; or perhaps even those
with the most active social media profiles.
Broadly speaking, directors at Sport Girls feel that they have been
usurped by clubs who have not invested in women’s football and still lack
much-needed long-term programmes for player development. Even
though CONMEBOL policy stipulates the need for at least one youth
category, there is a danger that clubs only pay lip-service to this aspect
rather than carry it out wholeheartedly across a range of age categories in
the way that Sport Girls has done for the preceding 18 years.

Players’ Views and Experiences

A difference that distinguished the JC Sport Girls from other clubs was
the marked lack of insecurity and instability that characterises women
footballers’ lives. Generated by a reluctance to fully formalise the position
of women footballers within a changing scenario, ambiguity and precar-
ity (often two- or three-month contracts) are the norm in many semi-­
professionalised settings like Argentina and Colombia (ACOLFUTPRO,
2020; Garton, 2019). A consequence of this is constantly having to relo-
cate to another city, country or even continent to continue their activi-
ties. The developing transnational market and migration of players
already has been covered in the literature (Agergaard & Tiesler, 2014);
however, the focus of this work is on the push–pull factors that tend to
lead players to look largely to Europe or North America for a career.
Clearly, the great majority of players do not have these opportunities
156 M. Biram

available and have to relocate regionally or even internationally on numer-

ous occasions within a given calendar year.
For precisely that reason, I was initially surprised by the level of attach-
ment players felt for JC, an aspect that contrasted sharply with the more
transitory contexts. Seven or eight players highlighted that ‘JC Sport Girls
es como una familia para nosotras, una familia más unida que ninguna’ (JC
Sport Girls is like a family for us, a family that is more united than any
other). This resonates with the experiences of UAI Urquiza players in
Argentina, who offer a similar expression—‘nunca te olvides de dónde vin-
iste’ (never forget where you came from)—in acknowledging the club’s
ethos and formative influence (Garton, 2019, p. 75). For this reason, it is
important to acknowledge the diversity of experiences of women’s players
not only across countries but also within national contexts.
From this discovery, I continued questioning to discover that many of
the players had spent more than 10 years with the club. They spoke
warmly about how it had helped their emotional development and given
them opportunities to socialise in wider circles. Players spoke of how key
figures at the club reached out to girls from a variety of social backgrounds
and dedicated time to each of them individually. The club’s base in the
affluent suburb of Miraflores is deceptive. Players told me that the club’s
hierarchy is driven by bringing together a group from diverse back-
grounds, and they were keen to point out the various areas they each
come from. This aspect of the club has not gone unnoticed with the pass-
ing of time. For example, JC Sport Girls has benefitted from significant
funding from the local Miraflores Municipality, which recognises the
social role of the club in the community.
The players are extremely positive about the opportunities that Sport
Girls has given them—for example, travelling to Manaus to play in the
Copa Libertadores. Still, when approached individually for their opin-
ions on the wider state of women’s football in the country, the players
were initially much more reticent to comment on topics they obviously
consider far from satisfactory. After a short period of breaking the ice,
they became much more forthright. Once again, unlike players I met
from elsewhere on the continent, the Peruvian players were yet to feel any
differential or trickle effect from obligatoriedad. They were, however,
 9 Invisible Champions: An Ethnography of Peruvian Women’s… 157

aware of it, and curious to converse with players from other teams as to
what this may mean for them in the short, medium and long term.
Players felt that the development of women’s football on the continent
could broadly be divided into three or sometimes four tiers, with Brazil
as the most developed and countries, which they also felt to be semi-­
professionalised, in the middle (Garton et al., 2021). In all cases, they
grouped Peru together with Bolivia and to a lesser extent Ecuador in the
final tier. The three-week Libertadores tournament for them represented
a unique opportunity to be in contact with their counterparts from
other teams.
Informatively, in the hotel where JC Sport Girls were staying, organ-
ised by CONMEBOL, there were only two other teams (the tournament
had 12 teams in total)—Deportivo Ita of Bolivia and Union Española, an
amateur Ecuadorian women’s club, not to be confused with the Chilean
professional outfit of the same name. At the time I met them in December
2018 in Manaus, they remained unpaid amateurs, thrust fleetingly into
the limelight to play in a lopsided group including two past winners of
the women’s Copa Libertadores—Santos of Brazil and Colo Colo of
Chile. The players were keen to underline the fact that the game that
most resembled their domestic calendar would be the dead rubber for
third place in the group with Deportivo Ita of Bolivia.
The gulf in development at the group phase spoke to the deep-rooted
challenges of uneven development in women’s football across the conti-
nent. The Peruvian case warns against the temptation to extrapolate
broad conclusions for an entire continent based on one or two emblem-
atic cases, as happened in the early Anglo literature on South American
football (Mason, 1995). Fortunately, in the case of women’s football, a
burgeoning literature is bringing the necessary nuance, calling into ques-
tion institutional claims of professionalisation in Brazil (Goellner, 2021),
Argentina (Garton et al., 2021) and also in Colombia (Biram & Mina,
2021; Mina et al., 2019). In each case, claims of professionalisation were
placed under scrutiny with the idea of a state of semi-professionalisation
proposed.
For the duration of the Copa Libertadores tournament, the team was
accommodated in the industrial area of Manaus and was able to access
high-quality training facilities made available by the local women’s club,
158 M. Biram

3B da Amazônia. Perhaps for this reason, foremost in the players’ minds

at the time of carrying out the fieldwork was the comparatively appalling
standard of the pitches in their native Peru. They spoke of pitches that
would more accurately be described as a beach, others that were uneven
and could easily cause injuries. At times they even spoke of pitches where
the grass was so long that they struggled to see the ball. This is not limited
to smaller clubs or even to Peru—similar findings have been found in
Santos in Brazil (Biram, 2021). All of this is a by-product of the way
Peruvian women’s football has been structured for a number of years. The
league is also Lima-centric, a quasi-desert terrain where maintaining grass
is difficult and prohibitively expensive.
The tournament essentially runs first at district level, after which dis-
trict winners compete at a provincial level and only then does the final
tournament at a national level take place. In this way, responsibility for
running a women’s tournament is passed down to the provinces and even
to local districts. It is at least theoretically possible that the involvement
of Peru’s larger clubs will slowly start to remedy the lamentable condi-
tions in which tournament games are played. Nonetheless, it is worth
noting that several professional clubs from across the continent have
already chosen to base the women’s operation at entirely separate facilities
to the men’s team, using training grounds for official matches. Thus,
nothing can be taken for granted in this regard.
The players had no trouble joining the dots in terms of the intercon-
nected nature of their marginalisation. One, for example, proffered the
following: ‘¿Cómo podemos esperar que los medios de comunicación se intere-
sen por nosotros cuando se juega siempre en tan malas condiciones?’ (How
can we expect the media to be interested in covering us when we always
play in such poor conditions?). This remark is representative of the play-
ers’ awareness of the complexities of the problem.
An agenda for change would require the full incorporation of women’s
football into national federation calendars—this includes a full friendly
schedule for national teams and a season of reasonable length for wom-
en’s teams held at appropriate facilities. The players were acutely aware of
what needs to be done and were able to spell out a coherent agenda of
changes in less than five minutes. The players realise that only when these
 9 Invisible Champions: An Ethnography of Peruvian Women’s… 159

steps are completed will it be possible to get a reasonable audience from

national and international media.
Academically, there has been a tendency to focus on the shifting nature
of pejorative media coverage (Mina & Goellner, 2015; Mourão & Morel,
2008), or on the lack of visibility of women’s football (Goellner, 2005;
Rial, 2013). This certainly rings true in the Peruvian case, but players felt
that much of the problem stems from institutional neglect of the wom-
en’s game. Along similar lines, there has been a disproportionate focus on
national teams, rather than on the everyday experiences of women’s foot-
ball and the gradual transition towards professionalisation. This has been
addressed in part by the insightful participant ethnography of Gabriela
Garton (2019), Guerreras: fútbol, mujeres y poder, in which she reflects on
her experiences with Club UAI Urquiza. There is a clear need for further
in-depth research on countries like Peru, which lags significantly behind
other countries on the continent, as the players were keen to impress on
this author.
When asked about their aspirations for the coming year, with the onset
of obligatoriedad, one player offered optimistically: ‘El próximo año todo se
vuelve profesional, nos gustaría ganar un poco de dinero para que nos sirva de
algo. Siempre lo hemos visto como un hobby. Lamentablemente en el fútbol
femenino no hay apoyo económico acá’ (Next year, it will all become profes-
sional; we would like to earn a bit of money so all the effort is worth it.
We’ve always seen it as a hobby. Sadly, women’s football has no financial
support here). These comments underline how Peru was a couple of
development stages behind many of its neighbours at the time of carrying
out fieldwork, but they also hint at the gradual drift towards change.
Understandably, players were eager for their efforts to be rewarded by
being paid and recognised as professionals, but from some of their
remarks about belonging to a family, there are many positive aspects of an
endeavour, like Sport Girls, that many would also like to retain.
As alluded to earlier, certain players have greater reach than others
because of substantial followings on social media. For example, Xioczana
Canales and Xiomara Canales, two sisters who have both starred for the
Peruvian national team, have 10,000 and 22,000 followers on Instagram,
160 M. Biram

respectively.3 This was, perhaps, a contributory factor in attracting a

brand-name club wishing to make a marquee signing to signal their seri-
ousness when they opened female divisions in 2019. Understandably,
given their status as international footballers, they were keen to gain
experience, but many questions remain about the level of commitment of
professional clubs in Peru set against the highly committed amateurism
of Sport Girls. This is to say, despite the prestige attached to the brand-­
name clubs, there are still no guarantees in Peru of a serious operation
being run for the women’s teams.
With the thrust of current policy, which focuses almost solely on
brand-name clubs, there is a danger of an abrupt transition from players
participating at clubs like Sport Girls, which see their role in terms of
social responsibility and community value, to transitory roles playing for
indifferent brand-name clubs, which have often done little or nothing to
support women’s football, and now are involved in satisfying
CONMEBOL legislation. Of course, this is not always necessarily the
case. Of the big three, Universitario had a women’s team long before
obligatoriedad, about which JC players spoke positively. For this reason,
recognising the agency of each club to run their operation as they see fit,
further research into specific cases would strengthen the current litera-
ture. Moreover, strategic support for smaller independent clubs may
smooth this, until now, abrupt transitional period that brings opportuni-
ties but also challenges.

Conclusion
The case of JC Sport Girls is a representative one for several smaller inde-
pendent clubs that have made considerable efforts to promote women’s
football and tackled deep-rooted societal stereotypes with motives that go
beyond economic gain. For that reason, a progressive polity would look
to harness and grow the cultural capital of such clubs to create a sense of
tradition in the women’s game.

3
Their Instagram handles are @xiomara_canales_oficial and @xioczana-canales.oficial, respectively.
 9 Invisible Champions: An Ethnography of Peruvian Women’s… 161

Women’s football on a continental level has reached an important

intersection whereby progress needs to be underscored not only by legis-
lation but also by affirmative action to address structural inequalities and
to offer much-needed accountability. The perspectives and experiences of
players, discussed in this chapter, speak to this breach. Players are reluc-
tant to believe in the rhetoric of football authorities because they are too
accustomed to their lived reality. They are acutely aware of the lack of
media coverage in Peru. They are conscious of the egregious playing con-
ditions they have had to tolerate for a long time, and they know that in
many cases, until the onset of obligatoriedad, many of the brand-name
clubs had done little or nothing to address the highly gendered nature of
football in the country. Conversely, they recognise the genuine intentions
behind smaller independent clubs.
Much of this can be addressed only with a coordinated plan juxtapos-
ing policy with accountability. Moreover, it is crucial that the route wom-
en’s football takes in Peru is not governed by prevailing economic
reductionism. Brand-name clubs may have better resources financially
than clubs like Sport Girls, but they are not necessarily better equipped.
To operate at their best, players need stability and much of the develop-
ment work JC Sport Girls offers players. For this reason, capital alone
does not mean that large clubs will ‘do women’s football’ better. Indeed,
brand-name clubs could learn a lot about the needs of women’s football
by learning from the experiences of clubs like JC.
Only by involving the actors who have sustained women’s football for
the past decades will Peruvian women’s football be able to guarantee that
the necessary level of commitment and vitality meets the coming chal-
lenges. In turn, this would require, if not wholesale institutional changes,
at least representation in the Peruvian Football Federation for actors who
have given so much to the women’s game.

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 10
Mexican Women and Academics Playing
Football
Ciria Margarita Salazar,
Isela Guadalupe Ramos Carranza,
and Emilio Gerzaín Manzo Lozano

Introduction
Risk, strategy, skill, strength and movement have always been considered
man’s domain. Sport is a field that seems to exemplify this view. Mexican
women live at a crossroads between historical tradition and the change of
roles demanded by current times and equality policies. The economic,
social and scientific development of Mexico, a country centred on male
power (Kuper, 2015), constitutes a panorama of various social ranges,
idiosyncrasies and identities. There is an advance towards progress in
areas originally intended for men, and at the same time, a challenge to
leave behind the roles and labels that have defined women’s participation
in public life (Galeana, 2013).
Sports, football in particular, used to have an exclusively male pres-
ence, hegemonic in sporting development and television audiences

C. M. Salazar (*) • I. G. Ramos Carranza • E. G. Manzo Lozano

University of Colima School of Education, Colima, Mexico
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 165
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_10
166 C. M. Salazar et al.

(Ramirez, 2018). Now women are making progress on the football field
with the creation of the Professional League five years ago and, beyond
the sporting model of the maximum circuit’s affiliates, Mexican women
have also found a niche of opportunity to continue promoting football
with a gender perspective from and within academia.
Such is the case of the present chapter on women academics and pro-
fessors at Mexican public universities, former and current players who
combine study and human resource training with their participation in
semi-professional and local leagues. The academics, from their respective
fields, have promoted feminist actions, encouraged participation in ama-
teur contexts and reached national teams, drawing attention to the need
for growth during the years prior to the emergence of Liga MX Femenil
(i.e., Women’s MX League). Therefore, it is relevant to understand the
positions and perspectives on the advancement of women in football and
the sport of women’s football players who study and/or teach at Mexican
public universities.
The chapter was prepared in two sections, the first with an anthropo-
logical and narrative approach that includes the following four topics: (1)
the evolution of Mexican women’s public participation, (2) the Mexican
women’s body in movement—from illegitimate to legitimate, (3) the
football culture in Mexico and the arrival of women and (4) university
football as the platform for the Liga MX Femenil. The second section
discusses the results and is based on the empirical method used to describe
the initiations and motivations for playing football, as well as gender
stereotypes, social transformations and the perception of change or the
development of women in the sport field.

 volution of Mexican Women’s

E
Public Participation
The figure of the Mexican woman with a languid, dreamy look rests in a
window frame and listens to a young man serenade her on a horse accom-
panied by a mariachi or a guitar. She waits, barely smiles, and at the end
of the song the man approaches her and takes her in his arms. There is no
resistance, only a surrender and placidity that reflects the scene of many
 10 Mexican Women and Academics Playing Football 167

nationalist films of the 1930s and 1940s—the so-called Mexican Golden

Age (Blanco, 1993).
Overtaken by social reality, the imagery of cinema provokes effects that
are not favourable for the development of women; it seems that meeting
one’s beloved and marrying him will result in the resolution of any
female’s conflict. Femininities are even limited because it is a matter of
imposing a model without accepting variations (Loaeza, 1995a). The
male–female polarisation and the weighing/hierarchisation of the former
over the latter has historically led to the invisibility of the female’s actions.
Let us think of a form of a Mexican ecosystem built on a masculine
axis, while everything feminine is kept on the periphery, a cognitive
centre-­periphery metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1983), where power is
concentrated at the axis (i.e., in men). At the same time, a silent construc-
tion of movement provokes the feminine lethargy, the simulation of
doing nothing—translated into the denial of the fact—into becoming an
alternate movement that remains parallel so as not to narrow and thus
destroy the metaphor from which it was posed.
During the Spanish conquest, the role of Malitzin (Glanz, 2013) was
decisive for the Spaniards to dominate the Aztec people because the prin-
cess became a slave and was given as an offering to those of the peninsula.
She stands out for her gift of languages and her knowledge of customs
and idiosyncrasies, attributes that brought her closer to Captain Hernan
Cortes and enabled her to subjugate the imperial city of Tenochtitlan.
The reviled interpreter—from then until today—had a dark end, and
her role in the history of Mexico remains a matter of debate. Sor Juana
Ines de la Cruz (Soriano, 2020) was noted for her great literary ability,
captivating several viceroys while in defiance of the almost angelic status
of a woman at the time. Although her work is now recognised, she
remains a unique case in all of colonial Mexico. She lived cloistered to pay
the price of knowledge.
On the path to independent Mexico, among the many women who
took part in the rebellion against the Spanish crown, the name of Leona
Vicario appears. She, along with her husband Andres Quintana Roo,
took up the fight and entered the battlefield. Later, she refused to join the
court of the Austrian Empress Carlota, wife of Maximilian, who founded
the Mexican Empire without much success and with a tragic end
168 C. M. Salazar et al.

(National Institute of Historical Studies of the Revolutions of

Mexico, 2020).
The vicissitudes of Mexican women can be enumerated one by one;
names are gradually uncovered and ennobled, breaking through the wall
of silence that once restrained them. The transgressions are not long in
coming: Amelio Robles (Rocha, 2019) participated in the armed move-
ment of 1910 and was recognised for his military capacity, for his brave
character in confronting the enemy. He retired with honours, but his real
identity appears in the records as Amelia de Jesus Robles Avila. A trans-­
man—a woman who joins the war hiding her gender.
The panorama of outstanding women in Mexico during the twentieth
century moves the mechanisms of the present, and in another millen-
nium, it will be necessary to build a clean, wide and luminous path for
equitable treatment where diversity is the great difference that unites
humanity.

 ovement of Mexican Women’s Bodies:

M
From Illegitimate to Legitimate
Without the advances generated by the women of the twentieth century,
it would have been difficult to make inroads into unimaginable fields
(Galeana, 2013). The actions of these women allowed progress to make
its way ever more firmly into the public sphere and into originally mas-
culinised fields, including the body and movement (Salazar &
Manzo, 2020).
The public figure of Mexican women, as elsewhere, is framed by ste-
reotypes. From childhood, being a woman implies differentiation in
treatment, a subordination to the presence of men in the home, whether
fathers, brothers or close relatives. Their physical development presup-
poses less resistance and competitive power to respond to patterns where
creativity and intellect are less important than their sensitivity
(Blanco, 1993).
The management of the female body is at a crossroads between objec-
tification, where the physical body is overvalued and directly related to
 10 Mexican Women and Academics Playing Football 169

the satisfaction of exclusively sexual and reproductive male pleasure, and

the transformative proposal to break with the stereotypes and imposed
schemes to achieve liberation and control of its structure (Coral-Diaz,
2010). Beauty (entirely relative and abstract), fragility, enduring youth,
the immobile state of their corporal image (Loaeza, 1995b), only provoke
a permanent state of dissatisfaction in the face of the changes that the
present time offers.
The body, male or female, is surrounded by the group, class, geograph-
ical region and culture (Bourdieu, 2000) and provokes a rapprochement
by affinity, the identification by resemblance of the one who holds the
strength and power with the one who is endangered. As occurs between
nations, as seen throughout history, with similarities to colonisation, one
gender dominates another; memory makes masculinity seem more
important (Jimenez, 2012). The male body suggests strength, achieve-
ment, triumph. The feminine is assumed, on the contrary, to polarise the
coexistence of both, a situation that takes on distinct tones in today’s
societies but that, for reasons of permanent memory (Gonzalez & Melero,
2012), is anchored in the tradition—that is, where everything that refers
to confrontation, achievement, strength and movement evokes the man.
In recent generations, the feminine, in a process of structuring–
destructuring–restructuring, opens the possibility of establishing new
forms of male–female relationships. This paradigm shift is proactive and
likely to increase, on the one hand, the visibility of feminine work in all
social fields; and on the other, the recognition of its potential in the
change of tasks dedicated or defined as masculine (Venegas et al., 2015).
The practice of football has allowed the social figure of Mexican women
to make inroads into a patriarchal field. Subsequently, with the support
of gender policies during the 1960s and 1970s, together with the expan-
sion of opportunities through the International Olympic Committee
(IOC), female participation in the sport grew with a higher competitive
level and professional character (Ulloa et al., 2017).
The various ways of experiencing football within Mexican society must
be observed from several spheres; contextual and historical considerations
provoke permanent discussions from and within the feminine vision.
Football mobilises women in a social and sporting sense, and the hori-
zons of this process are analysed in the following. In Mexico, the public
170 C. M. Salazar et al.

practice of football dates back to the 1960s, preceded by the English

feminist movements (Santillan & Gantus, 2010).

 exico’s Football Culture and the Arrival

M
of Women
The historical roots of football in Mexico date back to the nineteenth
century with the arrival of British immigrants, who initiated the practice
of football as a form of recreation and entertainment. In a short time, this
new sport spread to the children and young people of the country, espe-
cially Mexico’s upper classes, who played it in their schools, where foot-
ball had been incorporated into the curriculum with the intention of
motivating students through collective entertainment (Angelotti, 2008).
Football, as a pedagogical tool, constituted the ideal means to train the
new generations in the benefits of associative activities, promoting actions
organised around common objectives, even though it would ultimately
become a professional, massive, normalised and institutionalised sport
through the form of club companies (Angelotti, 2005).
Traditionally, football has become part of Mexican culture, with vari-
ous meanings as a manifestation of nationality or masculinity, within the
considerations for coexistence in a communal party. Likewise, it involves
artistic, political, social and economic manifestations that produce
approaches beyond the sporting field (Alabarces, 2003). In this sense,
Ferreiro (2003) mentions that football is an ideal laboratory to under-
stand the complex antagonistic ritual between fans.
Rivalries do not recognise borders, race, religion nor social position,
but they do identify gender in terms of a label placed on a person. At the
same time, there has been an assumption that only men play football;
that is to say, for spectators, men are a reference for practice. There is a
certain masculinisation of football; male footballers take into account the
criteria of winning or participating, even as female footballers highlight
other values such as helping or encouraging (Acuna-Gomez &
Acuna, 2016).
 10 Mexican Women and Academics Playing Football 171

In 1970, the press played a fundamental role in the dissemination,

promotion and development of women’s football when the first Women’s
Football World Championship was held in Italy and a year later when it
was organised in Mexico. These competitions led the International
Federation of Association Football (FIFA) to consider the option of a
women’s version of the World Cup. An invitation was made and only 12
nations agreed to participate, including Mexico; however, the first FIFA
Women’s World Cup would not be held until 1991 in China (Santillan
& Gantus, 2010).
In Mexico, since the 1960s, women have openly played football; how-
ever, it would take dozens of years for there to be a professional Women’s
Football League there. On December 5, 2016, Enrique Bonilla,1 presi-
dent of the Liga MX Varonil (Men’s MX League) at that time, announced
the birth of the Liga MX Femenil to be launched in 2017. The women’s
teams correspond directly to the men’s teams of each MX league-­registered
one, ushering in a new era of women’s participation in football (Lopez &
Robles, 2019).

 niversity Football as the MX Professional

U
League’s Platform
Women, as the story goes (Angelotti, 2008), began to play in the streets
or on the courts of the Mexican plains in the company of friends, neigh-
bours and/or relatives; later came the organisation of neighbourhood
clubs or teams, followed by the integration of federated sport and the
creation of municipal and state leagues (Angelotti, 2005). This expansion
allowed schools to participate in national events for children and
youngsters, as well as first-division tournaments sponsored by phone or
soft drink companies.
Then, hand in hand with the promotion of the University Games,
women’s sport was opened in the universities, and the growing push led

1
Source: Lopez, C. & Robles K. (2019). Mexican women’s football: almost half a century of history
and barely three years of being a reality. https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2019/04/10/
el-futbol-femenino-mexicano-casi-medio-siglo-de-historia-y-apenas-tres-anos-de-ser-una-realidad/
172 C. M. Salazar et al.

these institutions to find the best football players in the country and give
them scholarships to build competitive teams. Some of the Liga MX
Femenil teams are now university franchises made up mostly of female
players who have been recruited with the primary idea of studying and
playing at the same time, as Coronado (2020) mentions; and their per-
formance in the classroom and on the field synergise to consolidate Liga
MX Femenil during each season.
The proposal to use university players to reinforce the Liga MX Femenil
is based on the university sports model in the United States. The univer-
sity competitions are separated into State-level, then national and then
the teams are inducted into professional football. Its main characteristic
is its diversity and decentralisation without the intervention of the
Ministry of Education (Terol, 2006).
The sense of identity that a football team can generate is closely linked
to the university or team to which a person belongs. University football
teams are a link to professional identity; prior to 2017, it was the closest
thing to being professional. Yet, players were limited to competing for
four or five years depending on their degree. Nonetheless, university
sport became a platform for young people to select academic continuity
through sports scholarships that consisted of financial support to pay for
their studies.
University sport creates situations of professional belonging where
wearing the team’s shirt is also assuming the identity of professional prac-
tice. The university as an institution that generates knowledge is a place
where the sport of football is an object of scientific study and a generator
of the knowledge that society seeks to produce (Rivera, 2005). In the
same way, being part of a group, collective or team breaks with daily uni-
versity life. According to Connor Bracken (2020), in the case of women
football players who compete at a high level and study, they remain highly
motivated in both academic and sporting spheres. Also, research has indi-
cated that women who exercise get greater brain stimulation and increased
energy levels, which leads to the improvement of their perception of well-­
being, self-esteem and regulation of cognitive processes, leading to better
academic performance (Yoshiharu, 1996; Gruber, 1986; Ceballos
et al., 2000).
 10 Mexican Women and Academics Playing Football 173

Women academics and university students playing football are a new

category of study; nowadays, the conditions of sporting opportunities,
advances in terms of public gender policies and the social perception of
women playing football have changed. Today, these women are academ-
ics, but they are also top-level and/or professional players in a
national league.

 he Methodological Process for Broadening

T
Women Footballers’ Perspective
To approach this group of women located in the country’s public univer-
sities, a qualitative methodological process was designed with an anthro-
pological and constructivist approach. In the absence of references to
previous similar studies, it is useful to confront the object of knowledge
and order the data available for analysis (Arnold, 1998). Constructivist
research makes it possible to analyse the human experience and provide
the structure for data analysis. ‘

Human-observer and social systems are suspended in networks of mean-

ings, co-participatively produced and externalised through language, which
constitute their horizons of reality’ (Arnold, 1998, p. 32).

