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Soccer & Society
ISSN: 1466-0970 (Print) 1743-9590 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fsas20
Gender, feminism and football studies
Jayne Caudwell
To cite this article: Jayne Caudwell (2011) Gender, feminism and football studies, Soccer &
Society, 12:3, 330-344, DOI: 10.1080/14660970.2011.568099
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Soccer & Society
Vol. 12, No. 3, May 2011, 330–344
ISSN 1466-0970 print/ISSN 1743-9590 online
© 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14660970.2011.568099
http://www.informaworld.com
Gender, feminism and football studies
Jayne Caudwell*
University of Brighton, Eastbourne, UK
Taylor and FrancisFSAS_A_568099.sgm10.1080/14660970.2011.568099Soccer and Society1466-0970 (print)/1743-9590 (online)Article2011Taylor & Francis1230000002011JayneCaudwellJ.C.Caudwell@brighton.ac.uk
In this article, I explore some of the ways gender has been interpreted over
time within different feminisms and how this might be of use to a critical
football studies. I move between different feminist emphases, which
include consideration of the ‘category of woman’, the ‘category of gender’
and the ‘category of femininities’ and specifically in relation to football
contexts. This simple model of feminist categories (‘woman’, ‘gender’ and
‘femininities’) intends to capture some of the histories of feminist
theoretical development and available modes of feminist analyses. I use
these categories to demonstrate the depth and breadth of feminism and the
range of feminist theory available for future research and study of football
and its many cultures.
Introduction
In her book, Women on the Ball, Sue Lopez recounts an event her generation of
players experienced at the hands of the media in the late 1960s:
… the Daily Mirror was the perpetrator of one of the most damaging incidents in press
coverage – the ‘Joan Tench’ affair. As the Mirror Group of Newspapers had sponsored
the competition they wished to publicise the final between Fodens and Westhorn at
Willesden Sports stadium, and so they contrived a photograph of Fodens’ Joan Tench
going up to head the ball and then finding her shorts around her knees.1
Throughout our histories of football participation, in the UK and elsewhere, it is
evident that women have faced harassment, discrimination and abuse. This unfair and
inequitable treatment, usually perpetrated by men and male-run organizations and
institutions, has received severe criticism. As a result of such protests, by both women
and men, there has been change – not least the Football Association’s (FA) adoption
of the Women’s Football Association in 1993 – and this change has meant that most
girls and women now find it much easier and more comfortable to play and be
involved in the game. On the whole, blatant and overt forms of misogyny and sexism
are not tolerated; however, it would be inaccurate to claim that misogyny and sexism
have been eradicated. For example, Mike Newell’s (manager of Luton men’s football
team 2003–7) verbal outburst at Amy Rayner (assistant referee) in 2006: ‘What are
women doing here?’2
and ‘She shouldn’t be here, I know that sounds sexist but I
am sexist’3
epitomizes some men’s response to the presence of women on the football
pitch.
*Email: J.C.Caudwell@brighton.ac.uk
Soccer & Society 331
Newell’s self-confessed sexist comments continued to resonate when, on 9
February 2010, Amy Fern (nee Rayner) actually refereed Coventry City versus
Nottingham Forest men’s game for 20 minutes because the male referee suffered an
injury. This time the media were the perpetrators of the sexism. The Sun newspaper4
ran the headline ‘Can Women Referee Men’s Footie?’ And the caption ‘Oi, Ref! Are
You Blonde?’. The article goes on to consider the first question and provides
responses from two individuals – a woman and a man. In answering, Wendy Toms
(the Premier League’s first woman assistant referee) argues ‘yes’ women can referee
men’s football and Perry Groves (former Arsenal player) claims ‘no’ they can’t.
Groves’ answer is accompanied by a litany of sexist rationale, including ‘would
women refs be banned during their “time of the month” because they might be more
emotional, depressed or aggressive?’ and ‘a female commentator was tried out on
Match of the Day. She knew her stuff but didn’t sound right’. Needless-to-say the FA
does not endorse such remarks and men who have made similar comments have paid
a price: Newell was fined £6500 and made to apologize publicly.
Sexism and misogyny are also enduring and common occurrences within footballfan
cultures, and Jones’ research findings5
illustrate the extent and nature of sexist
commentary evident on fan Internet sites and sexist verbal abuse at live games.
Sexism and misogyny are very sharp and chilling reminders that gendered social
relations remain significant influencing forces in society and in football contexts.
Gender relations clearly implicate gender, and gender – as a concept – is central to
feminism (including feminist activism, feminist politics and feminist theorizing). In
this article, I explore some of the ways gender has been interpreted over time within
different feminisms and how this might be of use to a critical football studies. I move
between different feminist emphases, which include consideration of the ‘category of
woman’, the ‘category of gender’ and the ‘category of femininities’ to demonstrate the
value of continuing a gender analysis of football and its many cultures.
