Sport and Gender: Latin America in the Global Arena, 26 May 2017.
Programme and abstracts
10:00-11:00 Sport and Gender: Disciplinary Approaches
Jean Williams, ‘Pseudo-Science, Pseudo-Legalese And Pseudo-Paternalism: Disciplinary Approaches
To Sport And Gender’
Just six years after gentlemen and scholars formed the Football Association (FA) in 1863 female
players were sufficiently topical for readers of Harper’s Bazaar to consider their enthusiasm as
entertainment. After a period of significant minority activity, between 1881 and 1897, when over
100 organized matches were recorded and women’s football grew in popularity, female matches
took centre stage in England between 1917 and 1921. This is a rich topic that remains underresearched. It also contradicts the FA and world governing body, FIFA, view that women’s football is
in its infancy or adolescence. A one hundred and fifty year old baby or teenager isn’t a very
convincing metaphor and this is one of the ways on which women are infantilised today by the
football authorities. In what ways is football part of the general sports industry and in what ways is
its attitude to gender specific? Taking a historical approach to Sport and Gender, this paper will show
how Pseudo-Science, Pseudo-Legalese and Pseudo-Paternalism have dominated the narratives
about women in sport. At the same time, women have campaigned for more access to more sports,
although football remains a semi professional activity at best for most elite female players in global
gendered labour markets.
Vicki Robinson, 'Women Rock Climbers: Life Course Transitions, Gender Relations and Masculinity'
So-called ‘risk’ or ‘extreme’ sports have been conceptualised as dynamic spaces, with many aspects
of these sports seen as being in flux, including gender relations (see Robinson, 2013). This paper
discusses whether there have been recent shifts and changes in women’s involvement in the risk
sport of rock climbing, in relation to their diverse experiences across the life course, and in the
context of investigating gendered relations and masculinity. Contemporary evidence from female
climbers themselves, in the UK and elsewhere is considered here, as well as utilising original data
from a previous study on sporting masculinities. In this way, public sporting performances are seen
in complex interaction with the private sphere. Therefore, I argue that by exploring the wider social
relationships of these sporting participants and across the life course, as women age, go through
bodily changes, reflect on their risk taking behaviour, undergo change in long term relationships and
with some becoming mothers, this usefully expands the current theoretical focus of a feminist
critical perspective regarding women in sport.
11:00-11:30 Tea/coffee
11:30-13:00 Women’s Football/ Sport in Latin American History
Claire Brewster, 'Amazons and Sirens: Women, Sport and the Press in Twentieth-Century Mexico'
The notion of women engaging in physical recreation was anathema to early twentieth century
Mexican society. While underlying scepticism continued throughout the decades that followed,
post-revolutionary reforms provided a surprisingly open arena within which both men and women
could practice, and often perfect, their interest in sport. In this paper we analyse how the issue of
gender influenced such reforms, the degree to which this affected popular participation in sports,
and how sporting activities were portrayed in the Mexican media. The results of our analysis
challenge a presumption of continued machismo denigration of female endeavour. Rather,
mainstream sports journalists proved to be more enlightened in their treatment of women’s sport
than their counterparts in the radical feminist press. What this suggests is that class, as well as
gender, has affected the portrayal of female sporting achievement in twentieth-century Mexico
Jean Williams, ‘Women’s Football/ Sport in Latin American History’
Based on some more recent research on the professionalisation of women's football, patterns of
elite female player migration, and global markets, this paper will show how the history of the
gendered labour markets of football continue to shape professional opportunities. Drawing together
work on patterns of male player migration, female player migration, 'push' and 'pull' factors in
female professional careers and 'nodes' of player concentration, this paper will identify some key
aspects of elite player opportunity and challenge in Latin America and across the world.
