Accepted for publication in Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal published by
Emerald.
Women’s football studies: an integrative review
Maurizio Valenti, Stephen Morrow, and Nicolas Scelles, University of Stirling
Abstract
Purpose of this paper: Women’s football has received increasing attention in the academic literature,
partly due to its growing popularity worldwide. However, women’s football research remains scattered
across numerous academic domains. Focusing on the social sciences, humanities and management
disciplines, this integrative literature review aims to map and organise contributions, and to identify
research directions for future studies within these disciplines.
Design/methodology/approach: Using the keywords “women”, “girls”, “female” and “football” or
“soccer” to initially identify articles, an integrative approach was followed to evaluate and analyse
relevant literature. 117 academic journals were classified and subsequently divided into 26 themes
according to the subject area, topic and level examined.
Findings: Results of this integrative review show an increasing trend of journal publications since 1998,
with a large representation of studies related to historical and sociological research, where qualitative
methods are dominant. Articles investigating economic, managerial and marketing areas appeared in
more recent times. Women’s football has been researched from different perspectives (players, fans,
sport organisations) and across various countries.
Research limitations/implications: The restricted scope of this review (i.e. its focus on social sciences)
and the manual classification of articles represent two limitations of this study. However, the synthesis
of academic literature provided may assist scholars who are interested in women’s football and women’s
sports research to fill identified research gaps and contribute to further advance academic investigations
in this area.
What is originality/value of paper: This paper provides an overview of salient research avenues and
represents the first attempt to critically appraise the direction of academic contributions in women’s
football for the purpose of advancing scholarly inquiry in this sport.
Keywords: Women’s football; women’s soccer; sport management; integrative review
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Introduction
Concomitant with the substantial rise in participation and the increased recognition from
international governing bodies (FIFA, 2014, 2016; UEFA, 2016, 2017), women’s football has
received significant attention from sport academics around the world (Pfister, 2015a). The
number of scientific publications has been constantly increasing in the last two decades as
researchers have given attention to the development of women’s football and its stakeholders.
In particular, scholarly inquiry on the women’s game has bridged different academic domains
(e.g. sport sciences, social sciences, humanities and management) and created interactions
between various actors (e.g. players, coaches, fans, the media, policy-makers, football
governing bodies) thus contributing to a broader understanding of the directions that this sport
has taken over time.
Despite this recent increase in the number of academic publications, only one article (MartinezLagunas,
Niessen and Hartmann, 2014) has reviewed women’s football literature to date.
However, this paper focussed exclusively on studies within sport sciences (e.g. physiological
demands and player physical characteristics) while neglecting publications coming from other
disciplines. Yet we argue that there is a demonstrable need to extend the review beyond the
sport sciences domain as publications in social sciences, humanities and management fields are
critical to explain the intricate dynamics surrounding the experiences of women in the game
and to describe the multifaceted and arguably challenging context in which women’s football
operates.
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Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to rigorously review and systematically synthesise
research approaches, findings, frameworks and implications of women’s football literature in
order to:
a) organise women’s football literature by categorising published articles;
b) portray a comprehensive panorama of academic research on women’s football to date,
by highlighting year of publication, publishing outlet, authorship, geographical context
and methodological approach; and
c) summarise key findings and suggest research directions for future studies within
women’s football literature.
Method
Women’s football literature addresses numerous topics and research questions drawing on
various academic disciplines, and using different methodologies. Therefore, the approach
adopted for this review is based on an integrative methodology which thus permits the
combination of different types of research designs, as well as the extraction and synthesis of
both qualitative and quantitative data (Whittemore and Knafl, 2005). While integrative reviews
are considered inherently complex (Tavares de Souza, Dias da Silva and de Carvalho, 2010)
and difficult to implement without a stringent research framework (O’Mathúna, 2000), at the
same time they allow for the evaluation of a broad and comprehensive panorama of literature
from different disciplines and help shape guidelines for future research (Schulenkorf, Sherry
and Rowe, 2016; Torraco, 2005; Whittemore and Knafl, 2005). As suggested by Cooper (1989)
and in line with Whittermore and Knafl (2005), a five-step approach was followed in this
research: 1) problem identification (already presented in the introduction section), 2) literature
search, 3) data evaluation, 4) data analysis, and 5) presentation of findings.