The ‘category of woman’ reflects feminist thinking during the so-called second
wave (1970s and 1980s) of feminism and is based on the foundational premise that
sex and gender are distinct. The term –‘category of woman’ – indicates the value of
commonality, shared oppressions and political solidarity. However, this category was
later criticized for universalizing and essentializing women and their experiences of
gender relations. A shift to the ‘category of gender’, in the post second-wave period
(1990s), reflects the impact Judith Butler’s work had on feminism and on the theorizing
of gender. Butler’s contribution helped denaturalize sex and destabilize the sex–
gender distinction. Butler, and other gender theorists, re-examined concepts such as
‘identity’ (and identity politics) and developed critical arguments in relation to the
effects of heterosexual hegemony. Finally, the more recent ‘category of femininities’
demonstrates a feminist engagement with a so-called postfeminist era and debate
surrounding the contemporary proliferation of popular cultural and/or media cultural
articulations of femininities.
Gender and football studies
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s within the Anglo-American context, one term came
gradually to dominate the feminist lexicon: gender.6
Gender, as an important concept within the critical social sciences and humanities,
is a complicated term. It tends to be most insightfully used by feminists and pro
feminists. Within the lay persons’ parlance, gender, frequently denotes biological
332 J. Caudwell
differences between women and men (e.g. the many forms we fill in often request
‘gender’ with the options being ‘female’ or ‘male’). For those individuals who are
more interested in a critical reading of the social world and who take heed of the feminists’
advocacy – espoused during late 1960s and 1970s – that there is a distinction
between sex and gender, gender tends to be understood as socially constructed and
produced. Having said that, it remains that within certain circles gender provides a
mere descriptor for the socially constructed and produced differences between men
and women or between women and women, and/or men and men.
For the various strands of feminism that have developed in the Western world,
gender has deep political meanings. Probably one of the most notable examples of this
is the emphasis on the sex–gender distinction within a liberal politics for equality.7
Over the past 120 years or so, liberal feminists in the USA and Western Europe have
successfully challenged and transformed aspects of these societies through a reformist
political agenda. Young makes the point that feminist appropriations of the sex–
gender distinction ‘were very theoretically and politically productive’.8
By demonstrating that biology is not destiny9
and that, in fact, it is socialization
that is the cause of women’s lack of opportunities, liberal feminism has achieved on
many fronts. This social and legal reform has meant that a younger generation of
women and men, in the Western world, are more able to consider themselves as equals
and this has helped young women and girls take up sports, such as football, in the UK.
It is important to note at this juncture that despite liberal intentions to seek
collective reform, the gains made by this type of feminism tended to favour white
women from predominantly middle-class backgrounds. Having said that, football in
the UK is renowned for its working-class history and culture, and there is some
evidence that minority ethnic women have successfully taken up the game. In fact, one
of the most successful women in UK football to date is Hope Powell (OBE).
Powell has many achievements, at elite levels, as a player and as a coach. She
made 66 playing appearances for England (between the early 1980s and mid 1990s)
and has been manager of the international senior squad since 1998. Recently, she led
the England team to the European Cup Final in Finland in 2009. As a UEFA (Union
of European Football Association) pro-licence coach it is possible for her to coach
men’s professional football. In an interesting twist to the tale of Mike Newell’s
outspoken sexism, it was rumoured, by the football media, that Powell might be
considered for the management position left after Newell’s sacking by Grimsby
Town.10 In the end, the rumours were unfounded and the caretaker manager – Neil
Woods – took the job.
The example of Hope Powell, which highlights success and potential successes for
black women, does not necessarily signify the smooth inclusion of women and/or
minority ethnic groups into elitist football cultures. However, as King makes the
point,11 Powell is an interesting case, especially since there are very few black male
equivalents in the men’s game. Paul Ince, who was sacked at the end of 2008,
after only six months in his Premier League job, and the late Keith Alexander (died
2 March 2010), remain the only two examples of black managers, to date, in elite
men’s football.
Existing work on gender and football has rightly celebrated women’s successes,
and documented these occasions alongside the many struggles they have endured. In
this work, gender is commonly regarded from a liberal perspective as a social relation
to power. Within this relational dynamic, it is men and boys who dominate privileged
positions in the game and the entitlement to these opportunities. This dominance is
Soccer & Society 333
exposed and criticized, by liberal feminists, as being taken for granted as a ‘naturally’
occurring phenomenon. Within the sociocultural processes that normalize men’s and
boys’ involvement, women are placed as the ‘other’12. In such a binary, one group is
dominant as they secure more power than the ‘other’. Returning to Hope Powell, and
remaining mindful of the media treatment of Amy Fern (nee Rayner), it is interesting
that The Telegraph ran the headline – ‘No Hope of Powell becoming Grimsby’s
Gaffa’13
. The ‘no-hope’ caption suggests some of the furore that might ensue if she
were to secure employment in the men’s professional game. It is likely that her
management of a men’s team would receive constant critical scrutiny because she is
a black woman: she is the ‘other’.