The data-collection technique used was the interview, which Roberto

Hernandez-Sampieri and Paulina Torres (2018) define as a meeting in
which a person (the interviewer) and another person or persons, converse
and exchange information about a topic through questions and answers,
and communication and co-construction of meanings regarding the
topic addressed is carried out. The instrument used was a semi-structured
interview guide consisting of 34 questions divided into three main sec-
tions: (1) gender tasks and their current discussion (14 items), (2) gender
stereotypes and social transformations (7 items), and (3) the changing
female paradigm in sport versus academic life (13 items). The interviews
offered access to the interviewees everyday life and experiences, perspec-
tives and opinions on the topic addressed.
174 C. M. Salazar et al.

Female academics who play football were selected using the snowball
technique—‘a technique for finding research subjects. In it, one subject
gives the researcher another name, and the researcher provides the name
of a third, and so on’ (Atkinson & Flint, as cited in Baltar & Gorjup,
2012, p. 132). At the end of the process, there were 14 subjects, all
Mexican women who study at a postgraduate level or work in public
universities as professors and play at a university, semi-professional and/
or professional level.
The application of the instrument was carried out between the months
of February and April 2021 through videoconferencing on the Google
Meet platform. This facilitated access to these women, as their sporting
and academic commitments kept them busy while the distances between
cities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic made face-to-face meet-
ings difficult.

 niversity Women Playing Football: Reality

U
and Challenges
The analysis of the construction made by university women who play
football, referring to the tasks of gender and its current discussion was
developed under the scheme of semantic association (Arellano, 2015)
and interpretation of discourse (Leon, 2015) and applied to each response
to the questions asked. The participants in the study were composed of
10 women who live and play football in the State of Nuevo Leon, an
industrial locality—one of the three most populated in Mexico—border-
ing the United States, whereas the rest of the participants were from the
central and western regions of Mexico.
The average age of the interviewees was 31.9 years of age; 4 have a
master’s degree, 2 have a doctorate and 2 have a bachelor’s degree. Seven
of the women have a job associated with exercise science and three were
in administration. Half were teachers or members of the academic com-
munity, 30% collaborate with university centres and 20% were postgrad-
uate scholarship students and have sporting functions at the institution.
 10 Mexican Women and Academics Playing Football 175

Eight informants had a late start in their sporting careers; they were
not able to begin until secondary school or even had to wait until they
came of age before deciding to play at the university. In their experiences,
we found a lack of sport initiation opportunities or programmes, sport
promotion campaigns, sport role models, social and sport support from
family and peers and a gender-sensitive sport culture. It is the student
sport system that allows these women academics who play football to
access the sport in an autonomous, independent and socially protected
way through school representation and the comprehensive training pro-
vided by the sporting discipline (see Table 10.1).
Social labelling of women footballers is associated with discrimination
or aggression because of prejudice and lack of social recognition. In other
words, labelling women with words that associate incomplete masculin-
ity (i.e., homosexuality) or anomaly (Butler, 2007), as Didier Eribon
(2004) points out, perpetuates mental and cultural structures that sustain
inferiority, condemnation and rejection. Strauss (in Butler, 2007), from
the theory of sexual oppression and the limitations of the body, explains
how these representations of women footballers condition the equality of
men and women in relation to a political, social and cultural systems that
explains their capacities within the framework of a hostile sexism in
which patriarchal culture oppresses women in various areas of life. It is
understandable that many women drop out at an early age or wait until
an advanced age to take up football again (Montoya, 2012).
The words related to masculinity are: machorra, marimacha and
guacha,2 whereas those associated with homosexuality are lesbian and
Ranma 1/23 (see Diagram 10.1). Luisa Orozco and Dignora Usuga (2018)
define ‘butch’ women or tomboys as masculine women who develop
longings for other women and have short hair and masculine clothing,
posture and movement. These adjectives express a fear of the masculinisa-
tion of women (Eribon, 2004) as well as significant discrimination against
women who participate in disciplines that break with the feminine—the
delicate.
2
Translated to English, these terms mean butch, tomboy and slut.
3
Ranma 1/2 is a character from a Japanese Anime, which tells the story of a young martial artist
who was cursed by falling into a lake. When he encounters cold water, he turns into a woman and
returns to his male version in warm water.
176 C. M. Salazar et al.

Table 10.1 Beginnings in the Practice of Football and the Motivational Elements
for Deciding to Enter Competitive and Professional Football
Motivation for starting
Informant Beginnings in football football
1 In secondary school is when I started I saw a live match of the
to know about sporting events, and Mexican national team
that’s when I became more versus Barcelona.
interested in being or belonging to a
team.
2 I had certain skills that distinguished I struggled to find a place
me from the rest of the girls and to start playing on a team
boys, but I couldn’t play. and it wasn’t until high
school that I was able to.
3 I started playing football when I was The team belonged to the
five years old, and I have played family, so social support
football all my life. I played in a team was an important
of adults. motivation.
4 Very interested in participating in the Motivated always by the
different activities that were carried coach that I was included
out in the schools. in the teams.
5 Until I was 11 years old, I was playing I was encouraged to go to
in the street and in physical university to play
education classes in primary school football; they had a team
there.
6 I started at the age of five in a I was attracted by the
children’s football team. matches and the press
reports, the coverage of
the Mexican national
team.
7 I started in the sport very young, when No answer
I was five or six years old when I
entered primary school, so I was
always aiming for the teams from
that level.
8 I started playing in high school, that’s My father was a coach and
when I really started to have the his work made me feel
qualities to be at university team confident to practice.
levels.
9 I was playing in the street. and I had The university league made
the opportunity when I was in fifth me feel that I could play
or sixth grade to start. at a good level.
10 In secondary school, when I started No answer
playing fast football and I continued
all through secondary school, then
high school and finally in
undergraduate school.
 10 Mexican Women and Academics Playing Football 177

Marimacha
(4 mentions)

Ranma 1/2 Machorra

(1 mention) (3 mentions)
Women
footballers
label

Guacha Lesbian
(2 mentions) (3 mentions)

Diagram 10.1 Representation of the labels applied to women footballers

The stereotyping of gender and social transformations in the lives of

female football players is inscribed in their own representation of gender,
feminist empowerment and female leadership (see Diagram 10.2). A
binary sex-gender perspective is observed in their definition of gender
(Butler, 2007), and only four players came close to the social structure of
masculine or feminine. In the case of feminism, the relationship that can
be seen is closer to a social movement with an ideology that seeks equity
as well as equal rights and opportunities (Ordonez, 2011). This vision is
connected to the representation achieved through empowerment and
leadership: feeling rebellious, outstanding, free, intelligent, autonomous,
persistent and with rights, which makes the woman determined to con-
tinue seeking development opportunities for younger generations.
The perception of change that university women footballers construct
with respect to sports is underwritten by the visibility of achievements
and a greater presence of public policies for women and opportunities in
decision making (see Table 10.2). These achievements do not indicate
that a gender policy is being followed in sport, rather several of these
progressive advances are driven mainly by global feminist movements
(Klavenes et al., 2020) and, to a lesser extent, the development of policies
178 C. M. Salazar et al.

Women´s
Gender Feminism Empowerment
leadership

Rebel
Sexual Outstanding
Equity (3)
orientation (2) Free Competent
Rights
Identification Intelligent Empowered
(2) Current
Single Autonomy
Sexual role (2) Definition
Fighter Enterprising
Equality Ideology
Assumes her Bossy
Characteristics Social rights Responsible
movement (2)
Tendency Hardworking

Diagram 10.2 Representation of the words gender, feminism, empowerment

and women’s leadership

of global organisations such as the United Nations (UN), the UN

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and
the IOC.
One of the most significant achievements in the last five years has been
the formalisation of the Liga MX Femenil, which brings together the best
Mexican women footballers in sports affiliates that play in the top circuit
of Mexican football. It initially started as a quota (Poncela, 2011), an
obligation,4 and in the second year it became an outcome with unex-
pected audience reach and record-breaking numbers in Internet

4
In Mexico, the theory of the representation movement had a great impact on the recognition as a
right for women to achieve representation and parity in various public scenarios, together with the
reforms carried out by FIFA in 2016 to promote the development of women’s football, which led
to teams in the men’s league having a women’s team in the same division as a rule of
participation.
 10 Mexican Women and Academics Playing Football 179

Table 10.2 Women Academic Football Players’ Perceptions of Change and

Opportunity for Women Today
Unit of
analysis Perception of change
Sporting Well, I think that there is a very drastic process of change; I think
progress that now the exposure of women’s sport has increased a lot. (I1)
Empowering sportswomen has allowed us to demand more. (I2)
When I started, there were no women referees; there were no
women to lead the teams. (I3)
There are very, very good female players who the world does not
know as well as the men who are very famous and who even go
to other foreign leagues to play. (I4)
Progress has been made in the participation of women in sport,
marketing, sales, politics, social material for politics. (I5)
I think they already have many opportunities; you can even make
a living from some sports. (I6)
There is more openness from all the structures of sport, talking
about sportswomen as such, coaches, referees, people who are
in technical management. (I10)
Public Some struggles and initiatives for wage differences between
policies female and male athletes. (I1)
I know some proposals of political parties, but not political as
such. (I2)
The Law on Physical Culture and a PILARES programme that
addresses women’s demands around sport. (I3)
Little. (I4)
No. (I5)
Changes in the rules of the Football League that protect women
with their salary if they become pregnant. (I6)
I don’t really know much about public policy; I don’t know much
about this. (I10)
(continued)
180 C. M. Salazar et al.

Table 10.2 (continued)

Unit of
analysis Perception of change
Decision There are more women directors of sports institutes. (I1)
making In the MX League, women have arrived at the head of sports
projects and teams. (I2)
There is a lack of women leaders. (I3)
The cases I know of do not know the core of sport; they have got
to know it when they are put in that sporting or administrative
position. (I4)
They have been very good; the first director of sports institutes at
a national level lasted 12 years, which has allowed the openings
for other women. Currently, there are 7 out of 32 in states and a
national director. (I9)
There are women directors who were sportswomen, who trained
in the area and who are also academics and researchers, which
indicates enormous progress and offers certainty about
decisions. (I10)
I = Informant

broadcasting,5 stadium attendance and the sales of products and club

shirts, indicating the increasing interest of young women footballers in
following the new Mexican women’s football stars. Thus, regarding the
Liga MX Femenil, the women academics are of the opinion that:

I3: It is in development, it is growing, it seems to me that there are many

things that can be improved … it lacks many adaptations, much more
support from the directors, more exposure.
I5: Excellent project, which lacks economic support, the same conditions
for women’s as for men’s teams.
I6: It is a growing league, with a great future if it is given the recognition
it deserves … people became interested in women’s football, some-
thing that the clubs did not expect. They broke so many records of full
5
Women’s teams in 2021 generated almost 52 million interactions across Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram and YouTube, with growth in the digital environment derived from low engagement in
the traditional media environment. Source: El Mister: https://elmister.substack.com/. Women’s
football fans found in digital media the opportunity to follow and be part of the Liga MX Femenil
story; this is corroborated by Nielsen Sports, MX League and HR Ratings that on average there are
between 257,000 and 300,000 people watching Liga MX Femenil matches every week, which gives
women’s football approximately 10.2 million viewers per year (only for the 34 regular season dates).
 10 Mexican Women and Academics Playing Football 181

stadiums, streaming, goals, everything, and I think that the league did
not expect that.
I9: Now the matches are broadcast on Facebook or on one of the team’s
channels because they are looking for that interaction with all the peo-
ple; there are matches that have 15–20,000 viewers, 10,000 views.
I10: I have followed press releases or videos; I think it is good, the fact
that I know that some of the graduates of the faculty participate there,
the fact that they are young, that they have recognition beyond being
athletes, as people, as professionals is what makes it extraordinary.

The effects that Liga MX Femenil has had on women footballers in the
country go in two directions: the first towards the transformation to a
professional profile—today, a female footballer must be dedicated to dis-
cipline, maintain optimal physical preparation, mental toughness and
sporting adaptability (relying on ‘invisible training’) while possessing a
minimum academic preparation or using media resources to further her
education—– and the second corresponds to a social impact related to
the deconstruction of the masculinised imaginary of Mexican football. In
other words, the political impetus of FIFA and consequently FEMEXFUT,
as well as media exposure, led to the normalisation and homogenisation
(Butler, 2007) of women playing football, as these informants noted:

I1: Today, girls can see football as a job; we always saw it as a hobby
and pastime.
I6: In the news, women’s football is now being shown more and
more often.
I10: It is already a possible scenario to be a professional.

Finally, women academic footballers, as a generation of transformation

and empowerment, now see that the great opportunity to change the
imaginary, the panorama and the showcase spectacle is possible, to the
extent that:

I1: Playing at a good level of football and with values shows the physical
and mental strength of this new generation.
I2: Sports projects with a high level of professionalisation.
182 C. M. Salazar et al.

I4: Ignore social labels; just be a woman who plays football.

I6: The new generation of football players must prepare themselves to be
professionals.
I9: Congruence in sporting life, public life, to be a role model, to inspire
and be a parameter.

Conclusions
The group of women who study or work in tertiary educational institu-
tions has a very different way of seeing football than other groups of
women footballers, such as those who were not able to study for a univer-
sity degree and those who have reached the professional football league
with degrees or just because they are very talented. When we reflect on
the diversity of women footballers, it is clear that there is not a single
category of women; there are university women, women from the
Mexican plains, women from sports clubs, women from veteran leagues,
women from the national team or those who play in professional leagues
in Mexico and the world. This study’s category of university women foot-
ballers is one that experiences sporting independence through the stu-
dent sector, understood as the school representative space; in other words,
the permissiveness of the family and society protects and approves of
them when they represent their school, high school or university in events
organised by educational institutions.
The social structure of their position on the playing field, with respect
to their sporting and human rights, is firm and powerful; they are deter-
mined to seek conditions to improve their opportunities, and especially
those of the next generations. The academics who play football under-
stand that feminism is an ideological current and a mechanism to rein-
force and intellectually train women to empower themselves to assume
sporting leadership in the face of the challenges they face in the develop-
ment of grassroots sport and the working and sporting conditions of the
professional world.
The academics who play football emphasise the perception of progress
and advancement of women in sport as great advances, but not yet
enough to be transformed into tangible opportunities for themselves and
 10 Mexican Women and Academics Playing Football 183

the new generations. They have established a greater presence in the

media and have observed that women’s movements and protests are
already seeing results in the modification of laws, the proposed regula-
tions and the creation of public policies.
In five years, the Liga MX Femenil, from the perspective of academic
women footballers, has led to the breaking of stereotypes of women’s
football (i.e., once perceived as slow, boring and unable to generate inter-
est). Commercial brands have invested heavily in the league and its out-
standing players, models of sporting success have been developed that
have inspired new generations and players have gained recognition of
sporting rights—for example, security during pregnancy, major medical
insurance, job recognition, clothing that meets the requirements of fit-
ness and comfort, increased presence of women in decision-making posi-
tions (38% are female coaches and 27% are female sports administrators)
and protection from harassment and discrimination through a national
protocol.
Nevertheless, pay equity and discrepancy in terms of awards or bonuses
is one of the least advanced areas in the league; although, it is relevant
that the league and the women’s teams are beginning to become profit-
able in terms of their own income, which would generate financial auton-
omy (i.e., because they continue to be financed by the men’s league) and
better scenarios for Mexican women footballers.
Finally, feminist movements also have brought about a change in the
labels of women footballers, and they, strengthened and empowered by
global campaigns such as #MeToo and #8 M, have made assertions and
constantly pointed out misogynistic expressions and instances of micro-­
machismo by managers, journalists and players in the men’s league.

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 11
Football and Gender in Chile: Impact
of the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women’s World
Cup on the Participation of Chilean
Women in the Sport
Miguel Cornejo Amestica, Carlos Matus Castillo,
and Carolina Paz Cabello Escudero

Introduction
Throughout history, women’s football has faced multiple barriers, even
being considered inappropriate (Hjelm & Olofsson, 2003; Knoppers &
Anthonissen, 2003). Over the past few decades, however, despite

M. Cornejo Amestica (*)

Universidad de Concepción, Facultad de Educación, Concepción, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
C. Matus Castillo
Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Facultad de Educación,
Concepción, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
C. P. Cabello Escudero
Pontifica Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Instituto de Historia,
Valparaíso, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 187
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_11
188 M. Cornejo Amestica et al.

remaining a marginal practice in relation to men’s football, women’s foot-

ball has grown around the world in areas such as competitions and the
number of female players (Mahmoud, 2017). Historically, football has
been considered a male sport (Martín & García Manso, 2011; Llopis-
Goig, 2010), not only a product of gender stereotypes and prejudicial
categorisation of what is feminine and masculine but also establishing
behavioural models that standardise gender roles (González Gavaldón,
1999; Lamas, 1999). As a result, it has been very difficult for women to
occupy and build spaces for participation in this sport because of the
prevailing gender stereotypes in society, the non-application of equal
rights and direct and indirect discrimination in it (Yori, 2020).
To understand this issue, it is helpful to use a gender perspective,
intended to contribute to the strengthening of a democratic model in
which the demand for better relationships benefits both men and women
in all their diversity (Fontecha, 2006). Using a gender approach implies
critically analysing how the social system delimits spaces and resources
for men and women and conditions their choices as well as how the sym-
bolic and real order of gender hierarchises—what is considered mascu-
line—over that is deemed to be feminine (Donoso & Velasco, 2013).
Despite the barriers and situations mentioned here, the Fédération
Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has identified objectives
for the growth of women’s football (e.g., increasing participation of girls
in the sport, improving retention rates of women footballers, increasing
women’s participation in management positions and enhancing competi-
tions). Through the achievement of these objectives, FIFA seeks to reduce
gender gaps and promote the practice of sports by women. These initia-
tives can be found in the FIFA Women’s Football Strategy (FIFA, 2018),
which has five pillars: (1) develop and grow the sport; (2) improve com-
petitions; (3) communicate and commercialise to broaden exposure and
increase marketable value; (4) govern and start to increase women’s repre-
sentation in managerial positions and promote professionalisation; (5)
educate and empower, building capacity and knowledge about the sport.
One of the main goals is to reach 60 million female players by 2026. This
is an ambitious target given that in 2019, FIFA estimated that a total of
13.36 million girls and adult women played organised football world-
wide (FIFA, 2019).
 11 Football and Gender in Chile: Impact of the 2008 FIFA U-20… 189

Keeping this in mind, it becomes essential to understand both the cur-

rent state of women’s football and its development in specific contexts.
Therefore, this chapter is focused on Chile, and it seeks to describe the
historical development, characteristics and context of competitive
Chilean women’s football from the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women’s Football
World Cup in Chile to qualification for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
It contains a contextualisation of women’s sport practices in this country;
a description of the historical development of Chilean women’s football;
an analysis of the main women’s footballing events in Chile; an examina-
tion of the role of women in the development of this sport; and an iden-
tification of the differences and gaps between women’s and men’s football
at the competitive level.
Regarding the methodology used here, heuristic work was carried out
to compile sources, using gender as a category of analysis for historical
study (Scott, 1986), which describes as well as orients the research towards
new problematisations, offering background information that promotes
academic discussion regarding the future of Chilean women’s football.
The methodological approach used is a balance between a documentary
review with aspects of social history, particularly Chilean football, and
the general history of women and gender relationships (Hernández,
2004). For this purpose, primary and secondary sources of information
were selected for analysis; they were used to construct a wide range of
testimonies to guide the sections of this chapter. Among the primary
sources, the authors highlight historical archives of sports organisations,
government documents, interviews and the national press. The secondary
sources include information collected from scientific articles and books
on the subject.

Chilean Women’s Participation in Football

The arrival of modern sport in Chile occurred in the same way as in other
European countries, as function of two concrete aspects: the British influ-
ence and the arrival of these practices through seaports, as was the case for
Italy, Spain and France (Matus et al., 2018; Pujadas & Santacana, 2003).
During the mid-nineteenth century, the first sporting activities in Chile
190 M. Cornejo Amestica et al.

began to be recorded, which were initially developed by European immi-

grants. These sports were then practiced by the Chilean aristocracy
(Modiano, 1997). The main cities through which ‘modern sport’ entered
were the ports of Iquique and Antofagasta in the north, Valparaíso in the
centre and Talcahuano in the south-central part of Chile (Matus et al.,
2018). The sports performed the most from the middle to late nineteenth
century were cricket, hunting, golf, tennis and equestrian activities; the
main participants were members of the upper classes and men (Santa
Cruz, 2006). In this sense, Mercado (2007) pointed out that the emer-
gence of modern English sport also served as a means of conveying mas-
culine values.
During early Chilean sport, women’s participation was low, limited to
recreational and social traditions only. There is little information about
whether Chilean women practiced any type of sport in a regular or com-
petitive way, beyond the recreational ways of the two first decades of the
twentieth century (Mercado, 2007). As Santa Cruz (2006) argued, the
history of national sport in these first decades was eminently masculine;
women only participated marginally, limiting themselves to the role of
spectator and/or practitioner of an activity that would emphasise and, in
any case, not undermine their femininity—or what was considered femi-
nine from the prevailing masculine point of view.
Since the 1920s women have participated in more ‘popular’ sports
such as boxing and cycling, revealing the popular origins of the practitio-
ners (Marín, 2007). In the following years and decades, women began to
participate in competitive sports, registering important outcomes at the
international level, even though mainly in individual sports. Although
Chilean women’s participation in sports at the elite level increased signifi-
cantly during the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first
century, their participation has always been lower than that of men
(Azócar et al., 2012).
This was not only the case in Chile but also it was seen in other coun-
tries and contexts given the multiple barriers that have affected women’s
development in sports (Hartmann-Tews, 2006; Scheerder et al., 2005;
Van Tuyckom et al., 2010). It is possible to consider, for example, the
male models of physical education as well as the historical sexual division
between men and women, gender stereotypes and social roles attributed
 11 Football and Gender in Chile: Impact of the 2008 FIFA U-20… 191

to women (Macías, 1999). Additionally, women’s sports have received

limited media coverage, which has made its characteristics, growth and
needs invisible (Calvo & Gutiérrez, 2017; Sainz de Baranda, 2014).
In the case of Chile, there are barriers associated with gender stereo-
types and roles that affect the participation of women in physical activity
and sports (Cornejo-Améstica et al., 2019). Furthermore, a factor that
could influence lower female participation in sport in general has been
physical education in schools. The research indicates that this subject was
taught with an androcentric approach—where sexist behaviours and
activities were observed as exclusive for girls and boys—and content
focused on sporting competitions, often leading to the self-­marginalisation
of girls from physical education classes (Hidalgo & Almonacid, 2014;
Poblete & Moreno, 2015; Rodríguez et al., 2017).
Currently, the results of surveys on sporting habits from 2006 to
2018 in the Chilean adult population (Ministerio del Deporte de Chile,
2019) indicate a significant increase in women’s participation and interest
in sport, although these levels were always lower than with men. More
specifically, the following aspects also were observed among
Chilean women:

• Greater participation in historically male sports (e.g., football)

• A preference for individual sport practices
• Motivations for sport participation associated with health and training
• Greater attendance at public sporting venues
• Less spending on sports than men spent
• Lower participation rates in sporting organisations than men
• Motherhood and lack of time as the main reasons for abandonment of
physical activity

This information about female participation in Chilean sports can be

understood through feminist and gender theory as a historically natu-
ralised manifestation in a society where, at a cultural and structural level,
power has been unequally distributed between men and women.
Following the renowned anthropologist Gayle Rubin (1986), the sex/
gender system ought to be understood as the ‘set of arrangements by
which a society transforms biological sexuality into a product of human
192 M. Cornejo Amestica et al.

activity, and in which these transformed human needs are satisfied’

(p. 97). Thus, the sex/gender system impacts all social practices, includ-
ing football and sports. For historian Joan Scott (1986), gender is the
social organisation of sexual difference—a social and historical con-
struct—that has varied meanings across cultures, social spheres and time.
In this way, history also acts as a mechanism for the production of knowl-
edge about sexual difference. Therefore, the lack of historical legitimacy
in the development of women’s sport also affects female sport participa-
tion in the present.
On the other hand, authors, such as Pierre Bourdieu (2000) and
Michael Foucault (1984), intensified their analysis of the power of the
State in perpetuating processes of male domination, the reproduction of
gender roles and the omission of women from history. An example of this
is the National Policy of Physical Activity and Sport 2016–2025 of Chile
(Ministerio del Deporte de Chile, 2016) that includes, among its struc-
tural approaches, a specific focus on ‘[g]ender, where sport is recognised
as a tool that can collaborate in the reduction of gender gaps, which is
materialised in the “Principles and Purposes”’ of this policy (Cornejo-­
Améstica et al., 2019). As Cabello (2018) pointed out, however, it is
necessary to know the real implications of this approach—that is, how it
will materialise, what its objectives are and how the identified gaps will be
addressed.
This analysis is important because the national policy (Ministerio del
Deporte de Chile, 2016) indicates that, through physical activity and
sport, women can (1) optimise health, (2) improve self-esteem and self-­
care, and (3) access leadership positions. Nevertheless, these objectives
perpetuate stereotypes of women in sport and do not take into account
other gender identities, thus becoming a binary policy and reproducing
the hegemonic patriarchal order in all the structures of the Chilean State
and national sport.
 11 Football and Gender in Chile: Impact of the 2008 FIFA U-20… 193