Literature search
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Existing articles represent the data of an integrative review (Torraco, 2005). These were
identified following the recommendations outlined by Cooper (1989) who suggested utilising
informal, primary and secondary information channels. As search terms, women OR girls OR
female, AND football OR soccer were utilised to clearly delineate the starting point of this
literature review. No boundaries were defined for publication dates while only full-text English
articles were included in the review.
Primary channels of information were accessed through online databases SPORTDiscus and
Scopus. The former is a reliable source for sport-specific published articles and was used in
previous literature reviews (e.g. Schulenkorf et al., 2016); the latter was chosen due to its broad
coverage of social science literature which ensures the capture of relevant material that goes
beyond the sport domain such as gender constructions and sexual identities. In addition to the
two electronic databases, an “ancestry approach” (Cooper, 1989, p. 43) was employed in an
attempt to uncover supplementary sources that meet the inclusion criteria. Secondary
information channels such as Google Scholar, Researchgate and Academia were consulted and
additional literature was obtained through manual searches of relevant academic journals. Other
informal information channels such as conference discussions, grey literature, digital
dissertations, conference papers and working papers were also identified.
Data evaluation
The first part of the evaluation process was accomplished by carefully reading information
contained in the article title, abstract and by acknowledging the publication outlet. Published
and unpublished studies written in English were included in the review while references were
excluded when they fitted in the following categories: book publications, opinion pieces,
editorials and newspaper articles. It is important to underline at this stage that papers dealing
with women’s football from social sciences and management perspectives (e.g. economics,
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history, management, marketing, sociology) were considered for this review, while articles
examining women’s football with a sport science approach (e.g. physiology, sport medicine,
sport psychology) were omitted (see Martinez-Lagunas, Niessen and Hartmann, 2014 for a
review of sport sciences literature). It is acknowledged that this represents one of the limitations
of this literature review. However, as noted by Torraco (2005) and consistent with Schulenkorf
et al. (2016, p. 24), “an integrative review does not presuppose to be exhaustive on any given
topic or topics, but rather exhaustive within its predetermined and declared boundaries”. The
process of literature screening was performed in triangulation (Rothbauer, 2008) between the
three authors who eventually agreed to include 117 out of the 138 articles initially examined.
Data analysis
The process of data analysis was conducted through the review of the full text of each article.
These were ordered by: a) year of publication; b) publishing outlet; c) authors’ names; d)
geographical location where the study was conducted and e) methodological approach and
process adopted to analyse data. The data analysis process for the 117 articles continued
following Miles and Huberman’s (1994) recommendations which suggest dividing data into
intellectual bins that ultimately reflect common themes between articles. This categorisation
process was conducted by the first author and then discussed with the other authors. It involved
identifying the overarching subject area, the specific topics and the principal actors or levels,
by examining the articles’ publishing outlet, title, keywords and reading the full text with a
particular focus on the abstract and main conclusions. When it came to build the final catalogue
comprising the relevant literature, information was sorted on a logical sequence of macro- to
micro-level around the identified subject areas, topics, actors or levels. An illustration of how
this process was performed is presented in Table 1.
[Table 1 here]
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At this stage, it is important to clarify that while every attempt was made to reach an appropriate
categorisation, we acknowledge that the manual classification process remains imperfect and
therefore represents a limitation of this study. This is because some topics are easily associable
to a particular academic domain, while inevitably others present multi-disciplinary
characteristics. For example, research about branding was straightforwardly attributed to a
subject area, i.e. marketing, while success, i.e. the study of the socio-economic determinants
that lead to international sporting success, has been assigned to economics, although some
studies (e.g. Jacobs, 2014) in this category could have also fitted the category of sport
management and policy. Thus, we appreciate that research in some areas may overlap.