A critical approach to gender, from a liberal perspective, is disparaging of gender
relations that sustain inequitable social arrangements between men and women. Without
doubt, during the relatively short history of the game (in the UK the game has
developed during a period of industrialization, modernization and modernity, which
reflects approximately 150 years), girls and women have struggled against sexism,
misogyny and gendered stereotypes to be recognized as serious participants and
legitimate members of its many cultures. However, there are signs of change and
Hong and Mangan demonstrate this in their important collection of articles ‘Soccer,
Women, Sexual liberation. Kicking Off a New Era’ published as a special issue of
Soccer & Society in 2003. The 15 contributions included in the special issue reveal the
ways the contemporary arrangements, around the world, that govern women’s playing
opportunities, fare better than previously.
Many of the articles share similar concerns – although the contexts are different –
and provide documented histories of women footballers’ participation, for example,
histories of the emergence of teams, competitions and leagues. The circumstances vary
in the 16 countries covered (including Brazil, China, India, Senegal, Nigeria and South
Africa)14
and these variations depend on the histories of when women took up playing
and the responses, by those governing and controlling the game, to their involvement.
Some countries have experienced ‘golden years’ when women’s participation appears
relatively trouble-free.15
However, these periods can fit a pattern of ‘rise and fall’ in
some countries.16
In most countries, despite the evidence of the increasing numbers
of players, the Hong and Mangan collection highlights that women continue to face
resistance to their active participation.17 This is most apparent in how playing opportunities
for women lack financial resourcing and positive sociocultural support.
In a later publication (2007), Magee et al.18 present a range of work on Women,
Football and Europe: Histories, Equity and Experiences. This book continues to chart
the struggles, for women, throughout the game’s development, in some European
countries, including England,19 France,20 Norway,21 Scotland22 and Spain.23 As with
the Hong and Mangan collection, the focus tends to remain on gender relations. In
addition, there are three chapters that individually introduce and address whiteness,24
ethnicity25 and sexuality.26 In these chapters, ‘race’, ethnicity and sexuality are linked
to gender relations and, as a result, are shown to be strong influences on active
involvement in the game. In other words, racism and homophobia as well as sexism
(and misogyny) in football contexts are exposed as exclusionary for women players.
More recent articles in Soccer & Society in 2009 and 2010 also aim to make visible
the ways gender is interconnected with ethnicity. For example the work of Palmer on
young refugee women, ethnicity and religion, and Pelak’s study of South African
women players’ increasing participation (1970 to present) and the impact of the
combining social forces of gender, ‘race’ and class on this participation.
334 J. Caudwell
This emerging emphasis on particular groups of women and the diversity between
women reflects the schisms evident in feminist thinking. To rally behind a ‘category
of woman’ effectively reduces all women to one universalized unit. It also promotes
the mistaken belief that there is solidarity between women and that they form a
collective. What is apparent, however, is that not all women share the same social
location or gendered identity and therefore, we cannot view women as a unitary group.
Aspects of the liberal approach to gender are problematic when we realize that there
are other social signifiers and markers, such as class, ethnicity, ‘race’, whiteness,
sexuality, heteronormativity and disability, which differently position women. With
this realization, the reliance on the transformative power of a shared-identity politics
(based solely on gender) is tricky. ‘Gender’, therefore, must also be understood in
relation to difference and non-shared gendered identities. Consequently, women are
not only oppressed by men, male dominance, patriarchy and phallocentricism, they
may also be oppressed by other women. For example, the operation of racism,
homophobia and able-bodiness towards women at individual, institutional and
structural levels can play out through intricate processes that also implicate women.
Lloyd captures these particular ruptures in feminist thinking and praxis – the shifts
from sameness to difference – in her discussions on reform, emancipation, diversity
and différence feminism.27
However, despite seemingly rejecting shared-identity politics,
some diversity feminists retain a hold on identity and the materiality of the body,
and continue to rely on identity politics (for example, some black British feminists and
some lesbian feminists), while other diversity feminists have turned to how these
differences are formed. The latter reflects a turn to the concept of subjectivity, instead
of identity, and this involves the centrality of language and discourse in subject formation.
This emphasis on deconstructing subject formation and scrutinizing the ways in
which the individual subject comes into being have meant that this group of feminists
are often referred to as deconstruction feminists, as opposed to diversity feminists.28
For deconstruction feminists (including poststructuralist feminists), their concern is
the discursive formations of, for example, sex, gender and the body.29
In the context
of football studies, this approach to gender and how the construction of femininity and
masculinity, through football language and football discourses, impact on participation
indicates an engagement with gender theorists such as Judith Bulter and the
‘category of gender’.30
The significant shifts in feminist thinking over the past four to five decades reflect
the many internal debates within feminism and the changing approaches to the
concept ‘gender’. McRobbie31 suggests that: ‘… what feminism actually means
varies, literally, from one self-declared feminist to the next, but this does not reduce
its field of potential influence, quite the opposite’. Because of the ruptures within
feminism, it is possible to speak of feminisms and Birrell,32 in her review of sport
feminist theory, argues that the varied and extensive discussions within feminist thinking
are what give feminism its rigour, strength and depth of analysis.