Development of Women’s Football in Chile

During the early twentieth century, Chilean women’s football burst onto
the scene as a sporting practice with the creation of women’s football
clubs, thus initiating a complex path in a sporting tradition that has been
dominated by men (Cabello, 2020). In 1919, a group of women’s sports
clubs met at the offices of the newspaper El Mercurio in Santiago, creating
the first Women’s Football Association in the country; it was made up of
the following clubs: Flor de Chile, Delicias del Sport, Progreso Femenino,
Unión Teatral, Flor del Sport, Bélgica Star and Compañía Chilena de
Tabacos. The latter club emerged from the organisation of the female
workers of the tobacco company and was created specifically to play foot-
ball. The increased participation of women in the workforce during the
first decades of the twentieth century—mainly in industries related to the
production of clothing, as seamstresses or laundresses—led to both recre-
ational activities and new popular sports that expanded rapidly among
the female population living mostly in urban cities. The magazine Los
Sports, which circulated between 1923 and 1931, categorised women’s
sports primarily as athletics, basketball, table tennis and cycling. It is very
likely that some of the women of the aforementioned clubs also played
these sports before playing football.
It should be noted that after the founding of the first Women’s Football
Association in Santiago, women’s sports began to be recognised by the
sports press of the time. It reported on a match between the clubs Flor del
Sport and Delicias del Sport, describing them as ‘nice women’s clubs’
(Reyes, 2019). Almost 10 years later, in 1928, the Aurora Porteña sport
club of the coastal city of Coquimbo was founded and was made up of 11
players. At the same time, this was a period of struggles and demands by
women for the attainment of civil and political rights—for example, the
right to vote in political elections (Salazar & Pinto, 1999). Parallel to this
context, women were always playing football,even though these tradi-
tions were kept within the limits of socially acceptable behaviour of the
patriarchal structure and culture then (Cabello, 2020).
During the 1950s, the teams Las Dinamitas and Las Atómicas were
formed in the capital city of Santiago, both of which were composed of
194 M. Cornejo Amestica et al.

women from the working classes and played the preliminary matches of
men’s clubs. These ‘doubleheaders’ captured the attention of the specta-
tors. To the north of the capital, women’s teams were also created, includ-
ing the Colo-Colo club in Iquique, an amateur club that acquired the
name of the professional soccer club of Santiago; Las Malulas and the
Latino. The last two were from Vallenar (Cabello, 2020; Elsey & Nadel,
2020; Retamal, 2018).
In the second half of the twentieth century, some major milestones
stand out (e.g., a 1972 international match at the National Stadium
played by the Colo-Colo men’s team and the Panama national team) as
reported by the magazine Estadio. Here, the preliminary match was
played between the Colo-Colo women’s team and Mary Clair of the dis-
trict of Las Condes. The magazine noted that ‘the fans enjoyed the foot-
ball graces of the girls’ (Revista Estadio, 1972).
The National Amateur Football Association (ANFA) organised the
Metropolitan Women’s Football Cup during the 1980s. Then, in 1984,
the Central Football Association expressed interest in planning a profes-
sional Women’s Championship, but this idea never came to fruition.
Nevertheless, the participation of women’s teams in events became more
frequent and evident. For example, in 1987, the Estrellas de California
team was crowned champion in an international tournament in Mendoza,
Argentina (Retamal, 2018).
The core of the first Chilean women’s national football team was cre-
ated from these championships. This team played in the Copa América of
Brazil in 1991, achieving second place, with a prominent participation of
Ada Cruz who won the golden ball. In this tournament, however, the
Chilean team was unable to qualify for the first Women’s World Cup in
1991 held in China (Castelblanco & Jara, 2007). The team had 18 play-
ers and was coached by Bernardo Bello. Some challenges pointed out by
the coaching staff include the players’ lack of tactical knowledge and fit-
ness, which could be explained by their lives outside of football, together
with the improvisation in the management of the team by the Chilean
Football Federation. With the intention of complying with international
pressures and showing itself at an global competition, the federation
accepted an invitation to participate, without Chile even having a national
women’s league.
 11 Football and Gender in Chile: Impact of the 2008 FIFA U-20… 195

 ilestones of Chilean Women’s Football

M
and Its Impact
Women’s football has been played in Chile over the last 100 years, mainly
at an amateur and recreational level. Despite the lack of support from
sporting authorities, the sport’s growth has not been impeded
(Castelblanco & Jara, 2007). In this context, the participation of the
senior women’s national teamin the various versions of the Copa América
between 1991 and 2018 has been a factor of great influence for the devel-
opment of competitive football in this country.
Concerning this development process, a key element for the expansion
of women’s football was the organisation of the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women’s
World Cup in Chile, in addition to the recruitment of Spanish coach
Marta Tejedor to as lead coach of the national team. At the same time,
President Michelle Bachelet’s administration, characterised by policies of
gender equality, firmly supported this event (La Tercera, 2008).
During the same year, the National Professional Football Association
(ANFP) organised the Women’s First Division tournament called ‘Copa
Entel PCS’, with the objective of enhancing the development of women’s
football. A total of 14 teams participated in this competition. Another
action that joined forces in the promotion of competitive women’s foot-
ball was the Copa Chile SERNAM (National Women’s Service), carried
out in 2009–2010 with teams from all over the country participating,
including a club from Easter Island (Pardo, 2009).
On the other hand, the Copa Libertadores Femenina de Futsal, organ-
ised in Chile by the ANFP in 2013, 2015 and 2016, helped make wom-
en’s participation in the sport visible. In 2015, the director of SERNAM
announced that more than 200 athletes participated in this competition,
which highlighted the need to promote women’s rights in Chile
(Puranoticia.cl, 2015). In 2018, the Campeonato Sudamericano
Femenino Sub-20 de Futsal (South American Women’s U-20 Futsal
Championship) was held in Chile with the 10 teams from the South
American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) participating (ANFP,
2018c). In this process of development and validation of women’s foot-
ball, the ANFP started a program in 2018 called ‘CRECE’, the objective
196 M. Cornejo Amestica et al.

of which was to promote investment in youth football for boys and girls
(ANFP, 2018a).
Around this ‘support’ for women’s football and as a way of promoting
women’s participation, CONMEBOL incorporated a new rule for its
member associations; it states that men’s clubs that participate in the
Copa Libertadores de América and Copa Sudamericana must also have a
women’s team as of 2019. To comply with this new regulation, clubs
must incorporate a first team and a women’s youth category, which should
participate in official tournaments. In the same way, clubs are required to
have adequate facilities for women’s teams, although this last requirement
is less easily implemented (Marketing Registrado, 2018).
Following this development logic, the organisation of the 2018 Copa
América Femenina de Fútbol represented a push towards the massifica-
tion of this practice, where various actors, both governmental and pri-
vate, supported this event. For example, the matches were broadcast on
free-to-air television. Chile was crowned vice-champion of the tourna-
ment, allowing the country to qualify for the first time for a FIFA
Women’s World Cup held in France in 2019 (ANFP, 2019). The partici-
pation of the national team in the 2019 World Cup, alongside countries
where women’s football had already been developed significantly, repre-
sented a qualitative leap in the evolution of Chilean women’s football,
giving a boost to women’s participation in professional and amateur teams.
Nevertheless, significant gaps in working and sporting conditions
between women’s and men’s football still existed. In addition to the previ-
ous milestones that marked women’s football in Chile, the authors must
add the qualification of the national team to the Olympic Games (Tokyo,
2020), another first for the nation. This process of growth and sporting
achievements has made Chilean players visible and positioned them in
international leagues (i.e., France, Spain, Australia, among others), trans-
forming them into sporting icons for girls and women who play this sport.
 11 Football and Gender in Chile: Impact of the 2008 FIFA U-20… 197

 omen’s Role in Football’s Development

W
in Chile
Even though 2019 marked 100 years since the establishment of the first
Chilean Women’s Football Association (Cabello, 2020), there are numer-
ous examples that denounce the exclusion of women in the sport sector
on a daily basis, not only for those associated with its practice but also
with the political power, institutionality, decision making and presence in
the media, among others. These factors make the participation and distri-
bution of power, particularly in football, unequal between men and
women. Faced with this situation, football players and women’s groups
have configured strategies to make their position visible within the
national football landscape.
In 2016, groups of women footballers decided to come together and
form two organisations that would eventually be key to the dissemina-
tion, positioning and recognition of women’s football. The first of these
is the COFFUF (Women’s Football Development Corporation), which
was created with the goal of bringing exposure to and supporting the
work of the Chilean women’s national team, as well as promoting the
development of the sport in the country (Flores, 2018). The second key
organisation is ANJUFF (the National Association of Women’s Football
Players), through which high-performance football players seek to regu-
larise and improve the conditions of women’s football, protecting and
defending their rights (ANJUFF, 2020). These organisations include
players and leaders (e.g., Iona Rothfeld, Javiera Moreno and Fernanda
Pinilla (ANJUFF) as well as Daniela Pardo (COFFUF), all recognised for
their demands for the professionalisation of women’s football. In this
sense, although women’s participation in football has increased, this
growth has not been accompanied by increased participation in political,
management or decision-making spaces, which remain hegemoni-
cally male.
It should be noted that in the administrative structure of the ANFP,
women make up only 0.8% of the organisation (1 out of 128 people). A
similar situation is observed in professional football clubs, where the par-
ticipation gap is also massive. In 2019, women composed only 4% of the
198 M. Cornejo Amestica et al.

boards of directors across Chilean clubs (Cabello, 2020). Faced with this
reality, members and fans have articulated demands for more female par-
ticipation in the sport’s administration, creating associations of fans, gen-
der commissions and feminist groups that question machismo and
violence in clubs and boards. In 2020, these organisations created the
Coordinadora Feminista de Mujeres y Disidencias en el Fútbol (Feminist
Coordinator of Women and Dissidence in Football), which works toward
the eradication of gender-based violence in the sport (Torres, 2020).
It is also important to highlight the opening of media towards women’s
participation. Historically, the media has been a reproducer of masculin-
ising culture, largely responsible for the invisibility and stereotyping of
sportswomen (Hooks, 2004; Ramos, 1995; Vélez, 2017). Thus, a privi-
leged place has been generated for men in terms of sports (Vélez, 2017).
An attempt has been made to bring this reality to light through commu-
nication campaigns and social networks aimed at demanding, for exam-
ple, the broadcast of the women’s championships. In this way, the 2018
Copa América (ANFP, 2018b) and Chile’s matches at the 2019 World
Cup in France were televised nationally on free-to-air channels (Álamos,
2019). Following a successful social media campaign in 2020, most of
the National Transitional Championship matches were televised.
In terms of content and female participation in the sports media,
although there are still exclusively male television and radio programmes
that could be characterised as sexist, the presence of female commenta-
tors is becoming more frequent. These women face a double challenge:
on the one hand, they dispute a public space, questioning stereotypes and
gender roles and on the other hand, they demonstrate that it is possible
to disseminate sport content with a gender perspective, without the need
to resort to the use of violent or discriminating language. In 2020, women
sport commentators created the Agrupación de Comunicadoras
Deportivas (Association of Sport Communicators), which aims to be a
safe space for them in the development of sport communication, in addi-
tion to providing educational content on gender equity and promoting
strategies to eradicate sexism and machismo in the media (zonamixta.
cl, 2020).
 11 Football and Gender in Chile: Impact of the 2008 FIFA U-20… 199

 onditions of the Practice of Chilean Women’s

C
Football
Despite progress made in recent years regarding women’s participation in
football, in competitions and the institutional organisation of the sport,
professionalism is still considered to be a distant goal. Precarious condi-
tions persist, although from 2018 the ANFP was selected by FIFA and
CONMEBOL to develop the pilot plan for the licensing of women’s
football clubs. This is a certification system for professional clubs that
mandates obligations to the board of directors about requirements for
their teams/women’s sections (Fuchslocher, 2018). As of 2021, 12 clubs
have received a license, among them are Audax Italiano, San Luis and
Santiago Wanderers, though in practice their conditions are not audited.
Moreover, the National Championship is not recognized by FIFA as a
professional competition, which leads to issues with federal, formative
and even economic rights involving the sale or transfer of players, limit-
ing clubs’ ability to invest in training and development. In terms of the
organisation of women’s players, this situation also poses an obstacle
because the lack of contracts and status as workers (only 50 of 870 wom-
en’s players have a contract), by law, ANJUFF cannot be recognised as a
union (Ministerio del Trabajo y Previsión Social, 2016). Therefore,
ANJUFF is not in a position to negotiate collective rights nor to be con-
sidered as a worker’s organisation that ensures the defence of their mem-
bers’ labour rights.
The year 2020 marked the 12th anniversary of the National Women’s
Soccer Championship, which despite the COVID situation was able to
carry out a competition for the First Division, named the ‘ 2020 Transition
Championship’ because of its short duration and the absence of relega-
tion. The Primera B (second division), however, did not have the same
planning, which was also the case for the youth football competition
(Molina, 2021). At the same time, 2021 also brought uncertainty regard-
ing the development of these championships. This is in addition to the
precarious working and sporting conditions of some professional clubs,
which to comply with the obligations of the ANFP and CONMEBOL,
‘outsource’ their women’s teams. That is to say that these clubs provide
200 M. Cornejo Amestica et al.

their name and federative rights to amateur clubs to represent them

(Labrín, 2017). Thus, the professional clubs cede responsibility for the
women’s area to external entities, a reality that remains in First
Division clubs.
Gradually and thanks to the sporting milestones (e.g., the historical
participation in the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France 2019 and the
qualification for the Tokyo Olympic Games) of the senior national team,
along with pressure from fans, the conditions of women’s football have
been improving. For example, in the 2020 Transitional Championship, it
was common to play matches in official stadiums, responding to a his-
toric demand. The most significant demand from players, however, has
been the provision of professional contracts, which has yet to be
accomplished.
Unlike the professionalisation process in other South American coun-
tries (e.g., Argentina, where to participate in the first division it is manda-
tory to have a percentage of players with contracts), in Chile, regularising
the employment of footballers is still a voluntary process, subject to the
management of mostly male boards of directors. Only 3 of 32 clubs in
Chilean professional football have contracts with their entire women’s
team. These contracts imply minimum wages, evidencing the extreme
wage gap between men and women.
Women’s football players without contracts also must reconcile this
role with other employment, studies and housework. The situation is so
precarious that it is common for women footballers to carry out aid cam-
paigns to pay for medical or psychological treatments. The ANFP offers
health insurance that covers only injuries during matches and/or train-
ing; therefore, other injuries or sicknesses must be covered by the foot-
ballers themselves.
Finally, a potential opportunity to accelerate the development of wom-
en’s football is in the separation and independence of the National
Football Federation from the National Professional Football Association.
Both institutions were unified in the early 2000s, in a process that was
intended to facilitate the incorporation of businesses into Chilean foot-
ball (Cabello, 2020). Since then, both entities have been unified in terms
of representation, attributions and interests, which has generated a con-
flict noticed by various actors. CONMEBOL indicated in a letter to the
 11 Football and Gender in Chile: Impact of the 2008 FIFA U-20… 201

ANFP that the situation corresponds to a legal irregularity (Radio

Cooperativa, 2020). Likewise, the same situation was warned against by
the former president of the ANFP, Sebastián Moreno (Contragolpe,
2021), and by Ian Mac Niven, former manager of the Chilean men’s
team. In this context, it is evident that within patriarchal structures, such
as the ANFP, where there are limited to no channels of communication
and spaces for women to negotiate, the development of women’s football
has had to advance through alternative pathways.

Reflections
Considering the background presented in this chapter, it can be con-
cluded that every milestone in the development of Chilean women’s foot-
ball, especially those evidenced in the last two decades, has been a
consequence of the struggle and consistency of women footballers to
conquer and defend their right to practice professionally in a society and
football culture characterized by male hegemony, machismo and sexism.
The most significant growth of women’s football begins with the 2008
FIFA U-20 World Cup, starting a process of formalising women’s foot-
ball. This event was a key impulse that involved a shift from amateurism
to incorporation into the structure of Chilean professional football, but
without adequate conditions.
Despite the barriers described in this chapter, the development of
Chilean women’s football was evidenced by the regularity of the national
championships and the increase in the number of women players, which
has generated greater visibility and participation of clubs in international
competitions like the Copa Libertadores de América. These experiences
came to fruition at the national team level with the Chileans’ historic
qualification for the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France and sub-
sequent qualification for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. These results
have increased women’s interest in football; however, the COVID pan-
demic exposed the precariousness faced by women’s teams. With these
issues in mind, the main objectives of national women’s football are:
improving practice (i.e., training and competition) and working
202 M. Cornejo Amestica et al.

conditions (i.e., professionalism); access to decision-making positions in

sport organizations; and greater female participation in the media.
Undoubtedly, the growth achieved by women’s football in Chile is
remarkable, considering the multiple barriers in organisations that have
been historically and traditionally masculine. In this sense, the proposal
by Hall (2004), Puig (2007) and Moragas (2014) that organisations are
not neutral from a ‘gender’ perspective—that is, they are ‘gendered’
(through forms of male socialisation: politics, structure, practices)—is
very relevant; in other words, given that it is consistent with the structure
and organisation of Chilean football in which a clear male hegemony has
been observed. This is a situation that generates barriers and gaps, thus
affecting the development of the women’s game.
To conclude, and in accordance with Fontecha’s (2006) approach to
gender relations, Chilean women’s football requires prompt (re)construc-
tion and development using a gender perspective as a basis for its man-
agement, thus ensuring the establishment of better relationships and
conditions for both women and men who play football in Chile.

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 Part III
Latin American Conversations:
Pasado, Presente y Futuro
 12
‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long
as they don’t play football): Football
and Womanhood in the 1920s’
Argentine Capital
Pablo Ariel Scharagrodsky and Magalí Peréz Riedel

Introduction
After the British imperialist commercial expansion in Argentina, some
sports arrived at the La Plata River (River Plate) in an international con-
text of a robust and intense process of globalisation, circulation, exchange,
appropriation, imposition and normalisation of objects, ideas, people
and practices. Football was one of those bodily practices, and highly reg-
ulated sports games, introduced by the British community in Argentina.
Gradually, this activity became a regular and legitimate practice in the
heterogeneous landscape of Argentine cities. At first, a large portion of
the creole community and the most numerous groups of European set-
tlers in Argentina (i.e., the Italians and the Spanish) saw football as a
strange, exotic and semi-violent practice of dubious morality. In just a

P. A. Scharagrodsky (*) • M. Peréz Riedel

Universidad de Quilmes (UNQ), Bernal, Argentina
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 211
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_12
212 P. A. Scharagrodsky and M. Peréz Riedel

few decades, however, football became a widespread and socially accepted

phenomenon (Archetti, 2003).
In regard to the practice of football and its dissemination, the period
that extended between the last decade of the nineteenth century and the
first decade of the twentieth century was key in the city of Buenos Aires,
the Argentine capital. In those decades, with steps forwards and back-
wards, the formal and official practice of football began thanks to the
formation of a league and an association linked to that sport. Initially
practiced by the wealthier sectors (e.g., British residents, British business
executives or business representatives, students from educational institu-
tions of the British Empire, the Argentine upper classes and so on), foot-
ball quickly made its way to other social sectors—the consolidated urban
strata, middle strata and medium-low classes created by urbanisation
(Archetti, 2003). The popularisation of football boosted the economic,
social and political interests of various social actors. One of these actors
was the press, which stood out because it contributed to the creation of a
commercial scene, sports as entertainment, as well as the creation of a
new modern figure—the spectator. All this materialised as a series of con-
sumer rituals and generated new spaces for socialisation: football stadi-
ums. By the 1920s, according to Frydenberg (2011):

… football had ceased to be a trend for young people and had become part
of the life of almost all social institutions and corporations, which organ-
ised their own tournaments. Simultaneously, the spectacle, incipient dur-
ing the first decade and spasmodic in the concentration of large crowds,
was enriching and expanding (p. 125).

The consumption of football developed massive and popular dimen-

sions. The sport slowly became a space for the strengthening of local,
regional and national identities, as a country and even as a neighbour-
hood or barrio, for example. It also became a significant commercial busi-
ness in a decade when the real wage growth was 19% (1922–1929),
which promoted new types and forms of consumption. Some social
actors started to stand out in this huge commercial, identitarian and cul-
tural spectacle: fans, coaches or managers, players and club members.
 12 ‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long as they don’t… 213

Across the country, the accelerated growth of football generated mixed

reactions. Some politicians saw it as an ingredient of the welfare state that
they wanted to promote. Club executives highlighted football’s hygienic
and virile virtues while visionary entrepreneurs prioritised its economic
profit. Pedagogues warned about the physical and moral violence that
this practice generated. Sports doctors and physical educators had varied
reactions that changed over time (Armus & Scharagrodsky, 2014). There
were critical voices that fervently opposed the growing professionalisa-
tion of football. Some left-wing segments, speaking on behalf of the
workers, encouraged the creation of alternative football leagues
(Barrancos, 2011; Martínez Mazzola, 2014); although other sectors on
the left fiercely fought against the sport because they saw it as some sort
of opium that diminished the revolutionary potential of the working
class (Camarero, 2004).
In this context, on October 13, 1923, an outstanding sporting event
occurred: the first football match between two teams of women; it was
covered by the most important and influential media outlets in Argentina.
This was the first time that several media outlets wrote and published
articles about a commercial match between women’s teams in the
Argentine capital. The match took place at the former field of Club
Atlético Boca Juniors, which at the time was, and still remains, one of the
most popular clubs in the capital. It was open to the public, and visitors
had to pay an entrance fee to watch the two teams made up entirely of
women. This match was announced and promoted by the press as an
encounter between the ‘Argentinas’ [Argentine women] and the
‘Cosmopolitas’ [Cosmopolitan women].
In many ways, it became an unprecedented and original event. On the
one hand, during those years, recreational and semi-professional football
had already become a practice that was highly consumed and experienced
by a predominantly male sector. Football in Argentina was a homosocial
practice for men, distant from the female universe (Archetti, 2005).1 On

1
This does not mean that there were not any women playing football. In Argentina, in the first
decades of the twentieth century, although they were not the majority, nor was there much interest
in stimulating or publicising these types of experiences, women played football in various cities. For
example, in 1913, a football match between two teams of women took place in the Rural Society
of the city of Rosario, Santa Fe.
214 P. A. Scharagrodsky and M. Peréz Riedel

the other hand, the commodification of the female workforce (Barrancos,

2007) in a public football sporting event was rare, especially in a context
in which this commodification was common in other areas and low-paid
jobs; it generated conditions of intense exploitation of numerous groups
of girls and women. In short, the spectacle of football was historically a
male-dominated space, especially in regard to its practice and the sale of
the sport’s ‘male labour force’.
Using the contributions of social and cultural history and gender stud-
ies, this chapter’s research seeks to analyse how the general and specialised
press described and, at the same time, fabricated and interpreted the first
commercial women’s football match to be recorded in the Argentine capi-
tal. The specificity of this event evoked and consolidated various mean-
ings (e.g., socially accepted conventions, fantasies, fears, phobias,
concerns, prejudices and so on) that were widely spread by the Argentine
press. For the purposes of this investigation, the authors selected articles
from national newspapers and media outlets with the highest circulation
and prestige (e.g., La Nación, La Prensa, La Razón, Crítica and La
Vanguardia) and magazines with great dissemination and presence—
Caras y Caretas, Fray Mocho and El Gráfico. The research focused on dis-
cursive meanings, thematic recurrences and semantic patterns, as well as
their nuanced and diverse representations related to this event and its
participants.
According to Kircher (2005), the press is both a social and political
actor, serving as a performative space of cultural production, transmis-
sion and circulation. It is also a source of information about historical
events. Thus, this study used a hermeneutical approach to analyse a ‘text’
together with its historical and contextual conditions of production
(Fairclough, 2003), accepting that ‘sexual difference seems to be already
present in how we construct meaning: it is already part of the logic that
presides over writing’ (Laqueur, 1994, p. 43). The following sections
analyse the types of arguments that questioned women’s football as well
as the nuances and contradictions that circulated in the Argentine press
during the 1920s.
 12 ‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long as they don’t… 215

 ports and Femininity During the 1920s:

S
The Place of Football
Starting in the decade of 1920, although slowly and with a certain resis-
tance, a new public figure emerged in Argentina—modern sportswomen
as role models (Bontempo, 2016). This ideal was influenced by the arrival
and circulation of several paradigmatic cases of physical–moral arche-
types of European and North American athletes. The proliferation and
spread of the women’s sports crusade was attributable to a varied set of
reasons in the context of social, cultural, sexual, legal and political changes
in relation to women.
Some of the rationale behind this movement stemmed from the prop-
agation and allure of the eugenic discourse, the importance of the female
body in the future of the race and the fight against certain diseases deemed
‘feminine’, such as hysteria, nervousness, dyspepsia, scoliosis, muscular
weakness or tuberculosis (Armus, 2007, 2016). Other reasons included
the dissemination of an aesthetically desirable feminine body ideal for the
modern hetero-normative gaze, fears about the fertility rate in the coun-
try, the association between a healthy female body and the improvement
of the quality and quantity of the population and its genetics; this was
combined with growing fears around the ambiguity of certain female
bodily behaviours.
Specifically, 1923 was a year of great visibility for the Argentine sports
world. Various agonistic events transcended the national stage and made
international headlines. One of the most prominent events widely cov-
ered by the press was the boxing match between Argentine Luis Ángel
Firpo and American Jack Dempsey in September 1923. This was the first
sporting event broadcast by radio in the country. In August, just a month
before Firpo faced Dempsey in New York City, a record-breaking Italian–
Argentine swimmer, Enrique Tiraboschi, made headlines when he crossed
the English Channel, swimming from France to England (Scharagrodsky,
2020, 2021).
Nonetheless, 1923 was also a significant year for female athletes as
several women’s sporting events were widely covered by the media,
although to a lesser extent than those featuring male athletes. For
216 P. A. Scharagrodsky and M. Peréz Riedel

example, Lilian Harrison, born in Argentina and of British descent,

became the first person to swim across the River Plate. In just over 24
hours of uninterrupted swimming, she made her way from Colonia,
Uruguay, to Punta Lara, Argentina (Scharagrodsky, 2019). This accom-
plishment was featured on the cover of numerous national and interna-
tional newspapers and magazines, and the media continued to write
about Harrison’s feat for several weeks.
The First International Women’s Athletics Tournament was held in
Buenos Aires; it was organised by the General Directorate of Squares and
Physical Exercise of the Argentine capital, drawing public participation
and media coverage. Moreover, the media disseminated other sports
activities carried out by women, including the River Plate Championship
at the Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club (Deportes: Campeonato, 1923)
and women’s sports tournaments (e.g., cestoball, tennis, certain athletic
events, and so on) organised by the National Higher Institute of Physical
Education (INEF).
In 1923, the most influential weekly sports magazine of Argentina, El
Gráfico, featured sportswomen on its covers. Created in 1919 and pri-
marily focused on topics related to the male sports universe, El Gráfico
published several articles about the growing female physical culture and
its undeniable and necessary hygienic–moral benefits; this showcased the
ideal of the new modern Argentine woman and brought it into the social
imaginary. During 1923, about 10% of their covers alluded to women.2
Throughout the 1920s, approximately 27% of their covers made refer-
ences to women, but of that 27%, about 60% were published between
1920 and 1921. Many of the covers in these early years were linked to
female faces or silhouettes from the foreign entertainment industry,
although they did not refer explicitly to any sports.