Courtney J. Campbell, ‘Off Pitch:Sources, Interdisciplinarity, and Other Challenges to Social and
Cultural Histories of Football’
On 2 July 1950, Chile defeated the United States in the only World Cup match to take place in the
Northeast that year. Early in my doctoral research, I had picked this match as the subject of a
chapter in my Ph.D. thesis. I was very excited to arrive in Recife in 2012 to carry out the research
and expected to find sources on not only the match itself, but also the construction of the stadium,
the purchase of materials, the transfer of land, and radio transmission. Unfortunately, I found
nothing other than newspaper articles and second-hand stories about this match. I was able to
construct a chapter, which I also turned into a draft for a journal article, about the campaign to bring
the match to Recife and about regional art about other World Cup events. The final product sat well
within my thesis (and now within my book), but as a stand-alone article it failed to find a home, seen
as not historical enough for traditional historical journals and too historical for cultural studies
publications. This story highlights the difficulty of constructing off-pitch social and cultural histories
of football. My contribution to this panel will be a discussion of how to deal with a lack of textual
sources and how to interpret and analyse diverse cultural artefacts. I will also contribute to a
discussion of the limits of interdisciplinary research.
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:30 Cultural representations of gender through Latin American sports
Peter Watson, ‘The beautiful game? Observations on the development of women’s football in
Colombia’
In February 2017, Colombia’s first women’s professional football league began. The Liga Águila
Femenina comprises 18 teams, many linked to existing men’s professional teams. This marks
another important step for Colombia’s sportswomen in a traditionally conservative country more
used to watching women’s beauty contests than female sporting competitions. This paper will
discuss how women’s football in Colombia is confronting challenges and trying to change
perceptions of women’s involvement in sport, helped by female successes in other sports such as
athletics and cycling. It will also consider the role of social development projects involving football,
particularly the Metodología de fútbol por la paz, in promoting greater female involvement in sport
in more disadvantaged areas.
Courtney J. Campbell, ‘The Beauty of Garrincha’s Legs: Race and Gender in Brazilian World Cup and
Miss Universe Media Coverage (1950s/1960s)’
This paper examines media (particularly newspaper) discourse on victory and loss in World Cup
tournaments and Miss Universe contests in the 1950s and 1960s. Through a comparison of the
discourses of victory and loss in World Cup and Miss Universe events in the 1950s and 1960s, we
learn about the popular debate and presentation of gender, race, and region in Brazil. The article
focuses on newspapers, mostly in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, but also includes references to
cultural artefacts and intellectual history on race, gender, and nationalism in Brazil. This comparison
is fruitful due to the many similarities between how the Brazilian press presented World Cup football
and Miss Universe events. Both events were immensely popular and journalists even compared the
two. Articles on both themes are frequently accompanied by large photographs of the contestant or
player, showcasing the ideal male or female form. While these similarities are useful, even more
intriguing is the one, drastic difference in press treatment of these mega-events: while the press
remembered second place in the World Cup as a horrible loss, second place in Miss Universe was
still a victory worthy of celebration. Masculine beauty was exalted only in victory, while feminine
beauty was evaluated based on physical form and the ability to accept loss gracefully. In both cases,
the ideal Brazilian footballer or beauty contestant stood in contrast to the United States, particularly
as representatives of a mixed-race culture. This paper also alerts against analysing mass events as
projections of a unified identity and instead as spaces of debate. Mass events like the World Cup and
Miss Brazil pageants allow for multi-class and multivalent discussions through which we can tease
out gendered and racialized threads. In this way, newspapers were not only a space of horizontal
camaraderie, but also of direct or indirect debate.
David Wood, ‘Mujeres con Pelotas? Women and Football Writing in South America’
This paper will focus on the presence of women in the region’s growing corpus of football literature.
Particular attention will be paid to Brazil and Argentina as two countries in which women have
challenged dominant masculine narratives around football to acquire a significant – yet problematic
– presence in the respective nations’ football cultures. Through an exploration of selected, this
study will suggest that despite the manner in which patriarchal values and the male gaze continue,
to some degree, to frame the position of women vis-à-vis football, female agency in Latin American
football writing is an increasingly realistic goal.
15:30-16:00 Tea/coffee
16:00-17:00 Round table reflections and future directions