Rather simplistically, some writers have interpreted these increasingly different
approaches within feminism not as nuanced and developing arguments, but rather as
delineating stages of development, progression and a clear-cut divide between the
second and a so-called third wave of feminism.33 However, such a modernist and
linear approach to explaining these tensions and conflicts has been exposed as superficial,
inaccurate and of limited usefulness34 because it does not reflect the complexities
of the second-wave era and the post-second-wave era (including the influences of
poststructuralism, postmodernism and postfeminism).
Soccer & Society 335
The idea of a third wave of feminism has also been exposed for lacking a critical
engagement with the nature of contemporary neoliberal politics (of both the New Left
and the New Right). Genz35 hints at the strong associations between neoliberal
politics and third-wave feminism in her aptly titled article Third Way/ve. The Politics
of Postfeminsim. She links third-wave feminism with Third Way politics introduced
by UK New Labour – in the late 1990s and early 2000s – simultaneously connecting
third-wave feminism with postfeminism. For me, the associations highlight the need
to question the political content of a third wave of feminism.
Feminisms and football studies
The multiplicity of feminism, as we have seen, is easily relatable to football and
women’s involvement in the game. Increased access and opportunity to football by
women and girls generally, and specifically in the UK, evidences the impact of a
transformative politics associated with a liberal feminist agenda. The anti-racism and
anti-homophobia campaigns evident in UK football policy and practice36
indicate the
increasing rights of different groups of women, including disabled women, lesbians,
bisexual women, and black and South Asian women.
However, important issues remain to be explored. For example, studies of football
in educational settings,37
especially studies of informal play in school playgrounds,38
suggest that girls continue to be excluded from dominant versions of the game. Three
decades after the Theresa Bennett v FA court case (1978) – when the parents of
Theresa took the FA to court for banning their 12-year-old daughter from playing in
a boys’ local league – young girls continue to struggle against opposition to their
active involvement in hegemonic football cultures.
Governing bodies such as the FA and Fédération Internationale de Football
Association (FIFA) remain stubborn in their efforts to keep football (men’s football)
and women’s football separate. This desire to keep men and women separate was
made very clear at the end of 2004. FIFA banned Maribel Dominguez (a Mexican
woman who accepted a two-year playing contract with a second division men’s
professional club; Celaya) from playing in the men’s professional league. The ban was
immediate and within a few days of her accepting her contract with the club. In fact,
FIFA held an emergency meeting to deal with this inaugural event, after which they
issued the statement: ‘There must be a clear separation between men’s and women’s
football.’39 Frustratingly, FIFA’s pithy statement reflects an absolute ruling and does
not provide any rationale for the blanket decision – or, apparently, any recourse.
And yet, the same governing bodies are keen to be seen promoting girls’ and
women’s competitive football at local, national and international levels, that is, as
long as women and girls’ participation is distinct from men’s competitive and men’s
elite football performances. In many ways, these governing bodies aim to differentiate
not only women from men, but also femininity from masculinity. Sepp Blatter’s
(FIFA) now notorious statement ‘the future of football is feminine’ made at the
closing of the 1999 Women’s World Cup, signals the type of female footballer FIFA
prefer: femininity is foremost. Rather ironically, this statement, and stance, coincided
with the Brandi Chastain incident.
After the USA beat China, in a penalty shoot-out (5–4) in the final of the 1999
World Cup, Chastain, the ultimate goal scorer, sunk to her knees, ripped off her
playing shirt and held it in clenched fists above her head. This pose, one that
commonly denotes the pleasures of victory, was captured by a global media similarly
336 J. Caudwell
keen to frame women’s football as ‘feminine’. The media ignored the numerous photo
opportunities apparent within the one-and-a-half hour final game and the nine-goal
penalty shoot-out. Instead, Chastain and her Nike-crested chest were framed and
produced as the epitome of the event. The media exposed Chastain and not the
enormity of the footballing occasion. This exposure was done in a way that would
partially satisfy the often-chanted requests of male fans. That is the commonly sung
request by male fans and directed at women attending live games to ‘get your tits
out’.40
Young’s arguments become relevant here: ‘Breasts are the most visible sign of
a woman’s femininity….’41
Chastain, and her breasts, subsequently, became an
iconic42
– and obviously feminine – figure for football and for the future of football.