2
The first cover of the magazine El Gráfico on women’s football was published in 1925. It showed
two female players wearing their sports attire, greeting each other in the middle of the playing field.
The greeting was with the hand and, simultaneously, with a kiss—a clear homo-erotic image. In the
background, there was a man with a ball (‘La mujer’, 1925). During the 1920s, there was another
cover about football and women in October 1928 and a few more covers with women holding
footballs, although without a clear mention of said sport, and they were not dressed in the typical
sportswear. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a popular Argentine magazine published a
few articles on an ‘adaptation’ of women’s football. It was described as ‘football with skates, as the
new game for ladies in England’ (‘Un nuevo’, 1905).
 12 ‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long as they don’t… 217

It was in this social and sporting context, both open and contradictory
in regard to the female collective, that the capital city hosted an unprece-
dented sporting event: the previously mentioned women’s football match
at the former stadium of Boca Juniors; it was played in front of ‘no less than
6000 people’ (Atrajo gran, 1923). This event was covered before and after
it took place, and the diverse articles, editorials, photographs and illustra-
tions concentrated on various meanings linked to concerns, fears and fan-
tasies of a specific male sector; they were based on both the emerging figure
of the modern sportswoman and the symbolic, material, aesthetic and
moral limits that women had to face in certain practices—football.
The match was held in Buenos Aires on October 13, 1923, and it was
something different and new in terms of what had been organised and
consumed in the world of sports entertainment in the region until that
point. Nevertheless, in other countries, the reality was radically different.
For example, at the end of the nineteenth century in England, the pio-
neers of women’s football used the sport ‘as a platform to make feminist
demands visible, awakening great passions among public opinion’
(Marinello Bonnefoy, 2018). It was during World War I, however, that
women, especially workers, took up football with great interest and force.
Dozens of women’s football teams sprang up across the industrial north
of England in factories to raise funds for charities. Although during the
1920s there were very popular female football teams, the male leaders of
the Football Association (FA) quickly shut down the growth of the wom-
en’s game (Marinello Bonnefoy, 2018).
In several Western countries where football, especially men’s, was
already deeply entrenched, national federations and much of the sports
establishment questioned women’s participation. Their arguments com-
bined medical, moral and scientific issues, although many of the con-
cerns and fears were motivated by commercial interests and by panic in
the face of some sort of female empowerment. As this analysis of sports
articles and media shows, with nuances and differences, and thanks to
certain local translations and appropriations, Latin American women’s
football was interwoven, regulated and subjected to arguments originat-
ing from scientific, biomedical and moralistic discourse (Elsey & Nadel,
2019; Mallada Messeguer & Quitzau, 2020; Prates Silva, 2019;
Pujol, 2019).
218 P. A. Scharagrodsky and M. Peréz Riedel

This complicated international context served as the backdrop for the

first commercial football match between women in the Argentine capital.
Before the event, the headlines of some media outlets and magazines
anticipated the uniqueness of the it and the news about the foundation
of the first women’s football clubs: ‘Women’s football is practised in
Buenos Aires,’ adding that ‘River Plate was the first club of this nature,
founded in the capital’ and that ‘two teams, made up of young ladies,
train daily to be able to present themselves in public’ (‘En Buenos Aires’,
1923; ‘Se realizará’, 1923). A double-page article reported on the charac-
teristics of the two teams, their names, clothes and names of the captains.
The ‘Argentinas’ wore light blue shirts with white collars while the
‘Cosmopolitas’, made up of British and German women, wore white shirts
with a light blue collar. In the photographs, it is obvious that the players
had caps that covered a good part of their hair, sports shoes, knee-high
socks, long shorts and long-sleeved shirts. Media outlets published details
of the match, the names of the team members, their captains (‘En Buenos
Aires’, 1923), their main players (‘En Buenos Aires’, 1923), the highlights
of the event (Atrajo gran, 1923; El match, 1923), the final score, the
profits and descriptions of some picturesque scenes.3

 he Press and Voices Against Women’s

T
Football
When referring to the 1923 women’s football match, Argentine journal-
ists developed a wide array of arguments against women’s football; some
were based on scientific and biomedical discourses, particularly from
physiology and gynaecology. Some media outlets concentrated on the
dominant moral discourse on sexuality even as others focused on criticis-
ing the economic and commercial aspects.
The hegemonic biomedical discourse brought back the old and preju-
diced heritage of nineteenth-century hygienism. It started to spread and

3
‘Shortly after, amid lively discussions, the corresponding percentage was distributed among the
players. The scene was very picturesque, due to the bid to get more than what the businessman
wanted to pay’ (‘El match’, 1923).
 12 ‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long as they don’t… 219

promote new fears about how certain sports, activities and practices could
potentially be detrimental to women’s bodies, especially certain areas—for
example, the lower abdomen and women’s reproductive organs (Anderson,
2014, 2015). An article from the newspaper La Nación said the following
about the 1923 women’s football match: ‘Let us first discuss the physiologi-
cal argument. The woman—and they are all the same ... —does not need
to subsume her delicate and fragile maternal apparatus into what is for her
the rough practice of football’ (‘Un médico’, 1923, p. 3).
Another fear was that women could contract genitourinary diseases,
suffer physical injuries and have fertility problems because of intense,
abrupt or violent actions that were likely to occur in a football match.
The use of categories derived from the medical discourse provided an air
of scientificity to the arguments and inferences made by the press while
discouraging and delegitimising women’s access to football and to sports
(e.g., rugby or other high-intensity athletic disciplines).
Other arguments from the press, concerning the women’s football
match that took place at the former Boca Juniors field, focused on how
football could negatively affect the social customs and traditions that
were defined by the hetero-patriarchal order, especially in terms of moral
deviation. In some instances, the press emphasised the immorality of the
game and warned of the dangers of the loss of the footballers’ femininity:
‘Today’s match showed how improper it is for ladies to practise football’
(‘Match de fútbol’, 1923, p. 4). One of the main concerns about the
match in 1923 was related to the possible loss of the alleged natural femi-
ninity during sports practice: ‘We are not supporters of women’s foot-
ball … because we do not think that this excessively energetic and
essentially virile game is the most suitable for women’s activities in terms
of physical culture’ (‘El 12’, 1923). According to Reggiani (2019), in the

[19]20s, women’s sports were not frowned upon. Girls and women of the
elite and urban areas were encouraged to move their bodies to practise
physical exercise and sports. However, there was a symbolic and material
limit that they were advised not to cross, a limit defined by a set of customs
and traditions, and crossing such limits could lead to an erasure of their
‘femininity’, [their beautiful] ‘curves'’ [and their] ‘reproductive capac-
ity’ (p. 209).
220 P. A. Scharagrodsky and M. Peréz Riedel

Moreover, these sportswomen could become a doorway for a danger-

ous and misconstrued form of feminism:

This game is for men and that’s it. There are many reasons, simple and
complicated reasons (physical, physiological and aesthetic reasons) that are
more than enough to make favourable arguments in this sense. … Think a
little and you will notice that this novelty of football being played by
women is one element of the many that make up the outcome of what
‘progressive men’ and ‘progressive women’ have wanted to call the advance-
ment of women. It is a tiny part of that feminism that is so misunderstood
and, unfortunately, so tolerated. (‘Un médico’, 1923, p. 3).

One of the main Argentine experts in sports medicine, Gofredo Grasso

(1924), supported the previously mentioned moral arguments in regard
to certain sports practices. He strongly promoted a female physical cul-
ture to develop certain qualities such as dexterity, coordination and
greater body control; combat muscular and functional deficiencies in
unhealthy girls and women; and improve procreation, feminine aesthet-
ics and self-esteem. Still, Grasso believed women should not practice
some sports:

A woman does not need to resort to certain overly virile sports such as
wrestling, boxing, football or rugby, which, by their very nature, hurt the
sense of femininity that should prevail in her. Naturally, it will be necessary
to know how to distinguish the highly moral public manifestations of ath-
letics—connected in that sense to those of tennis, swimming, skating,
horse riding, etc.—from those of female boxing, football or wrestling,
which are inappropriate for the sex and that, in all fairness, are criticised by
public opinion and reasonable people (1924, pp. 101, 104).

Important authors and icons from the world of sports and physical
culture that were popular in Argentina agreed on the idea of ‘femina sana
in corpore sano’ if they did not play football. This same thought was rein-
forced in the educational field. One of the leading figures of physical
education in the country, Dr. Enrique Romero Brest (1873–1958), said
that football was a pedagogical practice for children.
 12 ‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long as they don’t… 221

Terms, such as ‘inappropriate’ or ‘improper’, were often used to describe

women’s football in mainstream media. Yet, some left-wing newspapers like
La Vanguardia offered more nuanced interpretations regarding the 1923
women’s football match. Generally speaking, the newspapers objected to
girls and women playing football. It was only acceptable if women did it
without brusqueness or violence, respecting the rules of the game and with
the sole objective of playing selflessly for the love of the game.

Football is certainly not an appropriate sport for the weaker sex, but per-
haps it could be accepted as a manifestation of vigour if it was practised
exclusively as a hobby, and if the players maintained the standard that we
stated of integrity in their actions, without using brusqueness (‘El match’,
1923, p. 3).

Apart from that, when referring to the women’s football match that
took place in 1923, some local newspapers published drawings and car-
toons to ridicule, censor or make fun of those women who dared to play
a sport previously, and unfairly, defined as exclusively male. For the patri-
archal imaginary, women’s football became one of the many practices and
situations used to parody and satirise the alleged physical–emotional and
moral inabilities of girls and women to kick, pass, head pass or defend the
ball; mark their opponents; fall on the ground or score a goal. The press
also sought to ridicule and normalise women’s alleged difficulties when it
came to controlling their intense, unstoppable and ungovernable emo-
tions. For example, one of the most important newspapers at the time, La
Razón, published a drawing of four women hugging the crossbar and goal
posts, seemingly expressing fear and nervousness, and calling for ‘help’
after seeing a mouse sitting on a soccer ball (‘Las mujeres’, 1923).
In some cases, sports journalists who wrote articles about the Argentinas
vs. Cosmopolitas match used a mocking and sarcastic tone to report on the
skills, ability and expertise of the players:

The female football players showed us that the weaker sex can play football
and that it is possible to get something good out of it, despite the bad hab-
its they may develop to win conjugal fights. ... Pulling hair, breaking a plate
over the head, a blow with the rolling pin, these are more or less tolerable.
But a good kick cannot be received with indifference (‘Atrajo gran’, 1923).
222 P. A. Scharagrodsky and M. Peréz Riedel

Still, there was no mention of the difficulties, stigmas and impossibili-

ties caused by the social, political, pedagogical and family context with
regard to experiences such as playing football.
The critics highlighted the immorality of the semi-professional and
public game, warning about the potential loss of femininity of the foot-
ball players. Nonetheless, the real fear behind many of these statements
was that women’s football could become a space for subversion or erosion
of the socially accepted conventions transmitted by the hetero-patriarchal
order. Some social actors had reactions that were derogatory, discrimina-
tory and, in some cases, humiliating. These reactions were partially a
result of the potential loss of certain symbolic and material privileges.
In sum, to criticise female football players, the Argentine press used
and spread ‘scientific’ arguments, particularly from the biomedical dis-
course, together with certain patriarchal discourses of feminine sexual
morality. On the other hand, there were also criticisms and objections to
the sporting event as a strictly commercial event. These objections arose
from some media (e.g., the socialist newspaper La Vanguardia), which
particularly denounced the true purposes of the 1923 match—business,
financial gain, commercial exploitation and profit:

But the game played yesterday on the pitch of Boca Juniors, apart from the
lack of skill shown by most of the female players, was far from a match
between football enthusiasts. Instead, they were women who had been
employed by a businessman to supply the show and who, after the game,
received payment for their services, from yesterday’s total income of 2192
pesos. In this way, it has been irrefutably demonstrated what the purpose
was for the organisers of this parody: to conduct business (El match,
1923, p. 3).

La Vanguardia was aligned with the socialist discourse that opposed

the capitalist, corporate and corrupt commercialisation of sports.
Although the newspaper mainly questioned the sad spectacle, it also
maintained the assumption that football was not an appropriate sport for
women. Barrancos states that: ‘Socialism did not explicitly express any
kind of preferential gender in regard to most sports, but it is evident that
their football also had men as its only performers. … It was a male strug-
gle, and the socialists did not fight the stereotype (2011, pp. 436–437).
 12 ‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long as they don’t… 223

Although socialists did not support women’s football, they did greatly
encourage them to practice swimming, athletics and basketball, among
other sports. From 1923, other leftist groups, such as the Communist
Party, promoted football in their workers’ clubs. By 1926, there were 50
clubs around the Capital and Greater Buenos Aires and 20 more in Santa
Fe, Córdoba and Tucumán (Camarero, 2004, pp. 16–22). Left-wing par-
ties wanted to promote matches among workers to foster feelings of
brotherhood and working-class solidarity as opposed to the football
matches from the bourgeois leagues that were losing their nature to
rivalry (Camarero, 2004, p. 23). Nevertheless, none of them encouraged
women to practice football.

 ress Coverage and Nuanced Views About

P
Women’s Football
During the 1920s, media coverage of women’s football matches was
mainly negative. Media outlets either portrayed it as a rarity and a sur-
prising event, rejected or mocked the players or were more cautious about
their disapproval and focused on other topics instead. For example, the
newspaper El Argentino focused less on the criticism of football and the
female players and more on the need to stimulate physical and sports
culture among Latin girls. The Latin identity or latinidad became a signi-
fier that condensed various meanings about a type of womanhood that
was linked to traditional customs, with regressive and not particularly
modern ideas about women’s bodies, aesthetics and physical care.

The proverbial decency of the Latin woman, which ... has been defined by
her adversity to sports, has not only given up ground in that way but also,
judging by its recent growth, it is easy to predict that soon our female
sportsmen (sic) will score at the level of the foreigners (‘La mujer argentina’,
1923, p. 5).

Although the media questioned the supposed Latina ‘decency’, it also

set a high standard: Argentine women should be like foreign female ath-
letes, if not better than them. According to El Argentino, this was the
224 P. A. Scharagrodsky and M. Peréz Riedel

goal, despite some ambivalence and sometimes contradictory meanings

about what the football match represented. An article said: ‘The football
match that will take place this Friday on Boca Juniors’ field signals the
culmination of women’s activities in sport, due to the nature and charac-
teristics [of the sport] to be practised, which seem to be inappropriate for
our girls’ (‘La mujer argentina’, 1923, p. 5). The newspaper congratulated
Club Estudiantes de La Plata for accepting the request to let local girls
play football on its pitches to see for themselves the advantages of this
practice.
Other well-known newspapers, such as Fray Mocho, also advertised the
women’s football match of 1923 (‘En Buenos Aires’, 1923). They pub-
lished large photographs and lacked the burlesque, ironic or derogatory
tone of other media. Although the names of the women who played in
this match are known,4 the thoughts and feelings that players had in the
face of the almost inquisitive or sarcastic gaze of the press and their con-
temporaries (e.g., the public, family, friends) are unknown. We also do
not know the type of symbolic and material support that they had, or
why they dared to play in a football stadium, whether for money, pleasure
or curiosity. Apart from the criticism and ridicule received from the
media, the articles, illustrations and cartoons, the match took place and
it even attracted significant media coverage. Whether because of eco-
nomic, political and ideological reasons or simply the pleasure of com-
petitive sports, these footballers played the game in front of an audience,
ignoring, discounting and resisting the androcentric and heterosexual
gaze of the broader social imaginary regarding sports (El match, 1923). It
also is recognised that there were audience members, although their reac-
tions or opinions are not known.
Beyond that, it is possible to infer that the materialisation of this match
generated a micro-resistance or new meanings among those more conser-
vative voices that argued the inadequacy, impertinence and impropriety
of women’s football. Although this resistance was temporary, the event
was a novelty and possibly disruptive. Yet, this resistance must have not
4
Their names were Elsa Martínez, Josefa Beguerie, Nélida Martínez, Margarita Iriarte, Alicia Tisset,
Emma Meyer, Estela Solari, Lidia López, Lucía Reyes had, Margarita Silva and Estrella Villegas or
Silvia Pilnick, Elena van der Beck, Ana Schwartinsky, Erna Vollnas, Frida Bisicamp, Elisa Bulat,
Elly Bisimcap, Elisa van der Beck, Elsa Schwartinsky and Mizzi Baurer.
 12 ‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long as they don’t… 225

grown greater because, as far as is known, this match was followed by

other sporting events, with more participation from football clubs and
even the creation of the Women’s Football League (Liga de Fútbol
Femenina).
In conclusion, according to the hetero and male sports gaze from the
Argentine press of the 1920s, the bodies of female footballers did not fit
within the sexual morality, aesthetics, socially accepted movements and
sex/gender binary of the time. Consequently, theirs were likely to be con-
sidered abject bodies. Nonetheless, the materialisation of the event caused
contradictory reactions. In other words, the abjection of certain bodies
and their visibility also could have momentarily subverted the sex/gender
system by revealing bodies and discourses that were different from the
gender logic, from a certain feminine aesthetic and the normative sexual
morality. As Butler (2002) argues, abjection allows one to ponder the
possibility of other bodies. It also contributes to breaking the hegemonic
limits of the body, making room for a radical rearticulation or disruption
of the symbolic horizon where bodies come to matter (Butler, 2002).
Symbolic cracks were caused by the match and the news articles, which
questioned, enabled and invited one to think about other bodies, aesthet-
ics, dress codes and movements. Nonetheless, it would take several
decades for women to become politically visible in the world of football
in Argentina.

Conclusions
The purpose of the current study was to analyse how local newspapers
and magazines represented the first women’s football match to be recorded
in Argentina. Although there was an increasing number of Argentine girls
and women who practiced sports during the 1920s, research has shown
that the press put into circulation a series of arguments against women
playing football. These arguments were supported by the biomedical dis-
course and a set of patriarchal discourses, social customs and traditions
that exceeded the biological discourse itself. At the same time, the argu-
ments defined and excluded certain feminine sexual aesthetics and moral-
ities. Some media outlets criticised how the match from October 1923
226 P. A. Scharagrodsky and M. Peréz Riedel

was a strictly commercial event with the end goal of making a profit. The
national and local press treated the women’s football match with a tone
of strangeness and exoticism. They used words and images that expressed
rejection, disapproval and mockery. A minority of media outlets were less
disapproving and focused on other topics, even though they still ques-
tioned the match between the two women’s teams.
Not even less-conservative media outlets, such as socialist ones, men-
tioned the very social, political, pedagogical and family contexts that
made it difficult for women to have access to play certain sports such as
soccer. The predominant patriarchal tone of the press won by a landslide.
Consequently, Argentine women had to wait until the end of the twenti-
eth century to participate in football events as players, not just as specta-
tors, either for money, for pleasure, out of an interest or out of curiosity.

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Médicas Sobre la Cultura Física en Argentina, 1880–1970 (pp. 275–299).
Buenos Aires: Prometeo.
‘Match de fútbol’ (1923, October 12) Match de fútbol entre mujeres, La
Razón, p. 4.
Prates Silva, K. (2019). É uma coisa indecente, imoral e escandalosa: os pri-
meiros relatos sobre football feminino na imprensa do Rio de Janeiro
(1910–1920). Recorde: Revista de História do Esporte, 12(2), 1–10. https://
revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/Recorde/article/view/30991
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Editorial Planeta.
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Colegio de México.
Scharagrodsky, P. (2019). ¿Cruzando fronteras? El primer cruce a nado del Río
de La Plata, Uruguay-Argentina, 1923. Claves. Revista de Historia, 5(8),
211–233. https://doi.org/10.25032/crh.v5i8.9
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 12 ‘Femina sana in corpore sano’ (As long as they don’t… 229

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n. 351, p. 4
 13
Transgression and Resistance:
An Approach to Mexican Women’s
Football History through the Case
of Alicia Vargas (1970–1991)
Giovanni Alejandro Pérez Uriarte

The International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS)

recognises Alicia Vargas as one of the best players of the Confederation of
North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football
(CONCACAF). A member of the Mexican national team from 1970 to
1991, Vargas was also an outspoken advocate for the equal treatment and
competitive salaries that she and her teammates deserved, fighting against
abuse by football promoters and administrators. During her professional
career, which took place in the context of second-wave feminism, Vargas
challenged gendered discourses that rejected the presence of women in
football and became one of the most recognised players in Mexico (Elsey
& Nadel, 2019; Carreño, 2006).
In 1970, without the support of the Mexican Football Federation
(FMF), the country’s first women’s national team was formed. This new
team played in the 1970 Women’s World Cup in Italy, where the host

G. A. Pérez Uriarte (*)

Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 231
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_13
232 G. A. Pérez Uriarte

team as well as England, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark also partici-

pated. That year, Mexico’s team achieved a third-place finish and would
finish as runners-up in the next year’s World Cup held in Mexico. Neither
event was sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de Football
Association (FIFA); however, both set an important precedent in the his-
tory of women´s football.
Despite this early success, it would take more than two decades for
another national team to be organised, this time to participate in the
qualifying rounds for the first FIFA Women’s World Cup held in China
in 1991, although the Mexicans were unable to achieve qualification. In
this sense, the history of Vargas’s life is a window through which we can
approach this important era in women’s football and analyse how Mexican
women transgressed and resisted gendered discourses that imposed a
model of domesticity on them (Santillán & Gantús, 2010).
This author considers Alicia Vargas, along with her fellow players, to
be a transgressive character in two senses. First, by playing football she
entered a space historically reserved for the expression of hegemonic mas-
culinity. It was common for women to approach this sport as spectators
or even as ‘trophies’ for the most virile winners, but not as players
(Torrebadella-Flix, 2016). In this way, when Alicia began to play football
on the streets, eventually playing in teams and leagues, she contributed to
the transformation of football into a field of dispute, in which female
players challenged the social values and gender stereotypes that defined
them as tender, fragile and passive (Espinosa, 2016; Santillán & Gantús,
2010). Second, by demanding recognition as professionals, Alicia Vargas
and her teammates incorporated an element that made their struggle
more complex: the labour dimension, or their status as workers. In this
sense, they fought to receive fair remuneration for their service, equal to
that of their male counterparts.
This chapter is divided into three sections that follow Alicia Vargas’s
career. The first explores her approach to amateur sports and how she
joined organised football. The second section deals with her experience as
a national team player and her participation in the first and second
Women’s World Cups. Finally, the third part explores her return to ama-
teur teams and her final involvement with the national team in 1991.
 13 Transgression and Resistance: An Approach to Mexican… 233

This investigation relied on structured interviews and unstructured

conversations with Alicia Vargas during March 2021. A lot of attention
was given to the words and, especially, the silences she used while remem-
bering her life story. It was also very important to cross-reference her
testimony with hemerographic resources from that period; thus, journals
(e.g., El Heraldo de México, La Prensa and Novedades) as well as magazines
like Balón were consulted. This contrastive method allowed the author to
fill information voids and broaden the perspective on the women’s foot-
ball phenomenon in Mexico.