However, we argue that article classification remains part of a fundamental process that helps
achieve the first two aims of this integrative literature review.
Once the data analysis was completed, in line with Whittemore and Knalf’s (2005) integrative
review process, the fifth and final step (i.e. presentation of findings) is described and discussed
in the next sections.
Results
To help reach the first of the proposed objectives for this integrative review, we identified five
subject areas, twelve topics and nine actors or levels, which, combined, resulted in 26 unique
themes (presented in Table 2). In the next sections, a description of the characteristics that
appeared to be relevant to comprehensively paint the current state of the women’s football
literature will be presented in order to achieve the second aim of this study.
[Table 2 here]
Researched themes and their evolution over time
Table 3 provides an illustration of articles’ distribution over time.
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[Table 3here]
Early studies on women’s football (from 1998 to 2003) focussed exclusively on historical and
sociological topics. The historical evolution of the game and players’ gender issues are the first
two themes to be explored and the first by number of publications (history-evolution-country =
22.2% of the full sample; sociology-gender-players = 16.2%). In 2000, Fasting and Pfister
looked at gender issues as experienced by coaches while two years later Christopherson,
Janning and McConnel (2002) considered how gender is framed and represented by the media
in women’s football. In 2003, Knoppers and Anthonissen studied two countries’ levels of
gender inequality and cultural barriers to understand how these affect participation in the sport.
Over the next six years, from 2004 to 2009, five new themes started to trigger researchers’
interest: the determinants of sporting success in international women’s football (e.g. Klein,
2004), the study of female football fandom from a sociological perspective (Kim, 2004) and
with an historical approach (Lewis, 2009), the marketing strategic challenges that women’s
leagues face to sustain their business (Southall, Nagel and LeGrande, 2005) and consumers’
attitudes towards attending domestic women’s football matches (Klein, 2009).
Articles in the final eight years (2010-2017) almost doubled (n = 76) when compared to the
output produced between 1998 and 2009 (n = 41). During this last time period, sociological
studies remained central with the inclusion of new topics such as migration (e.g. Botelho and
Agergaard, 2011) and role models (e.g. Dunn, 2016); and consideration of new actors such as
administrators (e.g. Welford, 2011), referees (e.g. Perreau-Niel and Erard, 2015) and female
fans (e.g. Pope, 2012). At the same time, experts in sport management started to examine the
positions of clubs (Aoki et al., 2010) and the impact of national governing bodies’ policies and
actions on women’s football development (e.g. Kjær and Agergaard, 2013) in order to identify
challenges that practitioners were facing in the women’s game; studies from sport marketing
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disciplines analysed branding (e.g. Melkersson, 2013) in women’s football; while other articles
explored aspects related to the attractiveness and competitiveness of women’s football (e.g.
Hjelm, 2011) as well as the determinants to attend or watch women’s football games (e.g.
Meier, Konjer and Leinwather, 2016).
Overall, research on women’s football can be regarded as a recent area of interest with the first
two articles being published as recently as 1998. Discernible peaks in academic publications
are noticed in 2003, 2011 and 2013 when the academic journal Soccer & Society released
special issues about the women’s game. Notwithstanding the recent drop in 2017, it becomes
clear that the attention given to women’s football across different academic domains has seen
an increase in the last eight years (even when articles in the special issues are excluded).
In sum, women’s football literature has seen contributions coming from five areas: economics,
history, management, marketing and sociology. Studies related to sociological (48.7%) and
historical (24.8%) aspects have been published more consistently over time while evidence
from marketing (11.1%), economic (11.1%) and management (4.3%) areas emerged more
recently. It is also interesting to underline that researchers examined the position of some actors
(e.g. players, 22.2%) and levels (e.g. country-level, 29.9%) more frequently while other
stakeholders (e.g. fans, clubs, federations) started to trigger scholars’ curiosity only in recent
times.
Table 4 outlines the themes (8 out of 26) with more than three publications, representing 75.2%
of the 117 articles selected for this integrative review. This closer inspection of existing articles
helps gain a comprehensive understanding of the current state of women’s football literature
and starts to expose a number of research gaps across different academic domains.