Feminists have critically analysed Western femininity and the ways this dominant
femininity is produced and reproduced. For some traditional feminists,43
‘femininity’
is the root cause of women’s subordination. This is because femininity is understood
as patriarchically informed and patriarchically imposed and therefore constraining and
oppressive. In addition, contemporary feminists who oppose the postfeminist movement
argue that popular cultural media forms, including film, TV, advertising and
magazines, are effectively re-centring ‘both heterosexuality and whiteness, as well as
fetishising a young, able-bodied, “fit” (understood as both healthy, and in its more
contemporary sense as “attractive”) female body’.44
As Genz45
highlights, ‘femininity’ implicates dominant discourses of whiteness
and heterosexuality. She makes the point that by conforming to normative femininity,
many white Western women have made substantial gains in social as well as
economic and political power. Such gains in power have been variously debated
within feminism as reflecting sexual objectification or sexual subjectivity and white–
female agency.46
Feminist thinking on ideas of ‘femininity’ is divided and similar to
feminist debate surrounding gender; feminist points of view on the meanings of
contemporary femininities remain contested.
As with the changing and increasing opportunities for women and girls to participate
in UK football cultures, footballing femininities have also metamorphosed. These
changes and developing emphases on femininity must be understood in the context of
the image of the women’s game47 and the imagined omnipresence of female
masculinity.48 Women, masculinity and football are readily elided and because of
these slippages efforts are made to contain the stereotype of the mannish/butch female
footballer. As I have highlighted above in relation to FIFA, Marible Dominguez, Sepp
Blatter and Brandi Chastain, there have been various practices to counter the signs of
female masculinity. Mobilizing footballing femininity is one way to achieve this, and
an aspect of UK football culture where a contemporary femininity is very visibly
mobilized, and therefore provides an exemplar for critical analysis, is the merchandise
aimed at women and girls who are interested in the game.
A self-proclaimed popular brand of football clothing and attire for girls and
women was footie chick.49 Their mission statement as it appeared on their website is
as follows: ‘Its (sic) simple … to be the leading brand for female followers of football
whether they watch, play or dream the game!’. In addition, the footie chick website
provided interested and potential consumers with the following information about
their football clothing and brand:
About Footie Chick
Passionateaboutbothfootballandclothing,FootieChickwassetupinJuly2002tobecome
the leading sports fashion brand for female followers of football around the world.
Soccer & Society 337
With this vision in mind Footie Chick was born. Footie Chick is the fun, funky girl that
lies within every female footie fan! She has a zest for life, a longing for fun and is up for
tackling her male counterpart – on the pitch, in the stands or in the pub! And, sometimes
she may even have the cheek of the devil!
The driving force of the Footie Chick team together with the visionary Footie Chick
brand has taken the female football market by storm. Growth and market penetration
over the recent years have been phenomenal.
The Footie Chick Brand
Footie chick is a fashion sportswear brand, aimed at females who are funky, fashionable
and maybe even a little football mad! The brand and range has been developed to reflect
the style and outlook of today’s female football fans.50
Footie Chick made use of quotations from women players. Some of these women play
at national and international level in England and consequently may have appeared to
girls and young women who visited the website as role models. The trademark icon
that accompanied the written text is a silhouetted, Charlie’s Angels-type, very slim
woman with her hands on her hips. The language of the website, as is evident from
the above information and the rotating quotations, relied on interpolations of femaleness
(the word ‘chick’ and the use of the colour pink on both the website and for the
clothing), youthfulness (represented through references to funky, fashionable and fun)
and success (of both female followers of football and the company footie chick). The
clothing, including playing strips, training kit and casual wear, was available to clubs,
teams and individuals. This range of clothing product, for instance there are footie
chick pyjama sets, aimed to encourage girls and women to be footie chicks both on
and off the football pitch. Despite the largely on-line retail transactions, the company
also appeared at major events: for example, they had a stall at some of the Women’s
European Cup 2005 games hosted in the north east of England.
‘Today’s female football fans’ are being encouraged, through conspicuous
consumption, to embody football and femininity. As Gill makes the point, ‘femininity
is a bodily property’.51
Women and girls’ bodies become potential sites and sights for
the adornment of feminine football attire and concomitantly the display of femininity.
In this way, the footie chick footballing body is an emerging embodied femininity. The
footie chick femininity is delicately laced with a new type of sexiness and suggests a
heterosexualizing of women’s football culture. This form of sexualization is less overt
compared with ‘the “Joan Tench” affair’. It is, in effect, concealed within neoliberal
discourses of individual choice and individual empowerment and fits within a broader
sexualization of culture52
in Western countries.
The tenets of individual choice and individual empowerment, which encourage an
emphasis on tenacity and taking control and/or responsibility, are evident when we
consider women footballers and nudity. In 1999, women playing for the Australian
national team posed naked for a nude-calendar: Matildas – A New Fashion in Football.