Origins: From the Streets to the Fields

Alicia Vargas (born February 2, 1954, in Guanajuato, a state in central
México) moved to Mexico City with her family at a very early age. During
her childhood, she used to play with her four sisters and two brothers, the
latter avid football fans. The relationship with her siblings gave her an
early insight into football. Between the ages of 10 and 12, family and
friends grew increasingly surprised at her game skills in the parks and
streets of her neighbourhood. Nevertheless, some neighbors were not
happy about the girl who practiced this sport. Alicia remembers that ‘it
was very frowned upon. Sometimes they would say things to my mother,
that she should force me into the kitchen, that I looked fea (ugly) playing
with the boys. They felt it was an invasion; they did not understand how
a woman was going to play a ‘male sport’’ (Vargas, personal communica-
tion, March 16, 2021). Comments of this nature were not limited to
neighbours. Individuals who enjoyed a certain prestige within the com-
munity were also opinionated; for example, during his Sunday sermon,
the local priest reprimanded mothers who allowed their daughters to play
with boys (Vargas, personal communication, March 16, 2021).
Despite the rejection in some sectors and the insults she had to face,
Alicia defended her right to practice her favorite sport. In addition, she
was not the only girl in the mid-1960s who exhibited a deep passion for
football. Mexican women had already formed amateur teams as early as
the 1930s (Añorve, 2019), and countries (e.g., England, Australia, China,
France, Chile and Argentina) also had women’s teams (Williams, 2007;
234 G. A. Pérez Uriarte

Elsey & Nadel, 2019; Franzini, 2005) So, it can be presumed that,
although it remained hidden, women’s football was present and survived
through hardships. Historiographic evidence indicates that the first
matches were met with resistance, some segments diminished their
importance, rejected them or outright banned them. Examples of the lat-
ter include the bans of women’s football in England from 1921 to 1971
and in Brazil from 1941 to 1979 (Williams, 2007; Knijnik, 2014; Votre
& Mourão, 2003).
Nevertheless, it was towards the end of the 1950s when the sport
earned attention in several states of Mexico; for example, in Jalisco and
Tamaulipas, several exhibition matches were organised (Carreño, 2006).
In that sense, the tours of foreign female teams in Mexico became a major
source of its popularisation. Among them, América of Costa Rica and
Costa Rica FC held several friendly matches in Mexico in 1963 (Elsey &
Nadel, 2019).
Likewise, the growth of women’s football in Mexico occurred within a
framework of drastic social and cultural transformations. During the
1950s, Mexico was mainly a rural country, but by the 1970s 60% of the
nation’s population lived in urban areas (The World Bank, 2018). In this
context, women’s participation in the workforce increased dramatically as
well as their access to educational opportunities (Sánchez, 2002). For
example, in the 1970s, women represented 17.6% of the total labour
force, while 65% of women had at least finished elementary school
(Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, 2007).
Although fewer women than men benefitted from these opportunities,
they were able to study and work in greater proportions than their moth-
ers and grandmothers of prior generations.
These changes coincided with the momentum of second-wave femi-
nism that, during the 1960s and 1970s, defended the right of women to
develop beyond the domestic sphere, called for labour equality and defied
the notion of motherhood as a social imperative, among other changes.
In other words, as these adjustments took place, gender identities also
underwent a transformative process: women’s life plans emphasised their
satisfaction related to professional development. This was a break with
traditional gendered discourse which placed a universal obligation for
marriage and motherhood on all women (Espinosa, 2016).
 13 Transgression and Resistance: An Approach to Mexican… 235

In this context, Alicia Vargas entered football, first playing in the streets
of her neighbourhood. When she was 15, she heard that the women’s
teams of the América and Guadalajara clubs were playing a friendly
match near her. She attended eagerly, hoping to play despite not being
part of any team. The match took place on the field at the Tribunal para
menores (Juvenile court). After watching the first half, she approached
both José Morales, Guadalajara’s coach, and Elsa Salgado, the team cap-
tain. Alicia asserted herself so much that both parties allowed her to play.
At the end of the match, Alicia also convinced them to let her join the
team. In this way, she became a player for Guadalajara, a club that was in
the process of joining the only women’s league in the country—the
América League (Vargas, personal communication, March 16, 2021).
Alicia Vargas’s entry into organised football would not have been pos-
sible without the effort and organisation of the enthusiasts who created
this tournament. The América League had its roots in the passion of
cheerleaders from Club América who also wanted to play. By November
1969, there were 16 independent teams in Mexico City and nearby cities;
thus, Efraín Pérez decided to organise the First Amateur Women’s Football
Championship of Mexico City, also known as the América League. Pérez
was a coach who had recently graduated from the Escuela Nacional de
Educación Física (ENEF) and became involved in the training of the
women soccer players of Club América.
Ten teams from Mexico City and six from nearby states, such as the
State of Mexico, Morelos and Puebla, participated in the América League
(Carreño, 2006). In the following months, more women were organising
new teams and applying to enter the competition. The growth in popu-
larity enabled the formation of the Asociación Mexicana de Futbol
Femenil A.C. (Mexican Association of Women’s Football, AMFF) in
February of 1970 (Carreño, 2006). This association was very important
for Alicia Vargas’s sporting career; at that time, she could never have fore-
seen that football would take her to another continent.
236 G. A. Pérez Uriarte

The First Women’s Team and Job Offers

In April 1970, the Federation of Independent European Female Football
(FIEFF) invited AMFF to participate in the first Women’s World Cup,
sponsored by the alcoholic beverage company Martini & Rossi. The
AMFF held a thorough local selection process, after which a team of 16
players was formed, among whom was Alicia Vargas (Carreño, 2006).
Alicia and her teammates attended the training sessions thanks to the
financial assistance of their families, and after just two months of train-
ing, they traveled to Italy.
The national team did not have the FMF’s support, and the players
went through several hardships to complete the journey. The women met
at the Mexico City airport without uniforms, shoes, flags or emblems
that identified them as national representatives. A few moments before
boarding the plane, they received uniforms from an anonymous sponsor.
Alicia recalls that they were not sure, but, from the labels on the jackets,
they assumed that the uniforms came from Enrique Borja, a famous
Mexican football player and owner of a sporting goods store (Vargas,
personal communication, March 16, 2021).
The hardships suffered by the Mexican team mirror the ones their
Argentinian counterparts experienced a year later. According to Ayelén
Pujol (2019), the Argentinian women’s team also lacked uniforms, equip-
ment, a medical team, a masseuse or a coach. This reveals two facts: the
dismissiveness of the sport’s governing bodies in both countries and the
bravery of the athletes who defended their right to play despite facing
major adversities.
In Italy, Alicia dazzled the European press. After winning their open-
ing match against Austria 9 to 0, the Mexicans reached the semi-finals,
and, despite losing to tournament hosts, they later took third place by
defeating England. Vargas’s abilities earned her the recognition of tourna-
ment most valuable player (MVP). The European press compared her
playing style with that of the Italian Angelo Domenghini and the Brazilian
superstar Edson Arantes Do Nascimento, better known as ‘Pelé’. Back in
Mexico, coach Efraín Pérez stated to the Mexican press that some players,
including Alicia Vargas, had received offers from Italian teams, but the
 13 Transgression and Resistance: An Approach to Mexican… 237

players declined them citing ‘family reasons’ (Carreño, 2006). Yet, in

reality, Alicia did not receive a formal offer on that occasion (Vargas, per-
sonal communication, March 16, 2021).
When she returned to Mexico City, she discovered that more teams
and women’s football leagues had emerged; some of them included the
Iztaccíhuatl League, Xochimilco League, National School of Physical
Education League and Naucalpan League (Carreño, 2006). Women were
attracted to the sport by Mexico’s good performance in the World Cup.
Later that year, sports promoter, Jaime de Haro, saw a business opportu-
nity if a second world championship were to be celebrated in Mexico.
The project came to fruition when the Mexican delegation, composed of
Efraín Pérez, journalist Manelich Quintero and Jaime de Haro himself,
traveled to the FIEFF congress in Italy to win the bid to host and formal-
isd the tournament for September 1970.
Nevertheless, organising a team for the second World Cup became
even more complicated. The appearance of new teams and leagues trig-
gered bureaucratic mishaps. Every league and team made their own deci-
sions and a consensus was unreachable. Alicia recalls that originally it was
established that the players would be picked after the celebration of a
selectivo—a tournament where more players would be oberved as a kind
of trial. This new roster would be reinforced with players from the team
that played in the 1970 World Cup, most of whom were members of the
América League. By then, Guadalajara, Alicia’s club, had already left that
league in favor of the Iztaccíhuatl League, so despite her participation in
the prior World Cup, she had to participate in the selectivo (Vargas, per-
sonal communication, March 16, 2021).
Even though the selectivo did take place, in a last minute decision the
coaches decided that the national team would be the same one that trav-
eled to Italy, but the players had to be part of the América League. Only
three footballers from the rest of the leagues would be included as rein-
forcements. Alicia’s participation was in doubt because of this adminis-
trative confusion; just a week before the tournament, coach Víctor
Manuel Meléndez finally called her in as a player (Vargas, personal com-
munication, March 16, 2021).
It is possible to confirm, thanks to reports in the press, that the 1971
Women’s World Cup in Mexico was a sporting and commercial success.
238 G. A. Pérez Uriarte

Even though the total profit generated is unknown, some newspapers

estimated it to be around 8-million Mexican pesos (4.2 million in today’s
US dollars, adjusted for inflation), but this estimate did not include the
broadcasting fees for Mexico and several countries in Europe (El Heraldo
de México, 1971; La Prensa, 1971). According to El Heraldo de México
(1971), the event included musical intermissions, folk dance numbers,
acrobats and an exhibition match played by local actresses and singers.
Manelich Quintero, Teodoro Cano, Hugo Sanmontiel and Juan Acevedo
are some of this newspaper’s journalists who gave great details about the
competition while also pointing out the impact it had on its audience. El
Heraldo de México reported 90 thousand people in Estadio Azteca for the
opening ceremony, an important indicator of the tournament’s success.
Alicia Vargas once again showed her skills, and this time she and her
teammates reached the final. Thanks to coverage in newspapers, one also
knows that the matches were broadcast on television and that many busi-
nesses organised publicity campaigns around the competition, such as
the department store El Palacio de Hierro (Novedades, 1971). Television
broadcasting of women’s football was not a novelty because matches of
the first female leagues of Mexico City were shown on Channel 8 a few
years earlier. The Mexican case was not an exception; other countries, like
Argentina, also organised friendly tournaments of women’s football that
were also broadcast on television (Pujol, 2019).
In the 1971 World Cup, the Mexican team’s matches filled the Azteca
Stadium with eager fans. Vargas attributes this attendance to a lewd curi-
osity because, despite the success achieved the year before, various sectors
of society still considered it improper for women to play football, arguing
that it was a ‘rough’ sport (Vargas, personal communication, March 16,
2021). In this sense, it is important to remember that throughout the
twentieth century and as women entered the sports field with greater
force, the limits of their infiltration were redefined by differentiating
sports practices between those considered ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’.
Those of the latter category were understood as practices in which physi-
cal expressions of violence and aggression were developed, assumed as
characteristics of masculinity (Moreno, 2007). For this reason, some sec-
tors of society viewed sports (e.g., gymnastics, tennis, swimming,
 13 Transgression and Resistance: An Approach to Mexican… 239

volleyball or basketball) as better suited for women; football was not

among them (Moreno, 2007).
This vision was also shared by the tournament organisers, who modi-
fied the game regulations and presented them as ‘concessions’ that would
make football a sport suitable for women. One of these changes, enforced
during the World Cup, reduced the playing time of each half from 45 to
35 minutes. Likewise, ‘feminine’ details were added to the stadium. For
example, the goalposts were painted with pink stripes, and pots of yellow
chrysanthemums were placed behind the goals and on the players’
benches. Similarly, the media declared that the dressing rooms were
transformed into ‘beauty salons’ (Espinosa, 2016).
In the same vein, the Mexican press actively objectified the players
through chronicles and cartoons; their presence on the football field was
associated with sexual issues, as though being an object of longing for the
male gaze was an obligation and an inherent female quality (Santillán &
Gantús, 2010). Alicia was no stranger to these gazes, and she remembers
that the fans ‘were lewd; they wanted to see how we lowered the ball with
our chest or how our legs looked’ (Vargas, personal communication,
March 16, 2021). The sexualisation of football players by the media and
fans alike was not an isolated case. The same phenomenon occurred in
other regions and still lingers. According to Goellner (2005), Brazil had
built a discourse of eroticism around female players since the 1970s,
which emphasised the sensuality of their bodies above their qualities as
players; this is similar to what the Mexican players experienced around
the same time.
Despite the hardships that arose as the tournament progressed, Vargas’s
talent and bravery led the Mexicans to the final match. It was then that
the women challenged the organisers; they demanded remuneration for
their services: two million pesos (1.055 million US dollars adjusted for
inflation) divided equally between all the players and staff members, 20
people in total. Alicia Vargas was 17 years old at the time, and most of her
teammates were her age or even younger. According to her statement, the
request was not an agreement among players, and most of them did not
find out about it until it was published in the newspapers. Nonetheless,
she sympathised with the request: Alicia was one of the most vocal advo-
cates in the media as we can see in the newspapers of the time.
240 G. A. Pérez Uriarte

In an interview with Bernardo Vargas García, from Balón magazine,

she declared: ‘It is improper that the organisers keep all the money and
they do not give us anything because we are the most important part of
the show. But we are going to speak up’ (1971). Despite the demands, the
event promoters and organisers refused to pay; they argued that the play-
ers were amateur. Alicia remembers that ‘[the tournament] gave them a
lot of money and we did not receive anything. Sometimes we did not
even have enough money to buy the newspaper. We bought one and
shared it to read the news. We depended [financially] on our families’
(Vargas, personal communication, March 16, 2021). When the press
questioned her, she answered that if this were an amateur tournament,
then they should not charge the fans an entrance fee. Likewise, she did
not hesitate to point out that it was unfair that players did not receive any
remuneration despite being the stars of the show while the organisers
profitted from their image and work (Vargas, personal communication,
March 16, 2021).
Alicia Vargas’s position can be explained from what Hollander (2002)
calls gender resistance. This is a set of intentional or unintentional acts,
which are opposed to conventional expectations or beliefs about roles and
behaviors that, in a certain vision, each gender should perform (Hollander,
2002). According to Hollander, it is unlikely that individual actions by
themselves produce a determining social change, but by developing alter-
native discourses based on them, they acquire greater impact and become
key elements that allow confrontation against hegemonic models of mas-
culinity and femininity. When Alicia played football, she clearly exempli-
fied a form of gender resistance in Hollander’s terms. In the same way, by
articulating discourses that criticised the decisions of the organisers and
the unequal treatment to which the football players were subjected, she
transgressed the dominant patterns regarding femininity (Hollander,
2002), according to which a woman had to dedicate herself to housework
and, of course, in no way could claim a fair payment—one that any man
would receive for performing the same job.
Still, after the organisers refused to pay them, some players suggested a
resistance tactic: not playing in the final until their demands were met. In
this situation, the young women were coerced by promoter Jaime de
Haro and by the federal authorities of Mexico City. After several days of
 13 Transgression and Resistance: An Approach to Mexican… 241

agitated discussions, they convinced the players to play the last match
against Denmark. The Mexican team showed up, and although they did
not win, they achieved one of the most important results in the history of
Mexican women’s football—World Cup runners-up. As part of their rec-
ognition, the players received financial support from a group of Mexican
actresses and singers who raised money outside the stadium and distrib-
uted it among the players. On the other hand, Jaime de Haro, motivated
by the scandal and with the intention that the players desist from the
request, gave around 10 000 pesos (5275 in today’s US dollars) to each
one of the players once the tournament ended (Vargas, personal commu-
nication, March 16, 2021).
After the championship, most of the women returned to their teams
and leagues as amateur footballers. Martha Espinosa (2016) has empha-
sised that, despite how transgressive their participation in the second
Women’s World Cup was, most of the players saw their foray into foot-
ball as just another stage in their lives. For most of them, this was a
moment of transition between adolescence and adulthood, which would
be marked by marriage (Espinosa, 2016). Yet, Alicia Vargas went beyond
this and defended her football career as a legitimate profession. Her per-
formance in both the Italy and Mexico World Cups was an important
showcase for her abilities, which piqued the interest of European teams.
Italian club Real Torino contacted her in 1971 to offer her an opportu-
nity to join, along with a scholarship for her studies, guaranteed accom-
modations and a salary. She accepted under two conditions: first, that
they allow her to reach the age of majority—18 years of age in Mexico—
and second, that the offer be put in writing, in a duly signed contract,
which should be validated by the Mexican and Italian authorities (Vargas,
personal communication, March 16, 2021).
When she turned 18, a representative of the Italian club went to Alicia’s
house in Mexico City with the plane tickets to Italy. Vargas inquired
about the contract and received an unexpected answer: she could review
it when she was in Europe, not before. ‘We are not accepting that. If you
are not serious about your contracts, I am not leaving. Take your tickets
with you’, the player declared (Vargas, personal communication, March
16, 2021). ‘You are going to regret it’, snapped the representative, but
Alicia ignored him.
242 G. A. Pérez Uriarte

This episode is very indicative of Vargas’s ideals. When she requested

that the offer be duly placed in a contract, she demanded the same digni-
fied and serious treatment male football players received. With her
actions, Alicia entered a struggle that continues to this day, that of equal
pay. Even though women’s football has undergone a global process of
professionalisation through the years, the pay gap between male and
female players is still one of the most visible aspects of gender discrimina-
tion in sports, especially when female players are forced to quit their
profession at an early age because of economical hardships caused by low
or nonexistent salaries (Aliendre & Contreras, 2019). Thus, when Alicia
demanded recognition for her work under dignified conditions in the
1970s, she took the first steps in defending a cause that still is one of the
main demands of current female footballers.

 eturn to Amateur Leagues and Alicia’s Last

R
National Team Experience
During the 1970s, Alicia was actively playing for teams of various ama-
teur tournaments, such as Guadalajara and Jalisco of the Iztaccíhuatl and
Independiente leagues, respectively (Vargas, personal communication,
March 16, 2021). Like several of her former teammates in the national
team, she studied physical education and went on tours with the national
women’s team to various cities in Mexico. These itinerant exhibition
matches were organised by sports promoters who pitted national team
players against local clubs. Still, Alicia remembers that travel conditions
were not always the best, and she never received any kind of payment for
the tours. The promoters’ argument, as they had stated before, was that
the footballers were amateurs and thus they should not charge a
playing fee.
For this reason, the tours only covered the transportation and accom-
modations of the players. Alicia remembers that ‘at the end of the matches
the promoters always told us that they had not earned much, that it was
all spent on the hotel and what we had eaten’. She recalls that when they
returned to Mexico City, they were always abandoned. ‘We had to wait as
 13 Transgression and Resistance: An Approach to Mexican… 243

a group until the subway opened because they abandoned us on the street
regardless of the time of the night; they did not even give us money for a
taxi fare’ (Vargas, personal communication, March 16, 2021).
Despite the difficult circumstances, Alicia was part of the team that in
1976 toured Costa Rica, marking the official debut of the Costa Rican
women’s national team (Hinojosa, 2016). The Mexican’s second-place in
the 1971 Women’s World Cup motivated more and more women to
form amateur teams in several regions of the country. For example,
Mercedes Rodríguez Alemán entered the national team a few years later;
she recalls being inspired by the success of the Mexican team in 1970 and
1971, and those matches also motivated women in her native Coahuila
to form teams (Elsey & Nadel, 2019).
Notwithstanding this growing interest, Alicia noticed that the support
for women’s football and the national team was not increasing. For this
reason, she decided to quit the tours. Her companions, on the other
hand, organised a team called Mundialistas that participated in the
Cabeza de Juárez League, which they won between 1973 and 1980 (Elsey
& Nadel, 2019). Vargas continued her football career in the Jalisco team
until 1991 when she, already a veteran player, received a peculiar pro-
posal: a return to the national team.
To understand how unexpected this proposal was, we must remember
that the FIFA did not yet recognise the 1970 and 1971 World Cups as
official tournaments. In addition, for several years, they were indifferent
to the development of women’s football. It was not until the late 1980s
and 1990s that this position began to change; this led to the organisation
of the first FIFA Women’s World Cup in China in November 1991
(Williams, 2007). The qualifying round offered only two places for
CONCACAF teams. Alicia Vargas received the offer to return to the
national team after the FMF hastily improvised the organisation of a
team to participate in the qualifying playoffs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Twenty years had passed since the Mexican women were runner-up
World Champions. Alicia’s conditions were no longer the same. She had
a stable job that could not be neglected to join the national team, so she
was hesitant to accept. Still, the FMF insisted, and, after acquiring the
necessary work permits, she joined the team. This was the only interven-
tion by the FMF that Alicia witnessed: ‘We did not receive support; we
244 G. A. Pérez Uriarte

had no field, no balls and we did physical conditioning at Alameda

Central Park’, a public space in the heart of Mexico City (Vargas, per-
sonal communication, March 16, 2021).
With the same abandonment they experienced two decades ago, the
Mexican women’s national team prepared for the regional playoffs. A few
days before traveling, the team received flags and uniforms. The former
player recalls that when the press interviewed her about their chances, she
gave a hopeless response; given the poor preparation of the football play-
ers and the nonexistent support of both the team managers and the fed-
eration, the probability of qualification was minimal (Vargas, personal
communication, March 16, 2021).
The veteran football player was not wrong because the Mexican team
failed to qualify for the 1991 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which also
marked the end of Alicia’s participation in the national team. After play-
offs, she returned to her work and her daily life. That last experience was
enough for her to understand that women’s football was ignored by
Mexican managers and promoters while in other countries (e.g., the
United States), it was growing fast. Back in Mexico, Vargas faced health
problems; she had to undergo surgery after suffering a fracture in her
fibula during a match. After recovering, she returned to the fields, played
for a couple more years and retired. ‘Being a professional footballer was
my dream. I could have even played in a men’s team’, Alicia recalls; she
was aware that certain circumstances were the reason her plans never
came to total fruition.
Several years later, Irma Chávez, a teammate from the 1971 national
team, called Alicia on the phone. She convinced her to buy the local
newspaper. ‘You are the best’, she told her joyfully, knowing that Alicia’s
triumph was the triumph of a whole generation. In the newspaper, Alicia
discovered that the IFFHS had named her the third-best CONCACAF
player of the twentieth century, tied with United States’ national team
player Julie Foudy and just under Foudy’s compatriots Michelle Akers
and Mia Hamm. At that moment, Alicia knew that the world had not
forgotten them.
 13 Transgression and Resistance: An Approach to Mexican… 245

Conclusions
The life experiences of Alicia Vargas are a valuable window into a vital
period in Mexican women’s football between 1970 and 1991. Her case
allows one to see that, despite difficult circumstances, women communi-
cated forms of resisting and transgressing hegemonic models of feminin-
ity. At the same time, they articulated discourses and took action against
the conditions they faced. Alicia, with courage and dignity, demanded
recognition as a professional football player, a worker who deserved a fair
salary and decent treatment. The support and solidarity from other
women, such as actresses and singers, showed Alicia’s cause, and that of
her teammates, was based on a structural problem suffered by women in
various professional activities. In this sense, her stance and her actions
contributed to a struggle that continues to this day: that of labour equity
and the defence of every woman’s right to develop professionally in any
chosen field.

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 14
An Oral History of Women’s Football
in Colombia: Building Tools
for Collective Action
Gabriela Ardila Biela

Introduction
The history of football practiced by women in Colombia has not been a
particularly researched field in historiography, sports and football. This
author wants to clarify why it is imporant to write about ‘football prac-
ticed by women’ and not ‘female football’ as it is called in Spanish—it is
the same sport played by various people. One should not believe there is
women’s football and men’s football, separately (Rial, 2013). Apart from
some journalistic texts and a few articles, such as Watson’s (2021), the
only book on the subject was published in February 2021 by the social
communicator Carolina Jaramillo Seligmann (2021); it is entitled ‘Balón
de Cristal’: A History of Women’s Football in Colombia. The book is con-
structed on interviews to explain a story that focuses mainly on the last

G. Ardila Biela
University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 247
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_14
248 G. Ardila Biela

20 years of football practiced by women in Colombia, not claiming that

this is where its history begins, but rather exploring this era in more detail.
This chapter argues that women have been playing football since its
origins in England. In Colombia there are journalistic records as early as
1949, in which various matches are reported (‘La reina caleña’, 1949;
‘Solteritas y a la Orden’, 1949). Nevertheless, why are there so few studies
on the subject? Why is there so little talk in the media about football
practiced by women? Why is it that when people think about football,
they usually think about men playing football?
Colombia has had a women’s national team since 1998, as well as
regional amateur leagues since the 1980s, and women in the country
have been interested in the sport and playing it at least since the late
1940s. This chapter seeks to reflect on the possible reasons for the erasure
of women football players in the history of football in the country and
which tools are useful to make them visible, and using these tools to
begin the path toward visibility. To accomplish this, the chapter focuses
on experiences of women playing football in Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Cali
and Medellín. First, the role that football has played in the construction
of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ binary bodies is analysed, each with their
specific characteristics without the possibility of existing outside this
binarism and the imaginaries of the nation. Then, using a feminist per-
spective, the chapter reflects on the place attributed to women in this
construction and the spaces of escape they have built (Müller, 2009).
Finally, it presents and analyses the reflections of women on their experi-
ences, using the methodology of oral history. This chapter’s objective is to
visibilise the stories of women who play football and contribute to cur-
rent knowledge of their history, struggles, achievements and difficulties.