[Table 4 here]
Journals
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Table 5 presents an overview of the first five outlets by number of published articles. The
academic journal Soccer & Society is largely ahead of the other outlets1
, having published
41.9% of research articles reviewed here.
[Table 5 here]
Authorship
There are researchers that contributed to the expansion of women’s football literature across
different disciplines with five or more articles (as authors or co-authors). Focussing on these
authors, it is noticeable that Gertrud Pfister mainly discussed the position of women in society
and how they contributed to develop European (German and Danish, in particular) women’s
football. Also, she helped shape the discussion around gender issues and female fan groups’
creation. Overall, her publications account for 9.5% of research articles included in this review.
Kari Fasting (5.5%) dedicated her studies to the exploration of historical and sociological
elements with particular attention given to the experiences of coaches while Stacey Pope (5.2%)
concentrated her works on the examination of female fans’ experiences of attending men’s and
women’s football events.
Geographical location of research
Findings of this integrative review highlight that women’s football has been researched
worldwide. Specific countries have been studied several times, including European nations (e.g.
Denmark, n = 4; England, n = 16; Germany, n = 8; Ireland, n = 2; Norway, n = 7; Scotland, n
= 3; Sweden, n = 3), South Korea (n = 3), South Africa (n = 2) and the United States (US) (n =
12). Also, aspects of women’s football have been studied once in other 13 countries (e.g.
Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, India, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Spain and Switzerland). Researchers employed a cross-national approach for precise
1
This is to be expected, given to its specific focus on football (soccer).
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macro areas (e.g. Africa = 1; Europe, n = 6; Scandinavia, n = 3; United Kingdom2
, n = 11), with
a comparative purpose between two or more nations (e.g. Fasting and Pfister, 2000; Knoppers
and Anthonissen, 2003) or with a global focus (e.g. Klein, 2004; Torgler, 2008).
In total, there are 11 countries or macro areas where three or more studies were conducted,
meaning that 76.7% of publications are concentrated in these territories. Table 6 shows the
distribution of the most researched themes in areas where at least three studies took place.
[Table 6 here]
Sociological investigations of players’ gender issues (n = 16) is the leading theme in these
countries, followed by historical evolution of the women’s game (n = 13) and women’s football
fandom (n = 13). Also, women’s football was examined from four of the five identified
disciplines in England, Europe, Germany and the US while some specific themes were
exclusively researched in certain geographical areas (e.g. economic-attractiveness-players was
investigated only in Sweden).
Research methodology
A large majority of studies was conducted using qualitative approaches (Figure 1). Most of the
studies dealing with the historical evolution of women’s football and articles published in the
area of sociology employed document analysis, interviews or mixed methods. All articles in the
economics domain used quantitative data and statistical tests such as regression analysis and
analysis of variance (ANOVA). Management research combined multiple methods (e.g.
combination of observation or questionnaires and interviews) while studies in marketing
collected data predominantly via questionnaires and surveys. Studies were labelled as
2
Despite being one political country, United Kingdom presents separate football identities. However, here it was
considered as a macro-area due to some studies either including different British nations or not explicitly stating
in which part of the United Kingdom the research was conducted.
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‘conceptual’ where no participants were specifically identified but rather a theoretical approach
was described.
[Figure 1 here]
Discussion and conclusions
The presentation of findings facilitated the fulfilment of the first two aims of this integrative
review as it provided a detailed account of women’s football literature to date. Building on this
newly gained information, the next sections will summarise key findings and suggest future
research directions in order to accomplish the third and last objective of this research.
Researched themes and their evolution over time: what’s next?
The presence of some more ‘mature’ themes (i.e. themes that have been researched more
frequently and consistently over time), the emergence of ‘recent’ research avenues and the
overall intensification in the number of publications on women’s football indicate that research
on this sport is blossoming. In particular, the last two decades have seen studies conducted
around 26 different themes. However, the number of themes with less than three publications
is 15, which suggests a need to strengthen and expand the understanding of particular areas,
topics and perspectives in women’s football research.