The calendar was produced and sold to help augment both the funds for, and the
profile of, the team’s imminent 1999–2000 playing season and especially for their
participation in the Sydney Olympics.53
The emphasis on ‘a new fashion in football’
is haunted by the previous discussion on the future of the game and the sexualized
commodification of the figure of the female footballer. The Australian team are not
alone in their efforts to seek attention and funding through nude displays of their
bodies. In 2003, Dutch football players were rumoured to be a part of a group of
338 J. Caudwell
sportswomen appearing naked to raise funds through a pay-per-view website. And
more recently, in 2009, four players from the French national team, again frustrated
with lack of media coverage for European Cup in Finland (2009), ‘stripped to draw
the attention of the public’.54
At club level, players have also appeared in various
states of undress. In 2007, women from one of the leading Spanish teams posed
completely naked (except the goalkeeper who wore gloves) in a picture – that depicted
a goal area, a goalkeeper, a six-woman defensive wall and a direct free kick – to
acquire money to supplement their meagre earnings.55
And, local-league teams in
Italy (Valencia) and England (Redditch)56
have produced nude-calendars for 2010 in
an attempt to increase funds for their clubs.
These women footballers’ decisions to appear nude and/or semi-nude are based on
their desire to increase public awareness, boost media coverage and enhance their own
and their teams’ financial standing. In this way, they are addressing the prevailing and
common conditions evident in football culture; women and girls get a fraction of
financial resourcing and limited positive sociocultural support compared with their
male counterparts. However, appearing naked to challenge these conditions is a
contentious resolution.
Gill argues that women and girls are no longer sexual objects in a traditional sense;
that is, they are not presented as mute and passive. Instead they are ‘presented as
active, desiring sexual subjects who choose to present themselves in a seemingly
objectified manner because it suits their liberated interests to do so’.57
In her critical
analysis of the proliferation of a contemporary feminine sexiness, she draws on
Radner’s term ‘technology of sexiness’.58
The reference to ‘technology’ invokes
Foucauldian theory, which identifies and explains govermentality and the ways
individuals begin to govern (self-surveillance) and discipline (self-discipline) themselves
(technologies of the self). The term ‘technologies of sexiness’ captures the
complicated ways dominant forms of femininity and sexual subjectivity are produced
and regulated, and how these dominant versions, with their basis in white–heterosexual
femininity, persist in Western cultures. Gill identifies strong relationships between
technologies of sexiness, individualism and neoliberalism. She concludes that
femininity and embodied femininity remain problematic constructs in contemporary
popular culture.59
Other feminist writers also draw our attention to neoliberal ideology, femininity
and, in addition, resurgent patriarchy.60 Renold and Ringrose, in accordance with
McRobbie, argue that resurgent patriarchy re-orders Butler’s heterosexual matrix in
new, but nevertheless heteronormative, ways. Implicit to Butler’s matrix is heteronormative
hegemony. Heteronormativity is an exclusionary system, which rejects certain
bodies as not ‘viable’ and not ‘legitimate’.61 For Butler, these excluded bodies are
positioned as abject because they fail to conform to compulsory sex–gender–desire
norms. Lesbian footballing bodies have traditionally been positioned as abject and
therefore excluded. As an aside, to date, there are no self-identified ‘out and proud’
elite players and/or officials (female or male) in UK football cultures. The exclusionary
nature of heteronormativity, coupled with a resurgent patriarchy, means that
exclusions continue and are, arguably, more covert and obdurate.
Observing the promotional posters for the England women’s international side
indicates this kind of privileging of heteronormative bodies. Certain players are
selected and these individuals receive the obligatory ‘feminine’ makeover. Katie
Chapman, a white player with blond hair and mother of two sons, is usually one of
these players. If England qualify for the play-offs later this year (2010) and make it to
Soccer & Society 339
the 2011 FIFA World Cup – to be held in Germany – which players will be picked to
pose for the photographer? And how can this be interpreted by a broad feminist political
agenda, which now stretches across the various categories of ‘woman’, ‘gender’
and ‘femininities’?
Concluding commentary
In this article, I have introduced gender, feminism and football in an effort to make
complex our approach to critical analyses of football cultures. As the gender project
within football studies gains momentum, it is important that we stay in tune with the
internal debates within broader reaches of feminism and apply these debates to the
changing nature of women and girls’ relationships to the game. I have made the point
that a traditional liberal feminist agenda is no longer sufficient for an extensive investigation
of gender in UK football cultures. Having made this point, I also recognize
the significance of existing contributions from this perspective. The shift to feminist
gender theorists and the ‘category of gender’ would not have been possible without
the substrate of a developed and coherent liberal agenda and the ‘category of woman’.
Much of the current work on women/girls and football, as is evidenced in this
special issue, reflects this move away from a traditional liberal agenda and a move
towards post-second-wave theorizing and the concomitant turn to difference, diversity
and deconstruction. In the articles that follow, and as I have mentioned in the
introductory article, the authors provide a range of contemporary feminist analyses.
Fielding-Lloyd and Meân deconstruct the language used in football coach education
to provide insights into how gender is produced in this context. Welford details the
different strategies adopted by different women volunteering at football clubs. Ratna
explores the intersections of ethnicity and gender. She also inserts a post-colonial
politics into the football studies’ feminist agenda. Jeanes makes direct use of Butler’s
heterosexual matrix and Drury draws from a broader poststructuralist and queer
feminist agenda. Ahmad centres the experiences of Muslim women footballers and,
like Ratna, she offers further important challenge to white Western accounts of the
game. Stride and Fitzgerald provide an invaluable and much needed introduction to
football provision and practice for girls with learning disabilities. This last contribution
is one of a few examples – in both feminist sport studies and football studies – of
research on gender and disability.
