Though women and girls do play soccer in Europe nowadays, many people still find it hard to reconcile football and femininity.
by Marianne Meier*
In almost every front room, flickering television screens cast a greenish glow, while flags from all over the world flutter from cars, balconies and in shop displays. Yes! Soccer currently reigns
supreme in Switzerland. And in addition to what is traditionally a male audience, more and more women and girls can be seen watching the games on big screens, bartering cards at "Panini" swap marts
and cheering teams on in football stadiums.
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Growing interest in football: female fans celebrate the victory of the South Korean team over Togo.
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However, although female enthusiasm on the sidelines has come to be accepted, female soccer players still encounter resistance and prejudice on the actual pitch. In contrast to their male
counterparts, women soccer players are nothing like society's established ideal of beauty. This has less to do with their actual anatomy than with the problems people have associating in femininity
with football in daily life.
Otto Rehagel, a top German coach, who has been the new god in Greece's football firmament since the 2004 European Championships in Portugal, made his views quite plain in a 1990 interview with the
"Sonntagsblick" (a Swiss Sunday tabloid) when he said: "Women are graceful creatures. I like to watch lady gymnasts. But when girls gallop around football pitches like cart-horses, that's going too
far!»
Definitions of femininity and masculinity are constantly changing
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Combative, ambitious, self-confident: sportswomen continually challenge old gender clichés.
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While it might have been OK to print remarks like this which smack of pub banter in the 1970s, statements like Rehagel's had already become rare by 1990. And the fact that prominent figures have
not been quoted with similar views in the public press in the last ten years points to a gradual change of outlook.
Today, the definition of what is regarded as feminine or masculine in our society is different from what it was yesterday, and tomorrow, it will be different from what it is today. Besides the
chronological factor, the way masculinity and femininity are interpreted is also largely determined by the relevant socio-cultural context. For instance, in the USA and Senegal, soccer and basketball
respectively are looked on as "typical" women's sports, though in these countries too, other disciplines are regarded as exclusively male domains.
In the 21st century also, the contradiction between "being a woman" and "being a sportswoman" continues to exist, particularly in traditional patriarchal societies. Female attributes are still
defined primarily in terms of words like restraint, elegance, passivity and weakness, whereas sportswomen – and hence women footballers – have to demonstrate a combative, active, ambitious and
self-confident commitment to the game to succeed.
Empowerment of girls and women through sport
When it comes to gender roles, the potential of sport, with its masculine connotations, lies in its very ability to break down these rigid social structures. Women and girls who take up a public
stance, show self-confidence, express themselves loud and clear, have ambition, assert themselves physically and are able to lose and win can change how they see themselves. In addition to being
personally rewarding, this also opens up new social horizons for women and girls who participate actively in sports. Their environment has to leave them space, allow them leisure time, promote
organizational independence, let them have fun as well as contributing to progress, and provide them with facilities. To avoid jeopardizing girls and women who dare to jump the barriers, forms of
sport have to be carefully selected to match the socio-cultural situation and introduced gradually. And awareness in the community has to be raised too.
These links between sport and gender are being increasingly recognized as a resource in the context of development cooperation and are being built into programmes and projects. Empowerment can
scarcely be interpreted more literally in any other area than in and through sport.
The first women cyclists, students, soldiers – or the first women soccer players – all broke new ground in the course of the twentieth century. In twenty years time, the natural enthusiasm with which
the up-and-coming generation of girls kicks a football around will make any reservations about women's soccer seem just as antiquated as the tardy enfranchisement of women in Switzerland does to us
today.
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