As observed in this integrative review, there is an abundance of studies that reported on the
stereotypes and continued prejudices present in football (see e.g. Caudwell, 1999, 2003, 2011;
Fielding-Loyd and Meân, 2008; Hjelseth and Hovden, 2014). Gender constraints remain a
major issue for women to emerge and gain credibility across all levels of the football world,
including: coaching (Fasting and Pfister, 2000; Fasting, Sand and Nordstrand, 2017; FieldingLloyd
and Meân, 2008; Lewis, Roberts and Andrews, 2015; Norman, 2014; Schlesinger and
Weigelt-Schlesinger, 2012; Skogvang and Fasting, 2013), media (Christopherson, Janning and
McConnell, 2002; Coche, 2016; Peeters and Elling, 2015; Peeters and van Sterkenburg, 2017;
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Pfister, 2015b; Skogvang, 2009), fandom (Ben-Porat, 2009; Dunn, 2017; Hjelseth and Hovden,
2014; Kim, 2004; Mintert and Pfister, 2015; Pfister, 2013; Pfister, Lennein, Mintert, 2013;
Pope, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016; Pope and Williams, 2011; Selmer and Sülzle, 2010) and
refereeing (Kim and Hong, 2016; Perreau-Niel and Erard, 2015), as well as positions of power
such as national federations’ organisational boards (Strittmatter and Skirstad, 2017; Welford,
2011). The steady number of publications on historical and sociological domains demonstrated
that researchers frequently shine a light on the socio-cultural, political, economic and legislative
context in which women’s football has evolved over time (see e.g. Bourke, 2003; Fasting, 2003;
Macbeth, 2002; Pfister et al., 1999). Specifically, the majority of these articles strongly
emphasised hegemonic gender relations as part of a dominant logic that still exists across
various areas of football. While being predominantly descriptive, these contributions help
underline how the history of women’s sports (and of women in sport) is deeply characterised
by the degree of gender (in)equality and the evolving role of women in society. In line with
this, we argue that it remains difficult to discern clearly between football historical accounts
and sociological investigations about gender without considering that the game itself represents
a platform for the social construction and presentation of hegemonic masculinities (Pfister,
2015a). Thus, we agree with Williams and Hess’ (2015) point that any research agenda
concerning the relationship between women and football will necessarily contribute to wider
understanding of associations between politics, gender and sport. With regards to future studies
in these areas, we call for new contributions that specifically look at the experiences of women
occupying non-playing roles (e.g. referees) and leadership positions (e.g. administrators, see
Burton, 2015 for a review) in (women’s) football as comparatively less attention has been paid
to the perspective of these actors to date.
Literature considering gender issues further strengthened the conceptualisation that football is
male-dominated and that women’s football still faces challenges that impede or prevent
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progress. However, there are some contributions that account for the increasing number of
female players and the improvements in women’s football competitions (e.g. Hjelm and
Olofsson, 2003; Hjelm, 2011), suggesting that as more women participate in football, matches
become gradually more contested, balanced and exciting to watch (Araujo and Mießen, 2017;
Pollard and Gómez, 2014). Importantly, attractiveness and competitiveness of the game are two
characteristics that can drive demand for women’s football (e.g. LeFeuvre, Stephenson and
Walcott, 2013; Klein, 2009; Hallmann, 2012; Hallmann et al., 2016; Meier and Leinwather,
2012, Schallhorn, Knoll and Schramm, 2017), help stimulate interest from fans (see Andreff
and Scelles, 2015; Scelles et al., 2013 for a review) and potentially lead to higher levels of
media coverage and appeal to sponsors (Pfister, 2010). However, while these represent some
of the principal issues that women’s football stakeholders struggle to overcome, to date few
publications in sport economics have empirically investigated the causality between factors that
determined such developments in the women’s game. Future studies in this area should
critically evaluate the rather simplistic assumption that the low level of demand observed in
women’s football is due to the ‘poor quality’ of female players’ technical performances. These
debates should be reversed by referring to cases, such as Sweden and the US, where women’s
teams and female players have become popular and accepted (Hjelm, 2011; Hjelm and
Olofsson, 2003). In addition, these examples should be utilised as baseline information to
systematically answer questions about the improved levels of competitiveness in women’s
sports. As noted by Frick (2011), changes in women’s sports competitiveness are not due to
females’ biological and psychological predispositions but to increasing prize money and
improved socio-cultural conditions. Related to these aspects, articles (e.g. Brendtmann, Carsten
and Otten, 2016; Jacobs, 2014) that tested for the importance of socio-economic factors in
determining a country’s international sporting success in women’s football consistently found
that gender equality is associated with better sporting performances. This would suggest that
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these countries are also more likely to invest in women’s sports. However, available studies in
women’s football do not provide clear evidence to support this assumption.