In this article, I have attended to some themes not apparent in the rest of the issue.
Given the increasing participation of girls and women in competitive football cultures,
I raise the controversial question: why should women’s and men’s football be kept
separate? Some feminist work has been conducted within educational settings and
children’s football cultures, which can help explore this theme further.62 However, to
date, nothing exists that analyses the spatiality of gender and sexuality in the competitive
arena, and/or how discourses of normative gender and sexuality help propel this
footballing binary. We have not asked the question – what is it about sociocultural
understandings of women’s and men’s footballing bodies that mean it is impossible
for them to appear – officially – on the same field of play?
It is likely that players such as Maribel Dominguez will emerge in the future. For
how many more years can footballs’ governing bodies insist on the separation of
‘men’s football’ and ‘women’s football’? More importantly, why do they do so? And
whom does it benefit? Dominguez lost a two-year playing contract and the privileges
that go with earning a professional footballer’s salary.
340 J. Caudwell
In relation to this point, I highlight how the formal discourses within football
governance and football media additionally insist on clear boundaries between men
and masculinity, and women and femininity. Through this train of thought, I introduce
feminist debate surrounding contemporary versions of heterosexualized femininity.
Emerging footballing femininities (e.g. footie chick and promotional posters for
national and international events) have received scant attention to date. By contrast,
there are numerous recent feminist contributions63
that explore the ways contemporary
femininities are being articulated in troublesome ways and ‘the spectacular
dimension of this visibility’.64
Currently, we are aware that normative femininity
reduces and restricts women’s relationships with football. However, the impact on
football cultures in the UK of a popular cultural emphasis on ‘…a more glamorised
and individualised feminine subjectivity’65
and what Gill describes as the ‘makeover
takeover’, remains largely under-theorized. For example, how do the powerful
influences of the fashion-and-beauty complex further reify hegemonic whiteness,
hegemonic heterosexuality and able-bodiness in football cultures?
The embodiment of sexualized footballing femininities is epitomized in the small
flurry of nude-calendars. The point is that women footballers are reduced to their
naked bodies – which is an enduring theme from feminist points of view – in an
attempt to change conditions (publicity and funding) for their international, national
and local teams. The interesting questions here involve an eye on neoliberal politics
and the extent to which individuals are expected to improve their own circumstances
regardless of broader societal inequalities. In many ways, nude-calendars, as a quest
to improve footballing conditions, perfectly match the aims of footballing agencies.
International, national and local clubs raise their own funds and public profile, and
simultaneously promote the game as feminine and sexy.
Radner’s ‘technologies of sexiness’ provides a theoretically informed way to
explore the debates surrounding women’s bodies, women’s sexual objectification and
women’s sexual subjectivity. Poststructuralist feminists have, for some time, adapted
the work of Foucault to help explain the complexities of female agency and freedom
of choice. ‘Technologies of sexiness’ is an extension on ‘technologies of the self’ and
both indicate the disciplinary nature of, in this case, white Western sexiness. Women’s
bodies in football contexts are on display in environments that are usually maledominated.
As Young makes the point, young women ‘internalise how they are
supposed to appear to others.’66 All women, to greater or lesser extents, are influenced
by discourses of sexiness. The dominant versions of female sexiness are contingent on
able-bodiness, ethnicity, ‘race’, sexuality, class and gender. Some women in football
are able to reproduce these dominant discourses through an embodied feminine
sexiness, most are not.
The prominence of sexy femininities within popular culture and a broader politics
of neoliberalism, which promotes individualism, have an impact on both feminism
and football. The impact on feminism has been discussed at length by feminists
outside football studies. These discussions involve serious debate on the existence of
postfeminism, postfemininities and so-called third-wave feminism. More generally,
feminists such as McRobbie argue that the current climate has meant that instead of
an overt and blatant backlash to feminism, feminism has been subsumed into cultural
and political fields:
Elements of feminism have been taken into account, and have been absolutely incorporated
into political and institutional life. Drawing on a vocabulary that includes words
Soccer & Society 341
like ‘empowerment’ and ‘choice’, these elements are then converted into a much more
individualistic discourse, and they are deployed in this new guise, particularly in media
and popular culture, but also by agencies of the state, as a kind of substitute for
feminism.67
The blending of feminism and neoliberalism, which McRobbie describes above, has
traces in football cultures and footballing agencies. The now extensive football media
(including new media and the World Wide Web) and the global network of football
governing bodies (international, national, regional and local) are significant institutions
that help produce UK football cultures. To date, we know little about the ways
they incorporate elements of feminism and how this affects women’s and girls’
involvement. For example, do the women working for the FA experience the ‘political
and institutional life’ of the association as problematic?