Body Politics
Sociological studies have investigated the uses of sport in the construc-
tion of national identity, recognising that its usefulness is not based on
sporting achievements, but rather on the processes of differentiation and
exclusion that can be generated through sporting practices (Patiño,
2010). Since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the
 14 An Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia: Building… 249

Colombian bourgeoisie, which was beginning to consider a capitalist

development project to be a republic, was nourished by sports practices
imported from Europe and the United States for this socio-political proj-
ect (Patiño, 2010). For example, clubs were created to promote urban
sports practices exclusively for the bourgeoisie as well as to discuss politics
and literature in those spaces, building a material and symbolic differen-
tiation from the rest of the population (Patiño, 2010):
This exclusionary practice of differentiation gained momentum in two
directions: on the one hand, building exclusive spaces and, on the other
hand, aiding in the search for national policies to control the population,
based on racist reflections of a eugenic hygienist nature (Patiño, 2010).
This exclusionary ‘geographic’ practice was accomplished through the
creation of elite clubs in the cities, so the upper classes and their families
could enjoy and play tennis, golf, and other elitist and new sports while
practices of social control grew through the development of public poli-
cies in schools and sport spaces (Patiño, 2010).
Thus, Law 80 of 1925 created the National Commission of Physical
Education, which received a budget to regulate sports events, the use of
public spaces for sports, sports presentations during national holidays
and anthropometric measurements (Ley 80 de 1925. Sobre educación …,
1925). This law rather than a practical reality exemplifies a discourse that
was being expanded because it was only in 1933, with the approval of
Decree 1734, that sport became regulated by the state and along with it
the search to control and shape bodies (Patiño, 2010). In theory, this law
and decree should have popularised sport in Colombia, not just making
it accessible for more people but also by controlling the measurements of
the people who practiced sports through medical, health and anthropo-
metric records (Gómez, 2011).
Along with the institutionalisation of sports entities, the discussion on
the ‘degeneration of the race’, guided the eugenicist pedagogical discourse
on the body and the need for physical work to combat this alleged degen-
eration (Roldán, 2013). Emphasising ‘race’ as a biological construct,
these discourses reinforced the need for homogenisation with the white
European population, using sports as a medium to achieve this. These
media strategies were strengthened at the national level, and thus nur-
tured nationalist discourses entrenched in sports practices, particularly
250 G. Ardila Biela

between 1948, when football practiced by men was professionalised, and

1951, when the first round of Colombia cycling practiced by men took
place (Roldán, 2013). These two events were used by the State in the
construction of a specific idea of a nation: strong, competitive and
masculine.
This is evidenced by the advancement of the professionalisation of
football practiced by men, which sought to alleviate the popular upris-
ings resulting from the assassination of popular political leader Jorge
Eliécer Gaitán on April 9, 1948 (Racines, 2011). Gaitán was the first
political leader who talked in a language that the Colombian people
could understand. His assassination resulted in the historical period
known in Colombia as ‘The Violence’. In other words, Colombia was
facing a difficult time in which the two political parties found themselves
in a violent war and Colombian ideas were divided into liberal and con-
servative thought. The government used sports, specifically football and
cycling, to create an idea of unity across the political positions that fuelled
the two-party war and used physical education in schools to construct
bodies according to gender, class and racial stereotypes (Racines, 2011;
Gómez, 2011).

 uilding the Feminine Body: Control

B
and Exclusion in Colombian Sports
At the time, women were not thought of as citizens; they had no right to
vote and thus feminised bodies were assigned the specific task of repro-
duction. This control over feminised bodies was framed in terms of repro-
ductive capacities and was a central argument for the supposed need to
regulate, dominate and exploit these bodies. In the field of education, in
the first half of the twentieth century, schools guided the education of
girls towards the service of their family and community. Later, other
pathways were opened that allowed them to go to university while main-
taining the role of mother, wife and educator (Báez, 2011). That is to say,
although new opportunities appeared, control of bodies by the State was
maintained.
 14 An Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia: Building… 251

The antropologist Zandra Pedraza takes up the specificities during the

educational reforms of the first half of the twentieth century around
sports. It is worth noting that one of early physical education’s main char-
acteristics was division according to social class, age and sex. Specific exer-
cises were exclusively for upper-class men while mechanical forms of
gymnastics were intended for other people, such as the popular classes
and women (Gómez, 2011). Among women, class also mattered because,
before the State had eugenic interests in maternity and childcare, only
upper-class women could practice what was called physical culture.
The gynaecological discourses that inspired the country’s sport and
educational policies affirmed the need to subdue the typical ‘irritability’
of women through adequate physical education. These were also dis-
cussed during the first National Pedagogical Congress, where medical
doctors reinforced the differences between sexes, and so the fragility of
women’s bodies. This encouraged the prioritisation of the pedagogical use
of exercises for women that exalted feminine beauty and grace
(Gómez, 2011).
Thus, by the 1940s, sports became part of women’s education through
the specification of which disciplines were acceptable and how women
should practice them. Therefore, they were permitted to participate in
those disciplines that revered delicacy while rejecting the exhaustion and
masculinisation of the female body, which should embody elegance.
Thus, sports such as basketball, volleyball and other ball sports (a list in
which football was not mentioned), were regarded positively for the
development of women’s bodies. This sort of sports segregation also hap-
pened in other South American countries, as pointed out by Brazilian
researcher Silvana Goellner (2005), who reflects on the discourse about
the masculinisation of female bodies in football. There are similar inves-
tigations in the same direction on Mexico (Nadel, 2014) and other coun-
tries in Latin America (Elsey & Nadel, 2019) and Europe (e.g., Germany),
where some studies highlighted the argument of masculinisation of
women’s bodies as a primary obstacle to their access to football
(Selmer, 2013).
Other sports were accepted for developing specific body parts, such as
swimming, rowing, skating and even cycling. The main goal was to
252 G. Ardila Biela

develop an elegant body and protect the reproductive organs (Gómez,

2011). This last argument was also used in other places:

In the 1920s, invigorated efforts began to exclude women from football

within physical education programs. In part this was due to the perceived
physicality of the game, in part due to its supposed masculinizing nature.
Moreover, the increasing identification of football as the national sport
heightened its representative power. The process of professionalization of
men’s football in the early 1930s and its perception as violent, … created
new market approaches to the sport that increased its penetration into
social life. (Elsey & Nadel, 2019, p. 66)

 vercoming Body Control and Colombian

O
Football’s Pioneers
Sport represented the institutionalised construction (at least through dis-
course) of sexualised bodies through physical education in public and
private schools with differences of class, sex, gender, racialisation and
ability. Although bodies were stereotyped and acceptable activities for
each were limited in public education and state discourses, however,
many people bypassed these spaces of control and actively practiced the
sports they chose (Elsey & Nadel, 2019). After overcoming stereotypes,
the challenge has been to overcome erasure. Because sports are builders of
bodies and nations, as stated earlier, deletion of women in football from
the field of historiography, as well as the study and analysis of the sport,
has been the subsequent way to maintain control. This is why, even
though there are numerous studies on football, almost all of them refer to
football practiced by men.
It could then be considered that the Colombian State’s controls were
successful and women did not practice football, but this argument is eas-
ily refuted by a quick review of press articles from the late 1940s. This
author’s research of the Colombian press included analysing two national
magazines, Semana and Cromos, specifically, as well as some national and
local newspapers according to tips given by interviewees and other aca-
demics (Watson, 2019). is The first year in which it was possible to find
 14 An Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia: Building… 253

something about football practiced by women was 1949 in the form of

references to some matches played in Cali and Barranquilla. Also, there
are articles that appear in 1951 about two Costa Rican women’s teams
that toured Colombia and encountered obstacles, mainly in Bogotá with
the criticism of the league’s decency—that is, a group of conservative
politicians’ wives questioned the morality of the event (Zeledón, 1999).
Although there are some newspaper articles on the topic during the
1950s, 1960s and 1970s, there are less than 15, which seems to signify a
low interest on the part of women to practice this sport. This absence is
why it is necessary, from a feminist perspective of historiographic analy-
sis, to resort to oral history to glimpse the developments of historical
agents that have been made invisible—in this case, women who practice
football.

Oral Histories of Colombian Women’s Football

Oral history is characterised by the fact that it is done in practice; in addi-
tion, it confronts debates about objectivity and subjectivity, memory and
the present. The historian Carmen Collado Herrera asserts that there are
two ways of doing oral history: through oral archives and through the
collection of sources and consulting testimonies (Collado Herrera, 2006).
The latter is the method used in for this investigation. Thus, the author
understands oral history as a tool that creates, among other things,
sources, which are the joint result of the articulation of the oral discourse
that emerges in the encounter between interviewer and interviewee.
Based on this, in this work interviews were conducted with the objec-
tive of learning about the experiences lived by the women players in the
development of football. The interviews reflect the subjectivity of the
interviewees in the reconstruction of their memory as well as subjectivity
in the formulation of the questions. The systematisation of these inter-
views allows one to reflect on the possibility of collective memories of
football practiced by women in diverse cities and also on the various
interregional sports encounters.
Women players have appeared and disappeared from football history.
Their existence has been thought of as exaggerated or monstrous and
254 G. Ardila Biela

their exclusion has been justified by the supposed lack of female sporting
tradition (Elsey & Nadel, 2019):

Women´s soccer in Latin America, however, was not simply overlooked.

National leaders sought to suppress it. Sports authorities systematically
closed down options for women to play the game with the support of pub-
lic health ‘experts’ who claimed that soccer damaged women’s reproductive
capacities. Ultimately, the reason for banning women´s soccer had little to
do with the game itself and much more to do with the meaning of soccer
and womanhood for Latin American nations. While men’s soccer was—
and remains—the national game throughout much of the region, women’s
soccer was seen as the threat, making the game almost antinational. The
idea that women soccer players violated national ethos led to the near dis-
missal of the sport. (Nadel, 2014, pp. 209–210)

Understanding that the erasure of women players is framed in social,

political and economic structures, this author sought to dismantle this
imaginary of women players without a football career. Using their voices,
the aim was to build narratives that can nurture the past and thus
strengthen the present towards a future where women and dissidents can
practice the sports they want to practice in a dignified manner.
To challenge the dominant history and reflect on the narratives of
women players, we understand them as an important part of oral history.
As Dora Schwarzstein proposes:

Oral history by—reflecting on the nature of the process of remembering as

a key element in the compression of the subjective meaning of human
experiences and by trying to explain the nature of individual and collective
memories—allows for the construction of an innovative and different
modality of dialogue between memory and history. (2002, p. 489)

This chapter discusses the conversations and interviews with 20 differ-

ent people involved with football in Colombia, including women players
and male coaches of football practiced by women. The interviews were
semi-structured and took place in the Colombian cities of Medellín, Cali,
Bucaramanga and Bogotá. The data was collected between 2018 and
2021. The women players interviewed had diverse experiences and
 14 An Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia: Building… 255

expectations within the sport. Seven of the interviewees were part of the
first official national team and some of them have been coaches. Some of
the interviewees visualised and imagined a life as a football player while
others played football as a hobby. The times in which the players have
been active range from 1970 to the present. This diversity is intentional,
because the author sought to investigate football practiced by women in
dissimilar spaces, both institutional and self-organised.

 he Beginning: Influence of Brothers

T
and the Streets
From the narratives of the players, there are common factors in most of
the accounts regardless of the interviewee’s age. The players’ entry into
football was mainly through their siblings, cousins or parents—mostly
male family members—either because they watched them play, they
played together or they were fans of teams. This is a factor that is seen
both in the countryside and in the city, in the players who had economic
resources and those who did not and throughout the various regions of
the country. Most of them explained that they started playing with their
brothers or cousins or that they used their brothers’ equipment (e.g.,
gloves or balls) despite the fact that typically they were not supported.
They might not have been prohibited and some were validated, but most
did not have the support of their families.
Former national team player Ruth Ortiz said: ‘Well, as I think [it] is
the story for all of us, I started playing football because of my brothers,
because it was easier for me to play football than for them to start playing
dolls with me. I only had one brother, so from a very young age I played
with him’. From the narratives, the street emerges as a central place to
begin in this practice. Most started in the street, either in their neigh-
bourhoods or in towns. Myriam Guerrero, former national team
player said:

…I am a daughter who shared life with her three brothers, with a single
mother who was abandoned when I was very young, so the economic limi-
tations were extreme, and we did not know anything about toys, we did
256 G. Ardila Biela

not know anything that other children could have known. So, as a result of
that, life begins to make sense in the street, it begins to make sense with a
ball of paper, it begins to make sense to have a bag at your disposal, fill it
with paper and kick it around.

So, the streets were central, and neighbourhood tournaments were

spaces of struggle for the players. Although some founded or created
mixed or women’s competitions, others had to fight for the chance to
play in tournaments for men and boys. The street is a common space that
does not disappear when players enter other spaces. Some started playing
in the street and, after passing through more institutional spaces, returned
to street tournaments. There is also the example of Amparo Maldonado,
a Colombian football player since 1970, who in a very particular way,
entered 11-a-side football directly after a call from the Valle del Cauca
league and several media outlets in 1970. She began to play, but when the
league stopped supporting her, the street was the space she and other
women found to continue playing.
The space of the street appeared repeatedly within the interviewees’
narratives along with self-organisation. In all generations, female players
have organised their own spaces for practice. On one hand, most of them
created their own teams and even tournaments. They sought funding in
more formal spaces such as schools or universities. In most cases, the
autonomous initiatives of the players were their only opportunities to
play. These were identify as emancipatory practices that are the basis for
the existence of football played by women. Thus, self-organisation is a
transversal characteristic of the experiences recalled by the players.
Reaching institutional spaces did not mean ceasing self-organisation;
many returned to self-organisation after being unable to continue in
institutionalised spaces.
Official women’s 11-a-side football teams (e.g., Águila Roja,
Independiente Cali, Marmar and Formas Íntimas) were built on the foun-
dations of self-organisation. This shows the interest of women in playing
football, which is also evident in diverse places of the world; as Jorge
Knijnik observes in Brazil, ‘[d]espite the forces that push them from one
point to another on the gender continuum, and despite their compliance
 14 An Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia: Building… 257

with or resistance to orthodox gender rules, the women are all clearly pas-
sionate and strongly committed to playing’ (2015, p. 67).
The interest of women in playing football has existed since the begin-
ning of this sport, but it has been made invisible. In 1885, the British
Ladies Football Club was called Football Club, although there are records
of football matches played by women as early as 1881 (Hoffmann &
Nendza, 2011). In the Federal Republic of Germany, between 1950 and
1970, it was forbidden for women to play football, but during that period
at least 150 games were played illegally (Heibel, 2011). Women have
practiced football regardless of prohibitions or discrimination and have
found and created various strategies to do so.

 racticing Gendered Football: Growing

P
as a Footballer in a Masculine Field
Most players did not have other women as role models in football.
Nevertheless, figures—such as Margarita Martinez, one of the best-­
known coaches who was also part of the coaching staff of the first
Colombian women’s national team; Amparo Maldonado, a player since
1970 and current coach; Myriam Guerrero, captain of the first women’s
national team and recognised coach; and Liliana Zapata, president of one
of the best known Colombian women’s clubs, Formas Íntimas—have
become references for various generations and among themselves. Still,
several interviewees were not aware of women playing football in their
region, even from more recent generations than those mentioned before.
All the interviewees played with boys and men in their early days and
for a large part of their sporting careers. Some of the players were given
nicknames of male players as a sign of respect and recognition of their
abilities—for example, Myriam Guerrero was called ‘Sequi’ and Margarita
Martínez, ‘Tarantini’. In other words, they were respected because they
could be compared with men and thus accepted as football players.
Women who played football were only accepted if they could be identi-
fied with men. Various players said this, which on the one hand goes
along with the idea that football masculinises bodies. As seen earlier, in
258 G. Ardila Biela

Colombia, national educational policies at the turn of the century rejected

the practice of certain sports, such as football, for women because of the
potential masculinisation of their bodies (Gómez, 2011).
The idea of the masculinisation of women’s bodies was based on under-
standing female and male bodies as necessarily distinct (as well as the only
ones in existence), which created a hegemonic masculinity and feminin-
ity that had to be maintained (Faust, 2019; Müller, 2009). The mascu-
linisation of these women made it possible to understand their
participation in a sport that represented masculinity, and thus they were
able to be recognised on the field. At the same time, by only accepting
them as peers if they represented masculinity, the argument of football as
a dangerous sport for femininity, and therefore for women, was strength-
ened (Elsey & Nadel, 2019; Goellner, 2005).
Regardless of whether the interviewees sought football as a career
option or not, they all remember that practicing it was difficult, and they
were questioned in diverse spaces for doing so. Amparo Maldonado, for
instance, felt ashamed for a long time and did not invite her mother
to see her play. All of them remember being insulted while playing, often
about their physique but they were also attacked for their sexuality and
told that their place was in the kitchen and/or having babies. Their stories
are similar to what has happened in other places in Latin America (Elsey
& Nadel, 2019). Similarly, most of them explain that to play football
they often needed arguments beyond the desire to do so. From demon-
strating that they could play, to accepting that they would put up with
the conditions imposed by boys’ and men’s teams, to having the support
of their brothers and/or friends.
Another aspect narrated repeatedly was the issue of equipment, par-
ticularly uniforms. They all remembered having to play with men’s old
uniforms; or, for example, the first official national team in 1998 had to
fight to be allowed to keep their uniforms after competing because they
were asked to return them. Sonia Chala, former national team player in
1998 voiced:

…The bad thing is that they gave us a uniform, it was a blue and a yellow
jersey. First of all, the uniforms of that time were uniforms for men, so
those jerseys were like that, those were the jerseys! And when the ­tournament
 14 An Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia: Building… 259

was over, Mr. Alvaro said: ‘No, I need the jerseys for the U17 team’, I don’t
know who was going to use them … but we: how can we give back the
jerseys? So, nothing, Myriam, as captain, showed up and said ‘No, we are
not going to give you the jerseys, so ‘take one and leave us one’. So, they left
us the yellow one, they let us have one, otherwise they would have taken
our jerseys. So, it was a very bad, very bad, very bad, very complicated
situation.

As for football shoes, or boots, many had to play barefoot to avoid

damaging their own boots, and access to goalkeeper gloves was difficult.
Lucila Marín, who played for the Santander leagues’ team for 12 years,
said: ‘I played at school, and I played with the boys and they didn’t hit
me, but I did hit them hard and barefoot because if I damaged my shoes,
they would hit me at home. Our football boots were our barefeet’.
Another memory shared by all the players, especially in the regional
leagues, was the terrible conditions in which tournaments were played.
Not only did they have inadequate uniforms and gloves but also, during
the league tournaments, they had to stay in dirty places, sleep on buses,
struggle for food, play and train on fields in poor condition and struggle
with difficult schedules (e.g., midday games, in hot weather, or at night
without any lighting). Ruth Ortiz remembered:

…Yes, as always, we were the Cinderellas of the sport, in the league of

Bogotá. Bogotá took us, the first time I was in the Bogotá team in 1992, it
was in Granada Meta, that was terrible. We arrived at a house there, and it
was a residence. It was terrible, the beds were turned over, the sheets were
stained, in some there were even something like tablecloths to cover the
beds, and the administrators left for a better hotel. We then took our things
and we sat there on the sidewalks of the town to wait for them to change
our hotel.

More research needs to be done on the transformation of these condi-

tions for the league players of subsequent generations, but those inter-
viewed for this study all recall outrageous conditions and little recognition
for their sports practice. The mistreatment of women who practice foot-
ball has been part of the polarisation that has been created functionally
between the genders. Although since the late 1800s there has been
260 G. Ardila Biela

criticism from medicine on the feminised structure of bodies; sports have

also strengthened the binary construction of bodies (Faust, 2019). Thus,
a body that refuses to fit into this binary is punished socially, economi-
cally and politically. Also, the way women are seen in sport depends on
class and race, whether seen as athletes or as ridiculous. As has been
shown, historically sport was permitted as a practice for health and the
construction of a specific type of femininity (Elsey & Nadel, 2019).
Football was not this kind of sport, so the women who dared to practice
it were punished, or at least ignored.

 arly Matches, Exhibition Football

E
and Professionalisation by Women
Most of the players interviewed participated in small-sided football in the
street, at school or at university as a pathway to 11-a-side football.
Although their desire was to play this type of football, these versions of
the game, with fewer players and reduced spatial requirements, allowed
them to initiate, or at least continue, their footballing career.
A practice that appears repeatedly in several generations is that of exhi-
bition matches. The game organised by the Queens in Cali in 1949 was
presented as an exhibition as were the matches played by the Costa Rican
players in 1951; it was the match for which Amparo Maldonado was
called by the league of Valle del Cauca in 1970 and the matches the
national team played in the tour of Ecuador in the mid-1970s. Since the
mid-1980s, Myriam Guerrero also organised exhibition matches as well
as in the early 90s with the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL)
team. Recognising these recurrences allows us to see how women football
players sought at various times in history to build strategies not only to
play the game but also to earn recognition. Nevertheless, these strategies
have been repeated with little success. For 40 years, women practicing
football revealed themselves to demonstrate their abilities, in circus-like
and self-organised spaces, but nonetheless, all generations reported that
they have experienced violence and discrimination for playing football.
In Brazil, during the 1930s and 1940s, circuses became a central stage for
 14 An Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia: Building… 261

the practice of sport by women who were welcomed in these spaces that
housed ‘strange and exotic’ talents (Bonfim, 2019).
From diverse experiences, the research also shows that women have
participated in all areas related to football: as players, coaches, technical
directors and referees. Amparo Maldonado was a player and a coach;
Margarita Martínez was a player and part of the coaching staff of the first
national team; Myriam Guerrero was captain of the first national team
and later became a coach; Liliana Zapata was the president of the club
Formas Íntimas; Elizabeth Oviedo has been a referee since the 2000s; and
Nancy Mora was a player and also a coach of the League Santander. The
fact that they have managed to occupy these spaces at certain times, how-
ever, has not resulted in more broadly opening these spaces for women.
Within the social transformations evidenced over time, during the 1990s
and early 2000s most women’s teams had female coaches, but by 2020 in
the ‘professional’ teams there was only one woman in a coaching role
(Seligmann, 2021).
In a 1949 article in Semana magazine, the referee was a woman (‘La
reina caleña’, 1949); similarly, El País, a Cali newspaper, reported on a
tournament in 1971–1972, with some articles noting the intention of
using women referees for the competition, advertising that there were
referee courses available for women who were interested in participating
(‘Mañana: cierre de inscripciones para tomar parte en el torneo femenino
de fútbol’, 1971). Yet, subsequent matches have had mostly male referees,
although it is not a topic that has been discussed extensively or that the
players have felt the need to mention in their interviews.
In the narratives of the footballers interviewed, it is evident that the
attainment of certain positions did not imply a linear development
towards greater possibilities. Opening spaces in small-sided and 11-a-side
football did not expand possibilities after institutionalisation. On the
contrary, as Amparo Maldonado recalls in her interview, even though the
players on her team were registered in 11-a-side football and small-sided
football, they were sanctioned and had to withdraw from small-sided
football to participate in 11-a-side football. The recurring exhibitions are
another example.
It is also fundamental to mention that the existing clubs, which had
been conducting grassroots work with women and girls for years, were
262 G. Ardila Biela

not allowed to register in the league when the ‘professionalisation’ of

football practiced by women began in 2017. In large part this was because
of the South American Confederation’s (CONMEBOL) requirement for
men’s clubs to incorporate women’s teams. The new requirement led to
the traditional professional men’s clubs poaching players without giving
recognition to the clubs where they had been trained for years. There was
no financial recognition, no purchase of sporting rights and no transpar-
ent transfers of the players. Liliana Zapata explained that in the first pro-
fessional tournament in 2017:

The men’s football clubs created the teams, but did so reluctantly. There
was a lot of mistreatment from the men’s football clubs. The men’s clubs
stole the players, and at 3 a.m. the Federation gave them the Comet pass-
words. The Colombian Football Federation has the passwords of all the
clubs. The Federation used the passwords of the women’s clubs to give the
players to the different teams; this was done with all the players of all the
clubs. Difútbol was upset but in the end nothing happened. The training
fees were not paid.

Developments in professional football practiced by women are under-

way. Considering what has happened so far, however, this professionalisa-
tion has not recognised the historical trajectories of female players,
coaches, technical directors and referees; it has simply fulfilled the call of
the most important regional institution of football practiced by men—
CONMEBOL. Faust (2019) argues that the lifting of the ban on women
playing football in Germany was because of a fear of autonomous foot-
ball practices. In this analysis, professionalisation seems like more of a
quest for control of football practiced by women rather than listening to
the needs and desires of the players and a recognition of the women who
historically have made the practice of the sport possible for women in
Colombia.
 14 An Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia: Building… 263

New Segregations
Therefore, the trajectory over time has not meant a gradual linear open-
ing of spaces for women, but rather constant struggles for participation
and recognition. In the same way, institutionalisation has not led to the
recognition of the work of those who historically have fought for spaces;
instead it has signified an element of loss of participation for women by
preventing self-organisation. Some players were also coaches, but since
professionalisation in 2017, there is just one female coach. Although for
players professionalisation has meant the promise of a career in the
sport—which has not yet been fully fulfilled—as indicated by Selmer cit-
ing Müller, the process of women’s exclusion from football has been his-
torical and institutionalisation has often also in reality been a search for
control by patriarchal institutions (Selmer, 2013). Historical develop-
ments do not demonstrate a process of gradual interest and introduction
of women in football, but rather perpetual interest and struggle to open
spaces that have been closed to them. Thus, it is actually a gradual process
of exclusion, which could not take hold, foiled by the passionate struggles
of those interested in women’s participation in football. This last point is
fundamental because all the interviewees recognise their achievements as
well as the later achievements of women in football as the result of their
struggles.
Most of the players perceive this historical process as one of social and
cultural transformation, of struggles they have won, of hope for a profes-
sional future and, at the same time, of frustration at the exclusion from
spaces beyond that of a role as a player. Many affirm that they would like
to be players now, to have a ‘professional’ tournament, although they
recognise the precariousness of this supposed ‘professionalisation’.
Nevertheless, it is evident that the opportunities to fill spaces as coaches,
technical directors and members of a coaching staff have largely been lost.
As the institutionalisation and recognition by sports entities (e.g., Difútbol
and Dimayor1) have become more consolidated, even fewer spaces within
coaching staffs have become available for women. Patricia Vanegas asserts

1
The Difútbol is the Amateur Division of Colombian Football. The Dimayor is Major Division of
Colombian Professional Football.
264 G. Ardila Biela

that during the 1990s it was relatively normal to see female coaches, just
as Liliana Zapata remembers Margarita Martínez as a coach and Amparo
Maldonado as both creator and coach of her team in the late 1980s.
Most of the interviewees consider that the latter generations have ‘had
it easier’ than them, and that their own struggles have been difficult and
painful. Despite the conditions they faced, however, the practice of foot-
ball has been gratifying. They recognise the spaces, the friends and the
sociability as successes and reasons why it was worthwhile to practice this
sport. Still, they also relate their experiences with a lot of pain and shame.
They were never presented with spaces freely offered to them, but always
as spaces they had to earn, according to Elsey and Nadel:

History telling can confer legitimacy on its subjects, just as it can deny it in
the same instance. The neglect of women’s historical participation in Latin
American sports has served to naturalize [sic] gender differences in society
more broadly and to justify the denial of resources to women athletes.
Focusing on women’s activities within sports illuminates a site of women’s
creativity and community. The media’s disinterest in women’s sports has
given historians a difficult track to follow. Frequently, the athletes them-
selves preserve the history of women’s sports, offering up their memories,
photographs, jerseys, and press clippings to journalists and historians.
(2019, p. 2)

In Colombia, women have been practicing football intermittently

since the end of the 1940s and then continually after 1970, as evidenced
by journalists’ reports from the 1970s and mainly by the stories of the
players interviewed for this study. During this time, female football play-
ers have been discriminated against, had their sexuality questioned, either
facing insults for being lesbians or through lesbophobic practices. In this
author’s interviews, all the interviewees recall being insulted while play-
ing and having their sexuality questioned. It is not necessary to go that far
to see examples of this. In 2018, a technical director, arguing against sup-
porting football played by women in Colombia, asserted that it was a
‘hotbed of lesbianism’ (“‘Caldo de cultivo del lesbianismo’, el ataque del
presidente de un club al fútbol femenino que causa indignación en
Colombia”, n.d.).
 14 An Oral History of Women’s Football in Colombia: Building… 265

Regarding lesbophobia, Elsey and Nadel (2019) consider that ‘[t]he

history of sexuality within sports also deserves much greater attention,
both regionally and globally. In oral histories, queer sportswomen
explained that they found a supportive community among their fellow
athletes. Questions remain about how vigilance of women’s sexuality and
violence against lesbians affected women athletes’ (p. 6). Moreover,
Goellner (2005) also reflects on the questions surrounding the experi-
ences of Brazilian female players in terms of sexuality. On the other hand,
there also have been cases of the homogenisation of black women, as
observed in newspaper reports from the 1970s, when several black female
players were called ‘The Colombian Pelé’ (‘América y Águila Roja, líderes’,
1971). These aspects, along with classism and ableism are fundamental to
understand the experiences of women players and to work to make the
sport a liberating space and not a replica of football practiced by men.