Also, some articles (e.g. Bell and Blakey, 2010; Hellborg, 2013; Southall, Nagel and LeGrande,
2005) discussed where and how women’s football is positioned and understood in the complex
institutional environment of contemporary sports. In doing so, they have given attention to some
of the issues that women’s football stakeholders should recognise when it comes to selling
women’s football, a product that is influenced by a dual logic of ‘business’ and ‘cause’
(Allison, 2016). These publications described aspects of the game - including its contradictions
- and proposed a number of critical questions on reasons that led to the failure of the first two
attempts by women’s football to break into the American professional sports market,
specifically: Should these failures be interpreted as a backlash for equality? Is women’s football
not big enough to generate profitable business? What does the sport market stand for?
Understanding the positioning of women’s football requires careful evaluations of how the
sport may come to the fore across different sport cultures. In European countries, the percentage
of girls that play football at a grassroots levels has certainly increased in the last three decades
(UEFA, 2017). However, only in a few countries such as France, Sweden, Germany and
England have leagues and matches started to gain considerable media attention and audiences.
Thus, it is critical to consider that women’s football is in a period of transition which inevitably
presents divergent interests and contrasting forces. For instance, on the one hand, some national
federations are trying to overhaul their leagues and turn them into full-time professional leagues
(e.g. FA Women’s Super League) in an attempt to cope with external pressures coming from
social and political institutions. On the other hand, women’s football clubs’ owners and
executives need to face challenges such as lack of financial profitability (European Club
Association (ECA), 2014) and organisational difficulties (e.g. Aoki et al., 2010; Welford,
2013).
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Along with these, women’s football researchers will need to engage in a number of critical
issues that have emerged in women’s football over the last 15 years. These include: the need
for higher investment into the game (including shares of prize money at national and
international tournaments), the necessity to modernise governance structures and uncertainty
about players’ career development, their working conditions (including policies for parental
and childcare provisions) and their professional status (FIFPro, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c).
Based on this discussion, it is important that future research in women’s football adopt crossdisciplinary
approaches so as to:
 Increase the number of investigations regarding the positions of women in non-playing
roles. These might provide additional insights on the challenges that women need to
face in a men-dominated world;
 Focus research initiatives on cultures and countries that successfully challenged
imbalanced gendered practices in (women’s) football. These may offer explanations
and insights about participant involvement and ‘cultural appropriation’ of the game;
 Identify, model and test the context- and sport-related factors that drive women’s
football development in terms of game attractiveness and competitiveness. This will
enable researchers to develop theories on the evolution of the game from a sport
economics perspective (see Berri, 2004; Szymanski, 2008, 2010 for a discussion) and
help stakeholders evaluate key elements affecting the overall development of the game
(e.g. participation rate, media coverage, financial investment), prioritise their actions
and measure their outcomes in practice;
 Help understand the positioning of women’s football in the professional sports market
and evaluate the strategies undertaken by football leagues and clubs to sell the product
and at the same time develop long-term sustainability;
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 Organise a unified framework that takes into account the existing divergent institutional
logics and conflicting interests currently existing in the context of women’s football in
order to provide effective solutions to the abovementioned concerns; and
 Explore experiences of women (semi-)professional footballers with regards to their
employment work-life issues as well the impact that welfare policies can have on their
careers.