In this article, I have focused on gender, feminism and football to offer a specific
and critical contribution to football – soccer – studies. I have raised more questions
than answers in the hope that this will inspire further work and therefore maintain the
momentum of the feminist project in football studies. To help explain the range of
feminist theory available for future research, I rely on a simple model of feminist
categories (‘woman’, ‘gender’ and ‘femininities’). The point I wish to make is that it
is important not to lose sight of the histories of feminist theoretical development and
available modes of analysis. It is this depth and breadth that gives feminism its
substantial critical edge.
Notes
1. Lopez, Women on the Ball, 214.
2. Cited in Kempson and Smyth, ‘It’s a Football Leagues First’.
3. Cited in Ley, ‘FA to Investigate’.
4. The Sun, April 7, 2010.
5. Jones, ‘Female Fandom’.
6. Lloyd, Judith Butler, 30.
7. Woodward, and Woodward, Why Feminism Matters.
8. Young, On Female Body Experience.
9. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex.
10. Wilson, The Telegraph, October 22, 2009; The Guardian, October 22, 2009.
11. See King, ‘Football in England’.
12. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex.
13. Cited in Norrish, The Telegraph, October 22, 2009.
14. USA, Canada, China, India, Denmark, England, West Germany, Norway, Republic of
Ireland, Sweden, New Zealand, Senegal, Nigeria and South Africa and Brazil.
15. USA and Canada in the mid to late 1990s, Norway late 1970s to 2000s.
16. China mid 1960s to mid 1970s and again in the late 1980s.
17. Korea, India and Africa.
18. Magee et al., Women, Football and Europe.
19. Jeanes and Kay, ‘Can Football be a Female Game?’. Welford and Kay, ‘Negotiating
Barriers to Entering and Participating in Football’.
20. Prudhomme-Poncet, ‘Les femmes, balle au pied’.
21. Skogvang, ‘The Historical Development of Women’s Football in Norway’.
22. Macbeth, ‘Women’s Football in Scotland’.
23. Soler-Prat, ‘How is Football Taught’. Goig, ‘Female Football Supporters’ Communities’.
24. King, ‘Football in England and the Gendered White Mask’.
25. Ratna, ‘A Fair Game?’.
26. Caudwell, ‘Hackney Women’s Football Club’.
27. Lloyd, Judith Butler.
28. Ibid.
342 J. Caudwell
29. Ibid.
30. See, for example, Caudwell, ‘Sporting Gender’.
31. McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism, 2.
32. Birrell, Feminist Theories for Sport.
33. See, for example, Heywood and Dworkin, Built to Win; Thorpe, ‘Feminism for a New
Generation’.
34. See, for example, Hemmings, ‘Telling Feminist Stories’; McRobbie, The Aftermath of
Feminism.
35. Genz, ‘Third Way/ve’.
36. See, for example, the official Football Association (FA) website: TheFA.com under the
topic ‘Equity’.
37. Hills, ‘Friendship, Physicality and Physical Education’; Renold, ‘“They Won’t Let Us
Play”’; Skelton, ‘“A Passion for Football”.
38. Clark and Paechter, ‘Why Can’t Girls Play Football?’; Swain, Jon. ‘“The Money’s Good”.
39. Tuckman, ‘It’s Still a Man’s Game’.
40. Jones, ‘Female Fandom’.
41. Young, On Female Body Experience, 78.
42. Schultz, ‘Discipline and Push-Up’.
43. See, for example, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer.
44. Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture’, 162.
45. Genz, Postfemininities in Popular Culture.
46. Ibid.
47. Harris, ‘The Image Problem in Women’s Football’.
48. Caudwell, ‘Women’s Football in United Kingdom’.
49. This company went into administration and no longer exists in its original form. Their
website no longer appears on the World Wide Web.
50. Quoted text no longer available online, as explained in previous note.
51. Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture’, 162.
52. Ibid.
53. www.womensoccer.com
54. http://en.calcioalpallone.com
55. www.theoffside.com
56. www.womenssoccerscene.co.uk
57. Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture’, 158.
58. Radner, ‘Compulsory Sexuality’.
59. Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture’.
60. McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism; Renold and Ringrose, ‘Regulation and Rupture’.
61. Butler, Bodies That Matter.
62. See, for example, Clarke and Paechter, ‘Why Can’t Girls Play Football?’; Hills, ‘Friendship,
Physicality and Physical Education’; Renold, ‘“The Won’t Let Us Play”’; Skelton, ‘A
Passion for Football’; Swain, ‘“The Money’s Good”’.
63. See, for example, Genz, Postfemininities in Popular Culture; Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media
Culture’; McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminsim; Radner, ‘Compulsory Sexulaity’; Renold
and Ringrose, ‘Regulation and Rupture’; Woodward and Woodward, Why Feminsim
Matters.
64. McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism, 9.
65. Ibid., 10.
66. Cited in Woodward and Woodward, Why Feminism Matters, 150.
67. McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism, 1.
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