Conclusions
Recognising the narratives of the players as present reflections of their
past makes it evident that the lack of historical references about their
practices has forced them to start over repeatedly, return to exhibition
tournaments, reestablish teams, demand spaces in technical direction,
and so forth. Thus, by compiling their experiences, supporting their
reflections with journalistic documents, capturing their life stories and
bringing to light the disinterest of sports institutions, one can provide the
players with the tools to organise themselves. In this way, they can argue
that they are not just starting out, but rather their sporting experience is
more than 70 years old. They have history, the skills and the knowledge
to occupy all kinds of sporting spaces, whether as players, coaches, refer-
ees or administrators. In this way, it is possible to seek to transform the
continuity of exclusion from the spaces these women have fought for in
the past, giving the female football pioneers a place in history by to rec-
ognising their experiences and showing, from their narratives, the paths
they have taken to be able to practice football in spite of all the difficulties
they have faced.
266 G. Ardila Biela

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 15
Has Latin America’s Title IX Arrived?
Impact of the CONMEBOL Institutional
Incentive Regulations on South
American Football
Fernando Augusto Starepravo, Giovanna Xavier de
Moura, and Felipe Canan

Introduction
Created in 1972, Title IX is federal legislation that established that no
person in the United States (US) should be excluded or discriminated
against based on sex in any educational program or activity that receives

F. A. Starepravo (*)
Departamento de Educação Física, UEM—Universidade Estadual de Maringá,
Maringá, Brazil
G. X. de Moura
Departamento de Educação Física, UEM—Universidade Estadual de Maringá,
Maringá, Brazil
Ingá University Centre (Uningá), Maringá, Brazil
F. Canan
University of the State of Amazonas, Boca do Acre, Brazil

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 269
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_15
270 F. A. Starepravo et al.

federal financial assistance. Therefore, the law enabled equal opportuni-

ties and funding for sport programmes between men and women (Gregg
& Fielding, 2016). The law significantly increased women’s participation
in sports as athletes particularly in university sport, intramural sport,
intercollegiate sport and high school programmes in the United States.
Almost 50 years later, this type of initiative, which was very successful
in the North American context, has reached the South American conti-
nent through the Club Licensing Regulation of the South American
Football Confederation (CONMEBOL). The initiative meets, Knijnik’s
(2015) claims, the need for a gender equality policy in sport when dis-
cussing inequalities in Brazilian football.
CONMEBOL is an international sport institution that organises,
develops and controls football competitions in South America, including
the Copa América, in which the national teams compete, and its major
club tournaments such as the Copa Libertadores de América, which is the
continent’s principal football competition, and the Copa Sudamericana.
In 2016, CONMEBOL launched its new club license regulations that
introduced a new series of rules. The document complies with Article 23
of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) statute,
which obliges national federations and football bodies to have gover-
nance measures—for example, political and religious neutrality, antidop-
ing control and, key for the discussion in this chapter, the incorporation
of legal dispositions that provide for gender equality.
With this new regulation, to obtain a CONMEBOL license, a club
must have an adult female team and at least one female youth category
(under 15) or be associated with a club that has such teams. In both cases,
the candidate must provide technical support and all equipment and
infrastructure necessary for the development of the women’s teams under
suitable conditions. Both teams also are required to participate in national
and regional competitions, authorised by their respective local federation
(Confederação Sul-Americana de Futebol, 2016). This initiative can be
interpreted as a multicentric sport policy of a regulatory and redistribu-
tive type for gender equality (Canan et al., 2019), a type of policy that
will be conceptualised and discussed further in the following and that
bears similarities to Title IX—part of Public Law 92-318 of the
United States.
 15 Has Latin America’s Title IX Arrived? Impact… 271

This type of multicentric policy presents an attempt to reduce the his-

torical gender inequality that affects society and, in this specific case,
football in South America. Under the management of CONMEBOL, for
example, the 2019 Copa Libertadores da América provided prize money
of US$12 million to Brazilian club Flamengo, the champions of the
men’s tournament, 141 times more than the US$ 85,000 awarded to the
winning women’s team, Corinthians from Brazil (Lance, 2019).
Still, the case of the difference in prize money between genders for
CONMEBOL competitions is not an isolated case, but it portrays a
chronic sport and social issue. For example, women have played football
in Latin America for more than 100 years, despite legal restrictions in
some countries. In Brazil (Brasil, 1941), women were not allowed to play
football because it was considered non-feminine or masculine and sup-
posedly had negative effects on women’s reproductive capacity (Nadel,
2015). Likewise, according to Nadel (2015), such discourse was defended
by public health experts, whereas other critics questioned players’ sexual-
ity, suggesting that the women who played football were homosexual and
that football served as a ‘recruiting place’ for lesbians. These ways of
thinking served and, to some extent, continue to serve to marginalise
women’s football in Latin America.
It is important to highlight that there are multiple realities of women’s
football within South America. While Mexico, Brazil and Chile are at the
forefront on the continent, despite the difficulties faced by women and
the wage gap between men and women, in other South American coun-
tries, women footballers still experience unfavourable conditions. Miryam
Tristán, top scorer for the Peruvian national team, says that in Peru, those
who play football do because they really like it, not because they want to
earn money; even though in Argentina, a female player from the first
division receives the same minimum salary as a male player from the
fourth division, although some players do not even receive a salary
(Mancera et al., 2021).
While in the widely studied North American case, it is certain that the
regulatory and redistributive legislation has had a great impact on wom-
en’s sport, there are still no data on the scope and effect of the changes in
the licensing regulations for CONMEBOL clubs. In this sense, the pres-
ent study intends to identify multicentric sport policies of a regulatory
272 F. A. Starepravo et al.

and redistributive type of gender equality in relation to women’s football

in South America and their respective developments. To this end, the
policies adopted by CONMEBOL are analysed, as well as the national
federations of South American countries in relation to women’s football.
Analysis and discussion are supported by two essential theoretical refer-
ences: public policies, particularly in the duality of statism and multicen-
trism, and gender inequality, its motivations and effects (Marks et al.,
1996; Höfling, 2001; Secchi, 2012).

 heoretical Approach: State and Multicentre

T
Public Policies
A public policy can be understood in several ways. In the state-centric
model, governments are the ultimate decision maker, and a multi-level
governance does not reject the view that the State is important, but it no
longer monopolises policymaking. Decision-making competencies are
shared by actors at different levels rather than monopolised by State exec-
utives (Marks et al., 1996). In this scenario, non-state organisations (e.g.,
CONMEBOL itself and the national football federations) influence and
promote policies.
Secchi (2012), in a similar sense, points out that public policy is a
guideline designed to solve a society problem—that is, a socially relevant
need. This need can be general, serving society as a whole, or specific,
serving a part of society and/or a particular area; in this case, known as
sectorial policy (Starepravo et al., 2019). Thus, public policy does not
only mean the action of the State but also the regulations made by it;
public policy seeks to solve not only general but also specific problems.
This perspective allows one to understand that, even though they are
public—that is, in the public interest of society or part of it—policies do
not necessarily have to be state-owned. According to Höfling, ‘the State
cannot be reduced to the public bureaucracy, to the state bodies that
would conceive and implement public policies’ (2001, p. 31).
Because many public problems are specific, or sectorial, it is important
that social groups directly associated with such problems be involved in
 15 Has Latin America’s Title IX Arrived? Impact… 273

their resolution. The State is responsible for regulating, guiding and

encouraging this social participation, although not necessarily responsi-
ble for resolving it entirely. In this sense, Secchi (2012) didactically
advises that there are two approaches to understanding public policy: the
statist and the multicentric. In the first, public policies are fully devel-
oped by state actors, by the public bureaucracy, the so-called public
administration (i.e., state agencies and agents). On the other hand, in the
multicentric approach, institutions and non-state agents assume the lead,
or at least, the important roles in the implementation of public policies,
contributing to the resolution of the social problems that directly
affect them.
The typology presented by Frey (2000) and reinforced by Secchi
(2012), which classifies public policies as: (1) distributive, which privi-
leges certain social groups or regions, with costs distributed across the
whole society; (2) redistributive, which privileges certain social groups,
but with costs concentrated on other social groups; (3) regulatory, estab-
lishing or guiding standards of behaviour or action for public and private
agents; and (4) constitutive, structuring state or public organisations in
general. Considering this typology, multicentric policies typically are
more strictly related to regulatory ones.
This suggests that the State and civil society understand something as
a public problem—in the sense that it is something that deserves atten-
tion and collective action—but instead of taking full responsibility for its
resolution (i.e., to act so that the social issue is focused on fully), recog-
nise its (e.g., budgetary, human, institutional, bureaucratic) limits and
include civil society to act in partnership. So, often if one is interested in
such a problem, the State may simply abstain or even allow assumption
of a certain role in helping to resolve it. This is the case, for example, of
sport laws (i.e., rules of sport and its competitions) from which the State
abstains, leaving it to the responsible governing bodies (e.g., confedera-
tions, federations, associations).
On the other hand, the analysis of governmentality suggests that the
emergence of policy communities represented not a diminution of gov-
ernment power, but a more subtle exercise of power and, in fact, an
extension of State power. According to this analysis, the governmental
power in relation to sport is less a matter of imposing constraints on
274 F. A. Starepravo et al.

organisations and their leaders than constructing or shaping organiza-

tions capable of bearing a kind of regulated freedom. The key objective is
to encourage federations and sport clubs to become malleable partners in
the implementation of government policy (Houlihan, 2005).
Canan, Rojo and Starepravo et al. (2019), seeking to understand pos-
sibilities for guaranteeing the right for sport beyond State policy, pre-
sented examples of multicentric and regulatory policies in three spheres:

1) Gender equality, recognising the historical gap between sport (and

other social spheres in general) for women and for men, as noted by
Moura (2018).
2) The equalisation of sport disciplines (e.g., football, basketball, athlet-
ics, weightlifting and so on) and age groups, recognising the historical
gap between elite spectacularised sport and non-spectacularised sport
and/or aimed at social groups other than the main athletes, as high-
lighted by Bourg and Gouguet (2005), and Bueno (2008).
3) The division of powers between the State and the private sector, with
the former offering means (i.e., permission, incentive) to earn profits
in the exploitation of services of public interest to the latter, provided
that minimum guidelines are met, recognising the inability of the
State to attend exclusively to every and any social demand, as pointed
out by Höfling (2001).

In the case of equalisation between genders in the field of sport, which

is of particular interest to this research, Canan, Rojo and Starepravo et al.
(2019) examined the example of Title IX, a US law that requires gender
equality in any educational program funded by federal resources; and the
example of the CONMEBOL licensing regulations, which require clubs
participating in men’s competitions organised within CONMEBOL’s
scope also have women’s football programmes.
The first example is a typical case of regulatory policy whereas the sec-
ond illustrates an interesting multicentric policy. Even without specific
State guidelines—this does not mean that it is not important to the
State—gender equality, with the consequent development of women’s
sport, has been a public concern highlighted by international organisa-
tions at least since the 1970s. This is the case, for example, of the
 15 Has Latin America’s Title IX Arrived? Impact… 275

UNESCO International Charter for Physical Education and Sport of

1978, or more recently the CONMEBOL club regulations, which have
regulatory policy characteristics.

Gender Inequality in Sport

Difficulties faced by women in sports have been noticed for a long time.
Since the beginning of their participation in this environment, which is
socially recognised as masculine, questions about the masculinisation of
their bodies and the dangers to their health emerged, especially regarding
the risks to maternal functions—considered women’s main social contri-
bution (Goellner, 2006; Knijnik, 2003).
This limiting vision of women’s participation in sport, based on medi-
cal discourses, lasted for many years, leading, for example, to the creation
of a Brazilian legislation that reinforced the idea that women could only
practice physical activities and sports that were compatible with what was
considered maternal and feminine (Brasil, 1941). This relationship of
limitation in the practice of sport was narrowed years later with the pro-
hibition of modalities with physical contact, including football
(Brasil, 1965).
Even after the repealing of the football-related legislation in Brazil and
the expansion of activities aimed at women’s football (Goellner, 2005),
not only in this country, but throughout the Americas, women contin-
ued experiencing difficulties in accessing the sport. The idea that football
was a sport that valued the aspects of being a man, of virility and strength,
were perpetuated, and women who practiced this sport were thus still
seen as transgressors of the social norms of femininity; this went far
beyond the actions of the game per se and also were related to their bod-
ies and clothing. The inequality was also reflected in women’s difficulties
in accessing areas, training materials, salaries and funding for the modali-
ties as well as in a lack of space and inadequate coverage in the media
(Knijnik, 2015).
The previously mentioned inequalities between men and women con-
nected with the sport sector, not only in football, but in various disci-
plines, meant that the project and laws were created in an attempt to
276 F. A. Starepravo et al.

break the historically created imbalance. It is in this sense that the US

Title IX law, presented in the following, was created.
Title IX, part of US legislation, is one of the most well-known public
policies in gender and sport studies because it has significantly changed
the reality of women’s sport in the United States. The law, created in
1972, states that ‘no person shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from
participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimina-
tion under any academic, extracurricular, research, occupational training,
or other education program or activity operated by a recipient which
receives Federal financial assistance’ (US Department of Education, 2015).
It is interesting to note that during the discussion period regarding the
approval of the law, the debate about women’s sport was not present,
considering that the legislation was focused on education. Yet, by address-
ing discrimination—a common issue in sport because this is a gendered
space from which women have often been excluded—led advocates of
women’s sport to recognise the applicability of the law in the field
(Theune, 2019). Additionally, because the US sporting system has a solid
foundation in the educational sector, whether in schools or universities,
sport was inevitably affected by the law.
The law enabled equal opportunities and funding for sport pro-
grammes between men and women (Gregg & Fielding, 2016) with equal
levels of competitions considering the interests and abilities of both sexes,
as well as equipment and supplies, training conditions, travel, remunera-
tion, changing rooms, sport facilities, medical services, accommodations
and advertising (Francis, 2016). Moreover, there is an obligation to have
teams of men and women in all sports. In the absence of women’s teams,
they could play on men’s teams and vice versa (Senne, 2016; McDowell
et al., 2016).
As stated earlier, the law significantly changed women’s participation
in sport as athletes. According to McDowell et al. (2016), within four
years of the legislation, there was an increase of 55% in the participation
of girls in sport clubs and 108% in intramural sports events. In intercol-
legiate sport, the participation of women increased from 16,000 to
200,000 in 2014, and in high school sport programmes, from 294,015
to 3.3 million in 2016 (Lane, 2016). In general, in 40 years of legislation,
there has been a 600% increase in the participation of women in sport in
 15 Has Latin America’s Title IX Arrived? Impact… 277

the United States (Yanus & O’Connor, 2016). Advances at the micro-­
level also have enabled changes at the macro-level in such a way that, in
2012, at the London Olympics, the US delegation was comprised of
more female than male athletes.
Outside the sport sector, the law also allowed for a greater presence of
women employed at US colleges and universities, an end to discrimina-
tory policies in admissions to undergraduate and graduate courses and
access to teaching materials. Besides, the legislation also was applied to
issues, such as access to scholarships and financial resources and the pre-
vention of sexual harassment in the academic environment (Yanus &
O’Connor, 2016; Lane, 2016; Druckman et al., 2018).

Methodology
This chapter is based on exploratory qualitative research using documen-
tary analysis. The exploratory research focuses on objects that are still little
studied, seeking to clarify, develop or even modify ideas and concepts (Gil,
2008). The qualitative approach does not point at numerical representa-
tion, but rather at an in-depth understanding of the topic studied, consid-
ering patterns, as well as details. The document analysis procedure uses
materials that have not yet been explored and described following scien-
tific standards as a source for analysis (Silveira & Córdova, 2009). Thus,
the source documents were: (1) CONMEBOL’s Club License Regulations;
and (2) Club License Regulations of the national football federations of
the CONMEBOL member countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.
In the absence or unavailability of this type of document on the web-
site of the respective federations, the authors sought to obtain informa-
tion regarding the existence of this kind of document on the Internet in
general. Furthermore, we looked for other documents issued by the
respective federations, which dealt in some way with the development of
women’s football. Data were collected in May 2021.
All documents were read in full, highlighting the excerpts that con-
tained information related to women’s football. Based on the documents’
content analysis, the assessment of the impact of the license regulations
278 F. A. Starepravo et al.

of CONMEBOL clubs in national confederations was separated into

four categories:

1) The existence or not of a regulation like that of CONMEBOL’s within

the scope of the national football federation.
2) The extension of the criteria for granting a license to participate in
internal (national) competitions organised by the federation itself.
3) The competitions to which the license requirements apply within each
federation (or competition level), such as national, State, first division,
second division, and so on.
4) Specific criteria for the development of women’s football programmes
by clubs participating in professional men’s competitions to verify
whether they are identical, extensive or restrictive in relation to those
of CONMEBOL, with regard to the license to participate in national
competitions.

After proceeding with the documents’ coding, we tried to establish a

discourse between the documents, categories and the theoretical frame-
work of multicentric gender equality policies such as Title IX.

Impact of CONMEBOL Club License

Regulations on National Confederations
Across South America
Since 2016 CONMEBOL has adopted a Club Licensing Regulation that
establishes conditions for clubs participating in their professional compe-
titions for men (Canan et al., 2019). These conditions are programmatic,
sporting or related to infrastructural, administrative, legal or financial
issues and must be progressively implemented by national football fed-
erations and clubs. At the end of the term or during the fulfilment of the
conditions, a new regulation, the current one, was published by the entity
in 2018 (Confederação Sul-Americana de Futebol, 2018).
Within the scope of sporting criteria, according to Article 90
(Confederação Sul-Americana de Futebol, 2018), the clubs that partici-
pate in CONMEBOL’s official competitions for men must develop a
 15 Has Latin America’s Title IX Arrived? Impact… 279

football program for women, including the establishment of an adult

team or, at least, a grassroots team (i.e., a youth team composed of young
players up to 15 years of age). Obviously, the club may have more than
one team from other age groups, but it is not on a ‘sine qua non’ require-
ment to obtain the license. The club itself can either develop the program
for women, or it can join a club that already has a women’s program, as
long as it effectively guarantees the conditions for this in terms of infra-
structure, funding, technical support and so forth. In addition, both the
adult and youth teams must participate in official, national and/or
regional competitions held or authorised by the respective national fed-
eration (Confederação Sul-Americana de Futebol, 2018).
Compliance is not required of clubs that are not participating in
CONMEBOL competitions, but Article 7 states that the requirement
must be included in the club licensing regulations of each national foot-
ball federation affiliated with the South American sporting body.
According to Article 12, in their respective clubs’ licensing regulations,
national federations must adopt the same minimum criteria or even more
(but not less) stringent criteria to be met for the participation of their
clubs in CONMEBOL competitions. Still, by the same Article 12, the
adoption of such criteria or any other for the participation of clubs in
domestic competitions (i.e., national or regional/state championships in
the first or lower divisions, and so on) is optional.
Concerning national club licensing regulations, they were found in 8
out of 10 federations that comprise the organisation (i.e., Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay).
Regarding Venezuela, a club license regulation was not found; but the
Regulatory Norms of the First Division present some equivalence to the
documents of other countries in relation to the development of football
for women. In Bolivia, a mention was made about the creation of such a
document, but it was not available on the institution’s website; so for the
purposes of this chapter, its existence is unknown. For example, the
Bolivian media, such as the newspaper Los Tiempos (2019), reported dif-
ficulties for the federation and football clubs to be able to fulfill the crite-
ria established by CONMEBOL. Nevertheless, despite the fact that no
news expressly affirmed the existence or nonexistence of club license
regulations in this country, the Bolivian media insinuated that they do
280 F. A. Starepravo et al.

exist. Or, least, if they do not exist, then the criteria are being met through
some other means and that this is acceptable for CONMEBOL because
the respective clubs continue to participate in the competitions organized
by the sports entity.
Regarding the club licensing regulations of the football federations of
the countries that have made them available, it appears that they all
reproduce the CONMEBOL criteria pertaining to the participation in
the sports entity’s competitions. In other words, in this case, the national
regulations subscribe to and/or reproduce those of CONMEBOL. In
relation to the adoption of criteria for the participation of clubs in
national competitions in each country, similarities also have been found;
yet, at the same time, there are small specificities (see Table 15.1).
Although most countries reproduce the CONMEBOL criteria and
some even outline more obligations for the development of women’s
football, some actions are softened, mainly with the intent that clubs can,
somehow, figure out how to fulfill all requirements. Brazil, for example,
adopted a progressive criterion. Since the publication of the regulations,
clubs in the first national tier (Series A1 and A2) have had less time than
tier B clubs to implement the criteria and acquire the license; tier B clubs
have had less time than tier C clubs, and so on. The license for participa-
tion in other national competitions and regional/state competitions has
been waived and, consequently, the fulfillment of the criteria has been as
well (Confederação Brasileira de Futebol, 2019).
Colombia has not expressly mentioned the obligation of a youth team
to participate in a competition organised or recognised by the national
federation (Federación Colombiana de Fútbol, 2017). Nonetheless,
because of the other obligations in relation to the development of the
youth team (i.e., common to CONMEBOL and other national federa-
tions), this can be understood as implicit. Peru provides a provisional
license to the clubs for the first year after achieving promotion to the
higher divisions of the national leagues, which waives, among others, the
requirements relating to football for women (Federación Deportiva
Nacional Peruana de Fútbol, 2018).
It is unclear why many national federations only publish the version
that is possibly the first of their respective regulations. This could be
because they are continuing to adopt them; even if they were published
Table 15.1 National Club License Regulations and Women’s Football
Competitions to
Entity Reproduces which the license Specific criteria for
responsible Document Document CONMEBOL requirement is development of
Country for football consulted year regulations applied women’s football
Argentina Asociación Reglamento de 2017 Yes Document indicates
Del Fútbol Licencias de that the criteria for
Argentino Clubes participation in
national
competitions will be
defined in a future
regulation that has
not yet been
officially advertised
Bolivia Federación – – – – –
Boliviana de
Fútbol
Brazil Confederação Regulamento de 2019 Yes Series A, B, C and D Requires a minimum
Brasileira de Licença de (Divisions 1 to 4) qualification (in terms
Futebol Clubes of the training
criteria for coaches
adopted by the
national
confederation itself)
for the adult female
15 Has Latin America’s Title IX Arrived? Impact…

team coach
(continued)
281
Table 15.1 (continued)
282

Competitions to
Entity Reproduces which the license Specific criteria for
responsible Document Document CONMEBOL requirement is development of
Country for football consulted year regulations applied women’s football
Chile Asociación Reglamento de 2017 Yes Three major divisions
Nacional de Licencias de of its main national
Fútbol Clubes championship
Profesional
Colombia Federación Reglamento de 2019 Yes All competitions
Colombiana Licencias de organised by the
F. A. Starepravo et al.

de Fútbol Clubes de la national federation

Federación
Colombiana de
Fútbol y la
Dimayor
Ecuador Federación Reglamento de 2019 Yes All competitions
Ecuatoriana Licencias de organised by the
de Fútbol Clubes national federation
Paraguay Asociación Reglamento de 2021 Yes License regulations Requires a minimum
Paraguaya Licencias de for clubs qualification for the
de Fútbol Clubes participating in the adult women’s team
country’s main coach
national
competitions,
including futsal (for
men and women)
and beach football
Peru Federación Reglamento para 2018 Yes It has not accurately
Deportiva la Concesión de clarified that the
Nacional Licencias de championships that
Peruana de Clubes de cover the need for a
Fútbol Fútbol license, but it has
Profesional de implied they are the
la Federación country’s main ones
Deportiva
Nacional
Peruana de
Fútbol
Uruguay Asociación Reglamento de 2017 Yes Two major divisions
Uruguaya Concesion de of its main national
de Fútbol Licencias de championship
Clubes
Profesionales
Venezuela Federación Normas 2019 Yes Only for clubs All clubs of the first
Venezolana reguladoras de participating in the division must create a
de Fútbol primera division CONMEBOL women’s grassroots
competitions football team.
Besides, the
Federation must
commit itself to
organizing a
Venezuelan women’s
super league, with at
15 Has Latin America’s Title IX Arrived? Impact…

least 8 professional
teams
Source: The authors, with information by National Football Federations from South America.
283
284 F. A. Starepravo et al.

in the past (e.g., 2017), they are still in the process of being implemented.
At the same time, it is possible that the COVID-19 pandemic adversely
affected their implementation. On the other hand, it is not possible to
rule out that political clashes, especially because of the fact that many
clubs object to the criteria and/or have had difficulties in implementing
them, as mentioned in relation to Bolivia, are leading to the softening of
mandatory requirements and/or changes in the regulations.
As Canan, Rojo and Starepravo et al. (2019) pointed out, just as at the
time of the creation of US Title IX, the educational institutions that
developed sport programmes exclusively for men were initially opposed
to regulations and imposed objections and obstacles to the mandatory
development of sport for women in general, claiming that they would
generate excessive expenses. A similar process of resistance and argumen-
tation in relation to costs was carried out by South American football
clubs when the CONMEBOL regulation was established, as explained
by Fernandez (2017). As the author observed, however, the director of
the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), at the time, stated that an
investment of only 5% of the men’s football resources would be sufficient
to create a good team of women without significantly harming the men’s
program.
At the same time, the developments of Title IX, in addition to contrib-
uting to gender equality, leveraged rather than hindered the sport pro-
grammes of US schools and universities, including in the sense of
increasing visibility and, consequently, financial resources (e.g., televi-
sion, sponsors, fans and so on). By drawing a comparison with the US
legislation, one can understand that the regulations of CONMEBOL
and national federations can prove to be an important multicentric and
regulatory policy mechanism in the quest for gender equality in sport and
social development.

Conclusions
The objective of the work for this chapter was to analyse the policies
adopted by CONMEBOL and the national football federations in South
America in relation to women’s football. By applying documentary
 15 Has Latin America’s Title IX Arrived? Impact… 285

research, checking on the existence or nonexistence of regulations in

national federations and the extension of the criteria to national and State
competitions, it was possible to determine that in most countries there is
only the reproduction of the original text of the 2018 regulation pub-
lished by CONMEBOL.
The initial text of the CONMEBOL regulations is not clear when
declaring that the federations must integrate them under the same crite-
ria, rather it could be interpreted as optional for the regulation of national
competitions. Moreover, the authors did not find the amendments prom-
ised by regulations that indicated there would be future updates to the
established criteria. Some countries also claim to have difficulties in
implementing CONMEBOL’s requirements for financial or health rea-
sons, and clubs are sometimes allowed a provisional license of one year to
adapt to the new requirements. These barriers, which range from lan-
guage to the lack of documentation organisation, along with the fear of
not allocating resources to women’s programmes, hinder the sport’s
growth and visibility in some countries and throughout South America.
Despite the difficulties encountered, it is interesting to note that in
some cases there is an expansion of the CONMEBOL regulations to all
national competitions, with specificities such as the requirement for the
technical qualifications of the coaches for women’s teams. This shows the
interest of these countries in developing quality women’s football. There
are even documents that integrate gender-inclusive language in their text,
which demonstrates the intention to incorporate women and make them
feel part of the entire organisational and legislative structure of the
institutions.
Nevertheless, a clear need exists for greater control from CONMEBOL
regarding the fulfillment of its requirements so as to support the national
confederations for the creation of their own distinct and objective regula-
tions and to provide assistance so that the clubs can structure themselves.
The authors suggest that further studies be conducted to verify the pro-
grammes and the development of women’s football plans in South
America, with special attention to funding so that one can get a complete
view of what has really been achieved by the new gender-inclusive regula-
tions towards the growth of the sport.
286 F. A. Starepravo et al.

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 16
‘Si nos permiten jugar’: Constructing
a Feminist Football in Latin America
Jorge Knijnik and Gabriela Garton

No soy, no hay yo, siempre somos nosotros

(I am not, there is no I, we are always us)
(Octavio Paz)

Si Me Permiten Hablar (Viezzer, 2013)1 is one of the most published,

republished and translated Bolivian books in history. Written by Brazilian
sociologist and feminist activist Moema Libera Viezzer and published for
the first time in 1977, the text gives the powerful, straightforward and

1
The English version was translated as Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domitila, a Woman of the
Bolivian Mines.

J. Knijnik (*)
School of Education, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
G. Garton
World Players Association, Melbourne, Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 289
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8_16
290 J. Knijnik and G. Garton

pungent testimony of Domitilia Barros de Chungara, a Bolivian woman

mining worker.
In 1975, Domitilia attended the inaugural World Conference on
Women. It was held in Mexico City and was the first event organised by
the United Nations with a sole focus on women’s issues. When it was her
time to speak, despite being intimidated by women from around the
world who introduced themselves as lawyers, teachers or scholars,
Domitilia courageously stood up on the stage and stated: ‘Well, I am the
wife of a Bolivian mine worker’ (Franco, 1992). She then continued her
speech by pointing to all middle-class women in the room, including
Betty Friedan, questioning the arguable sorority between them around
the world: ‘What equality are we going to talk about among ourselves? If
you and I don’t look alike, if you and I are so different. We cannot, at this
moment, be equal, even as women…’(Franco, 1992, p. 112).
Domitilia perhaps was one of the first women in the feminist move-
ment to raise issues such as social class that, rather than uniting, divide
women (Franco, 1992). She was giving voice to what theorists would
later call ‘intersectionality’, the several layers of social markers that one
needs to look at to understand various forms of oppression (Hancock,
2016). After the publication of Let Me Speak! (Viezzer, 2013) with
Domitilia’s testimony, she became the most famous of Bolivian women
miners throughout the world.
This chapter intends to draw a parallel between Domitilia’s experiences
of being oppressed and silenced but finding words to push back and be
heard internationally, to the experiences of women footballers across
Latin America. Mirroring Domitilia’s struggles and loud voice, one can
say that if society ‘Let us play!’ (‘Si nos permiten jugar’) football, the game
can drive and even lead the feminist struggle for more equitable societies
across the continent.
It is possible to understand that the football game, as it was brought
and implemented in Latin America, had been used as a colonising tool to
disseminate the oppressors’ playing culture while erasing local ones
(Nadel, 2015). As shown in most of the chapters of this book, however,
the same game was appropriated by local cultures, transformed and
employed as means for social transformation. Thus, here the authors use
 16 ‘Si nos permiten jugar’: Constructing a Feminist Football… 291

sociological creativity to imagine that women’s football in Latin America

might also be ‘an arena of resistance and conflict, a site for the develop-
ment of sweeping counterhegemonic strategies’ (Cusicanqui, 2012,
p. 95). Moreover, the intention is to show that a renewed and empowered
women’s football can be a potent avenue for Latin America to display its
diverse cultures to the world.
The chapter starts by briefly discussing how Western sports were used
as means of colonial cultural enforcement, but how they also have been
used by native populations to further their resistance against the invaders.
It is argued that the game of football was transformed by Latin Americans,
who brought a totally new and unknown corporeal dimension to the
game (Elsey & Nadel, 2019; Maranhão & Knijnik, 2011). We bring to
the discussion Paulo Freire, one of the most relevant twentieth-century
thinkers of colonisation, cultural oppression and freedom, to indicate
that dialogical embodied practices are key for the liberation and transfor-
mation of football within the subcontinent (Knijnik, 2018). Then the
chapter tries to set up a research and activist agenda that contains the
seeds that will help the transformation of the colonial and oppressive past
into a future feminist football in Latin America—a decolonised game
(Oxford, 2019) towards the Freirean untested feasibility (Freire, 1996;
Knijnik, 2013) or the Pachakuti envisaged by Cusicanqui (2012).

Colonisation, Football and Conscientização

Many readers of Freire’s philosophies argue that when discussing the
means of being ‘oppressed’ he was just referring to communities at the
bottom of the social ladder. This reading of Freire’s ideas is far from being
correct. Freire, in fact, states that everybody who has been colonised and/
or exiled are the oppressed in current societies (Freire, 2000). According
to him, colonised individuals have lost their ability to express their knowl-
edge and wishes during the displacement or colonising process, which
have been replaced by the conqueror’s feelings and judgements. The
oppressed struggle to discover their original mindsets. With their voices
missed, their arguments and verbal expressions are unacknowledged in
their new social setting. They follow a progression of self-deprecation
292 J. Knijnik and G. Garton

because as either colonised or displaced human beings they fight to cap-

ture that they too not only own information but also generate it through
their social enterprises. They essentially distrust themselves (Freire, 2000).
Competitive sports historically were used as colonial apparatuses of
control, as several sports were and still are. Abbassi (2009) shows how the
French Empire promoted such sports as a way to subjugate and govern
locals during various sets of colonial occupation across their history.
Conventional sports were a prevalent cultural method employed by the
predominant political power to control local populations (Abbassi, 2009;
Dine, 2002). This usage of competitive sports has long been associated to
what Freire (2000, p. 150) called a cultural invasion: ‘[T]he invaders pen-
etrate the cultural context of another group (…); they impose their own
view of the world upon those they invade and inhibit the creativity of the
invaded by curbing their expression.’
At the same time, though, one cannot consider the ‘colonised’ as pas-
sive beings who just submitted to the colonisers’ wishes. As shown on
countless occasions (Cusicanqui, 2012; Garton, 2019; Knijnik, 2013),
oppressed people will contest the sports-colonial order by struggling with
the sporting ideals that settlers wish to produce as well as their athletic
activities and competitions (Everbach et al., 2021; Lin & Lee, 2007).
People on the receiving end of oppression might try to destabilise the
customs and connotations that intruders and enforcers of colonisers’
sport culture and values wish to enforce on their sporting and playing
cultures (Darder, 2016; de D’Amico, 2019).
These efforts by the oppressed are what Freire (2000) calls a humaniz-
ing mission. It is an ongoing endeavour in which the oppressed, through
persistent dialogue that leads to reflection on their own social conditions,
try to expose the realities of cultural control (Freire, 2000). This enduring
struggle of humanization, which condemns subjugation while construct-
ing innovative arrangements of community conviviality, is what can con-
vert any footballer (i.e., coaches, players, educators, families) into cultural
workers (Freire, 1996). As seen in several communities across the subcon-
tinent (Hang, 2020; Litke, 2020), local football workers can use the
power of dialogue—dialogue as a social instrument for communal
change, not as a therapeutic tool for individual cure—to push for better
living conditions in their communities.
 16 ‘Si nos permiten jugar’: Constructing a Feminist Football… 293

Football is immersed in Latin American cultures (Bravo et al., 2016).

If one sees and understands football practitioners as cultural-makers and
workers, it is possible to realize that they are key actors to increase dia-
logue within their communities—thus, to manufacture everyday culture.
The footballing dialogues may start in the proper football fields, the same
social environment where coaches and instructors learn about football
themselves, have also learned how to pass this culture on to other genera-
tions; they can teach them not only to understand and play the game
better, but also how to use the power of football for social change (Añorve
Añorve, 2021). This is relevant because in Freirean thinking, the ones
who teach the cultural workers, must be in the world with the new gen-
erations, learning with them how to produce the new cultural formats
(Freire, 1996).
This is how the once marginalised and expatriate navigate the conscien-
tização process to renew their collective cultures, imagining a world of
scenarios that goes past enduring oppression. The training and collective
footballing practices, which emerge during dialogical shared moments,
bring to participants what Freire called conscientização. This is particu-
larly relevant for Latin American communities because their main forms
of socialising and producing culture are totally connected to football;
thus, the sport becomes key in the development of well-informed com-
munal agents who will generate their own cultures, instead of just sub-
mitting to the one’s of the colonisers. Football, both as an embodied
practice but also as a space that allows critical dialogue, is seen as an
essential tool here. It is part of a political project that points to the neces-
sity of communities to transform the oppressive features in cultural prod-
ucts. That is, to express their own ways of being in the world, in search of
a fairer and sustainable place to live.
294 J. Knijnik and G. Garton

L atin American Feminist Football’s Agenda

in Post-pandemic or Syndemic Times
During the initial years of the 1990s, the AIDS health crisis that hit
impoverished communities within several cities in the United States cre-
ated the conditions for the perfect storm for what Singer (1996, p. 933)
theorised as a ‘syndemic’. By coining this new concept, the author argued
that an epidemic virus, when meeting high rates of socially unfair condi-
tions, amplifies its actions. The lack of jobs or minimal living standards,
insufficient nourishment and inadequate housing, among other abysmal
social issues brought on by poverty in Latin America were the ‘perfect
storm’ for the COVID-19 syndemic to spread in its most fatal ways
(Burki, 2020). As the syndemic ran havoc through the continent and
poverty became misery (Colombo, 2021), its effects could be seen in
several sports leagues and especially within women’s football (Biram &
Martinez-Mina, 2021). Teams were destroyed, leagues abandoned and
many players were left without their wages, even if those were negligible.
As one hopes that the syndemic subsides in the next few years, the fol-
lowing sections raise a few topics that the authors consider key points to
the advancement of a feminist football on the continent. Rather than
being exhaustive, this list seeks to excite the imagination of feminist
researchers and activists to continue to strive for an inclusive and a fairer
game for all in Latin America.

F ootball as a Language: Decolonising

the Game
The football game arrived in South America as a colonial enterprise, cre-
ated and expressed in the language of the colonisers. Nevertheless, for the
native inhabitants of the subcontinent, Spanish was also the colonisers’
language, much earlier than English. Indigenous communities spread
around South America experienced suppression of their own languages
and dialects, thus parts of their own native culture. To have their voices
 16 ‘Si nos permiten jugar’: Constructing a Feminist Football… 295

heard, they had to learn and adopt the language of the colonial power, be
it either Spain or, later, England.
Nevertheless, mastering the language of the coloniser does not mean
one is culturally disenfranchised (Freire, 2000). Otherwise, dominating
the oppressor’s language might be a central tool to question the social and
political order (Freire, 2000). Therefore, the question that remains is:
How can one speak the language of the coloniser—as we do in this
book—and simultaneously contest its colonial powers?
It is argued that the body language manifested on a football pitch
needs to be understood as one of the most powerful means that Latin
Americans possess to express themselves. Playing the game with official
rules, or more informally amid a chaotic urban space, certainly contains
the main elements of local identity. By using the body language in a spe-
cial manner in a football match, South Americans suppress time and
space and may create a new, liberated social order.
This order, however, has been constrained, for several decades, by a
rigid and binary colonial gender order (Oxford, 2019). According to this
author, gender order manifests itself not only through the traditional
binary gender order that opposes male versus female, men versus women,
boys versus girls; but also colonial gender order creates binary hierarchies
in the women’s game—namely, the ‘neoliberal empowered players’ versus
‘the victimized players’ who have no access to any resources (Oxford,
2019). Within women’s football, this has been the norm that endures and
keeps bodies imprisoned, stealing their potentialities to produce the new
language of the oppressed.
Therefore, as Oxford (2019) argued, a decolonial footballing feminist
perspective must break this traditional gender order that was imposed
onto South American women. It needs to create several new social orders
that challenge the geopolitical status quo of knowledge (Radcliffe, 2017);
a new order that brings genuine opportunities for participation in the
civic spheres that football can produce across the continent. This new
order must ensure that women’s football and its participants do not
become another neoliberal token, but become the owners of their desti-
nies (Cusicanqui, 2012) and destroy coloniality in micro-, meso- but also
macro-social and political spaces (Garton et al., 2021). Moreover, an
order that ensures that the decolonial feminist perspective can be
296 J. Knijnik and G. Garton

perceived across bodies and minds of the continent. Therefore, this per-
spective must include all bodies, and guarantee that ‘everyone belongs’.

Freeing the Diverse Footballing Bodies

Maranhão and Knijnik (2011) discuss how Gilberto Freyre, a key South
American twentieth-century sociologist, has drawn an interesting parallel
between South American football, and European football, at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century. They identify that Freyre uses the meta-
phor of poetry versus prose to conceptualise the visible styling differences
between the bodies that play football on various continents; whereas
Europeans had a more mechanised playing style, like robots. South
Americans had a dancing footballing elegance, with plenty of creativity
that made their bodies dance on the football pitches.
The authors claim that Freyre’s metaphor is still relevant in today’s
football. Even though nowadays the European clubs and countries are
dominant in the sport, Latin Americans have always displayed a dancing
culture that most of the time pervades their football endeavours. As a
post-pandemic agenda, the authors believe that the dancing bodies need
to return to the fields to demonstrate all their powerful eroticism within
the game and beyond (Iannotta & Kane, 2002).
Nevertheless, as women’s football experiences a never seen before
growth (Williams, 2019), one needs to reconceptualise what bodies indi-
viduals believe will be acceptable in the football discipline. As open and
public spaces (Branz, 2012), should the pitches be open to everyone, or
is there a need to block ‘certain’ bodies from the women’s fields and rele-
gate them to other ‘non-spaces’? This topic deserves more attention, and
the chapters in this book are evidence of that. Women have historically
been excluded from football across the whole continent because of a
series of factors, from misogyny to open homophobia (Dennie, 2019;
Cunningham, 2019). Thus, at a moment when they have been conquer-
ing their spaces across the football arena, from pitches to management,
from broadcasting to sponsors (Williams, 2003), there is the necessity to
further the concept of women’s footballers and to address transgender
issues in the sport (Travers, 2018).
 16 ‘Si nos permiten jugar’: Constructing a Feminist Football… 297

Transgender women are currently promoting a ‘new gender revolution’

within the sports realm, in particular within football (Love, 2014).
Although major international bodies, such as the International Olympic
Committee, after years of deliberations and strict regulations, have now
accepted the inclusion of transgender people in their competitions, there
are persistent ‘myths’ about transgender women that need to be fought
against; for example, the idea that transgender women would ‘steal’ the
space of ‘real’ women to play sports (Kamasz, 2018) after decades of
hard-fought battles to win the right to play sports and football on the
continent.
Nevertheless, transgender bodies have been transforming the way one
sees sports; they bring a new dimension to the will to include everyone
who wants to play football. Transgender people, and women, challenge
the ways one discusses inclusion and equity within football, and pushes
for new boundaries that, rather than being restricted, can become porous
and opened to anyone who wants to join and enjoy the pleasures of a
dancing body on a football field (Scharagrodsky, 2019). Transgender
bodies certainly will bring back the needed dancing and poetry to the
football fields, and women’s football needs to be the first to include them
in any capacity.

Is Social Media the New Space for Feminist

Footballing’s Revolution?
For many underrepresented groups, social media has become their ‘lost
paradise’. Many groups who have been traditionally ignored or margin-
alised by mainstream media, have found their space in a range of social
media channels to manage and amplify their visibility, and to put forward
their messages. Simultaneously, they can also profit from this exposure,
by advertising products or services or branding their sponsors.
Women footballers have embraced this process in recent years and
increased their social media presence and profiles. Although this move-
ment might have been seen as positive for them, many questions remain,
specifically from a feminist perspective. Is social media involvement a
298 J. Knijnik and G. Garton

liberating development for women’s footballers? Have they put forward a

more collective approach to support sustainable change within the game?
Have players manifested their will for social and gender justice in football
and beyond?
Recent research has shown that in many cases, what women athletes
display in social media is a neoliberal profile (Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018).
Rather than looking at the key issues and social struggles that their game
faces, the authors argue that women athletes’ social media profiles empha-
sise their individual achievements. Exposing themselves as ‘winners’ in
the sports entertainment capitalist market, these profiles, instead of
advancing the feminist cause within the game, demonstrate how these
athletes have been absorbed by this market and want to be seen as
‘empowered and entrepreneurial’ individuals, not as leaders of a social
movement (Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018).
Rather than criticising this ‘neoliberal’ approach that the players take
on social media, one needs to understand these tensions. Football
researchers with a feminist agenda must look at all the players’ perspec-
tives and see how distinct feminist perspectives are in place when they go
public on the Internet (Thorpe et al., 2017). Although there is no single
response to the challenges and constraints presented by social media to
the women’s football context in Latin America, the authors believe that
researchers and activities must increase feminist education around all
football fields and spaces so that players enhance their conscientização
(Freire, 2000) of the oppressive social contexts in which they still live.
Conscientização brings action for transformation, and this is the key for a
better usage of all social media channels that can be occupied by women’s
football in Latin America and around the world.

‘Si nos permiten jugar’: For a Feminist Football

That Changes the World
This chapter started by bringing in the powerful voice of Domitilia Barros
de Chungara, a woman Bolivian mining worker who was also a trail-
blazer of a different feminism. Domitilia’s feminist struggle disturbed the
 16 ‘Si nos permiten jugar’: Constructing a Feminist Football… 299

white middle-class mainstream feminism of her time. She demonstrated

that among the exploration and subtraction of her continent’s under-
ground treasures by large mining companies, there were voices and
demands that needed to be listened to. She shocked the mainstream fem-
inist world by showing that their social justice struggle would only be
completed if they considered not only individual demands from certain
groups, but also the needs and hardships of other women and communi-
ties who were suffering unequal and corresponding layers of oppression.
The metaphor could not be clearer. As Domitilia wanted her voice to
be heard, here the authors claim that Latin American women must be
allowed to freely play football, without any more legal, economic or social
constraints. Like Domitilia’s feminism, what can be seen here is a foot-
balling feminism that is concerned with its communities and people.
Rather than another piece of the whole neoliberal sporting entertainment
industry, it is possible to see this football as a tool to advance social justice
for all women across the continent, with its rich and diverse cultures.
The authors are not naïve to claim that football is a panacea for all
social issues. It is evident that football can become, as it was in the past,
a tool for colonisation and commodification of bodies and minds. One
can see how a neoliberal ideology has become relevant within players’
social media profiles—for example, backing the notion of individual suc-
cess rather than community development. Nevertheless, the same game,
if understood as a collective tool for conscientização, can be the means for
achieving a better life for several communities.
Therefore, Let Us Play! is not an empty demand, but a struggle for col-
lective rights that goes far beyond the football pitch. It embraces the ten-
sions and paradoxes of the new footballing gender order; it understands
the neoliberal forces that want to commodify the game, but at the same
time it brings a communal dimension that cannot be ignored. Whereas
Domitilia was asking for her right to talk (‘let me talk’), the motto here
asks for the rights of the collective (i.e., nossotras, we, us) and of every
single girl and woman; this should be regardless of their social and ethnic
background, or gender orientation so that they can be part of this key
element of their cultural and political life. In this sense, a community-led
feminist football will be revolutionary and show the actual Latin American
capabilities to the world.
300 J. Knijnik and G. Garton

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 Index1

A 194–196, 200, 233, 235,

Abortion, 36, 37, 39, 40, 50, 60 240–243, 248
Activism, 36, 39, 40, 44, 51, 79, Amateurism, 17, 28, 160, 201
100, 108, 132 ANFP, see National Professional
Activism, political, 79, 90 Football Association
Act politically, see Activism, ANJUFF, 197, 199
political Anti-Communist Alliance, 81
Administration Argentina
of institutions, 19, 23, women’s national league, 16, 18,
24, 29, 273 20, 21, 24
women in, 45, 101, 142, 183, women’s national team, 11, 14,
197, 257, 265 16, 18–23, 26, 236
Agency, 30, 87, 91, 148, 160 Argentine Football Association
Aguante, 47–49, 57–59, 68–70 (AFA), 15, 16, 18–26, 80
Akers, Michelle, 244 women’s first division, 18
All Boys, 80 women’s league, 17
Amateur, 101, 119, 123, 143, Argentine women’s national
147, 149, 153, 157, 166, team, 23

1
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 303
J. Knijnik, G. Garton (eds.), Women’s Football in Latin America, New Femininities in
Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09127-8
304 Index

B Cholita, 119, 121

Bacarreza, Zdenscka, 116, 118, Civilising process, 100
124, 126 Class, 17, 43, 97–100, 102, 104,
Ban, women’s football, 135, 257 105, 108, 109, 169, 190, 194,
Barra brava, 47, 48 212, 213, 223, 249–252,
Barra Feminista, 56, 61–64 260, 265
Barras, 55, 56, 58–60, 62–64, 67–69 Club Atlético Boca Juniors, 213
Beauvoir, Simone de, 117, 122, Club licensing, 270, 271,
125, 128 274, 278–280
Belonging, 17, 46, 50, 57, 58, 68, Coach, see Coaching, women in
85, 89, 92, 159, 172, 176 Coaching practices, 78, 86,
Biological, discourse, 123 87, 89–91
Boca Juniors, 21, 27, 60, 217, 219, Coaching, women in, 41,
222, 224 59, 78, 79, 82, 83, 86,
Body, 260 103, 116, 118, 139,
female, 123 141, 142, 183, 195,
Bolivian football federation 255, 257, 261, 264
(FBF), 116 COFFUF, 197
Bolivia, women’s national team, 118, COLDEPORTES, 100
119, 125, 126 Collective action, 22–26, 60,
Bourgeoisie, 249 83, 87, 273
British Ladies Football Club, 257 Colombia, women’s national team,
Butler, Judith, 125, 225 98, 101, 105, 107, 248, 255,
257, 258, 260
Colonisation, 81, 169
C Compensation, 107
Cali, 261 CONMEBOL, 199, 270
Canales, Xioczana, 159 Coordinadora Sin Fronteras de
Canales, Xiomara, 159 Fútbol Feminista, 30, 36,
Canchita, 36, 38, 43, 45 43, 45, 50
Chala, Sonia, 258 Corinthians, 271
Chants, 57, 62, 67, 69 Costa Rica, 243, 260
Chauvinism, 134
Chile
women’s football league, 195, D
199, 200 Difútbol, 100
women’s national team, Discrimination, 64
195–197, 200 Documentary analysis, 277
 Index 305

F Hegemonic, 122
Fans, 69 Hegemonic masculinity, 57, 258
Fédération Internationale de Football Homophobia, 69, 271
Association (FIFA), 16, 199 Homosexual
Female, 258, 260 homosexuality, 271
Female body, 168, 215, 251, 258
Femininity, see Gender
Feminism, 47, 49, 50 I
Feminist, 69 Identity, 57, 64, 89
Feminist football, 49 Independiente Cali, 256
supporter groups, 56, 59, 60, 69
FIFA, see Fédération Internationale
de Football Association L
Fight, 59 Language, 80, 81
Football, 57, 62, 64, 67, 69 Latin America feminist
Football songs, 46, 48 movement, 60
Formas Íntimas, 256, 257 Lesbian, 121, 271
Foudy, Julie, 244 Licensing, 199
Fraternity, 122 Liga Profesional Femenil, 61
Freire, Paulo, 291
decolonialism, 291, 292
Futbolistas Argentinos M
Agremiados, 24 Maldonado, Amparo, 256–258,
260, 261
Management, 59
G Marginalisation, 120
Gender, 56 Marmar, 256
Gendered socialisation, 57, 64, 250 Marronismo, 12, 17, 27
Gender roles, 59, 64 Martínez, Margarita, 257, 261
Germany, 257 Masculinisation, 120, 251, 258
Güemes, 83 Masculinity, see Gender
Guerrero, Myriam, 255, 257, Mexican Football Federation
260, 261 (FMF), 231
Mexico, women’s national team, 166,
231, 236, 237, 243, 244
H Milagros Infante, 142
Hamm, Mia, 244 Moralising, 100
Harassment, 107 Moreno, Javiera, 197
306 Index

N Recreational, 195
National Football Federation, 200 Resignification, 69
National Professional Football Roja, Águila, 256
Association (ANFP), 195, Rothfeld, Iona, 197
197, 199–201
National teams, 138, 196, 255
Naturalises football as a male field, 67 S
NiUnaMenos, 24, 37, 50 Salary, 271
Sánchez, Macarena, 24
Sexism, 69
O Sexist, 62
Objectification, see Sexualisation Sexualisation, 123
Obligatoriedad, 196 Sexuality, 271
Olympic Games, 196 Sisterhood, 50, 122
Ortiz, Ruth, 255, 259 Solidarity, 50, 57
Otherness, 62, 64 Songs, 57, 62, 67, 69
Stigma, 121
Strike, 22, 23
P
Panama, 194
Pardo, Daniela, 197 T
Patriarchal, 201 Tapia, Claudio ‘Chiqui,’ 24
Performance of gender, 122 Team, 20–22, 23n3, 57, 261
Peru, women’s national team, 154, Topo Gigio, 23, 23n3
155, 159, 271 Transgender, 296, 297
Physical education, 100 Transgression, 122
Picaditos, 38, 43, 45 Tristán, Miryam, 271
Pinilla, Fernanda, 197
Political acts, see Activism,
political U
UAI Urquiza, 24
Ultras, 69
R United States’ national team, 244
Race, 97, 109, 260 Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Racism, 250, 265 (UNAL), 260
 Index 307

V Women’s bodies, 123, 168–170, 219,

Venezuela, Women’s national 223, 251, 258
team, 141 World Cup, 12, 16, 18, 24, 44, 61,
Villa 31, 83 101, 196, 231, 232, 243, 244
Violence, 69 qualifying, 24

W Z
Whitening processes, 100 Zapata, Liliana, 257, 261