Geographical location of research: is there a need to explore different countries and
cultures?
Research on women’s football has been conducted around the globe considering more than 25
countries/areas. However, our results show that over three-quarters of women’s football
literature focussed on the same territories (e.g. Western Europe and the US). Importantly, those
nations studied have never been ranked lower than 31st
(out of 177) in the FIFA/Coca-Cola
World Women’s ranking, meaning that research has concentrated on areas where women’s
football is already recognised and is to some extent developed.
Given the ambitions of international football authorities to develop the game worldwide and
the important roles that cultural and socio-political context play in the development of women’s
football, we suggest that scholars consider broadening their research focus to include cultures
and countries where less research has been conducted to date. For example, African, Asian and
Latin American countries have been given comparatively less attention in the literature. In
addition, nations where predominant cultures present lower levels of democracy and gender
equality should be investigated more closely in order to enhance understanding of the societal
attitudes that potentially lead to lower levels of women participation in football. This will help
advance awareness about the impact that both culture and football policies have on women’s
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football development and enable researchers and practitioners to ascertain factors that should
be considered in designing initiatives to foster the growth of the game in different countries.
Research methodology: how should we investigate women’s football?
This integrative review shows that women’s football has been investigated primarily through
qualitative research. This is to be expected given the prominence of sociological and historical
studies which tend to adopt qualitative approaches such as interviews and document analysis.
However, it is also important to underline that, in contrast to men’s football where a plethora
of statistics and quantitative measures is often publicly available, women’s football research
still relies on a relatively limited amount of quantitative data. A similar concern was expressed
by Martinez-Lagunas, Niessen and Hartmann (2014) when reviewing contributions from sport
science domains, a field where quantitative methods are commonly used.
Nevertheless, the emergence of new themes in economic and management disciplines
contribute to the need to employ quantitative or mixed methods in women’s football research.
This is in line with the gradual process of expansion of women’s football and the position it
starts to occupy in the sports environment which might have led stakeholders to collect more
measurable data in order to monitor and benchmark women’s football. Therefore, based on this
review, we argue that women’s football literature will potentially shift its trend towards a more
balanced distribution of qualitative and quantitative research outputs in the future. This
interpretation is further reinforced by the release of official reports by FIFA in 2014 (e.g. The
FIFA Women’s Football Survey) and UEFA since 2011 (e.g. Women’s Football across
National Associations) which include quantitative information about technical and managerial
aspects of women’s football in national member associations.
An integrative review on women’s football: final remarks
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This integrative review reveals that research on women’s football has been increasing in the
last two decades. However, it is worth noting that scholars from various academic disciplines
have put considerable attention on this sport only in the last seven to ten years. Therefore, a
number of research avenues still need to be explored, which in turn, will help interested parties
understand how the sport can develop in the coming years.
We argue that historical and sociological research represents the foundations of women’s
football literature with social and cultural constraints such as gender discrimination and
prejudices being identified as two of the principal problems when considering the experiences
of women in football, both in playing and non-playing roles. This highlighting of broader
societal concerns emphasises the need to consider issues such as power, ethics or institutional
behaviour and governance when discussing – for instance – the allocation of resources to
women’s football by national governing bodies. Unquestionably, gender stereotypes still
remain an issue within the football world. However, attitudes are gradually changing as women
increasingly occupy more important positions in society and sport (Burton, 2015; Strittmatter
and Skirstad, 2017; Welford, 2011). Importantly, Gammelsæter and Senaux (2011) put forward
two critical questions related to this issue: 1) is the recent development of women’s football a
result of the general shift towards a more ‘gender neutral’ society? or, 2) is it an attempt by
national governing bodies to extend their influence beyond men’s football, presenting
themselves as promoters of sport-for-all?
Higher gender equality in society, coupled with higher levels of democratisation, have been
associated to greater levels of women’s participation in sport (e.g. Balish, 2017). However,
while international governing bodies have allocated larger amounts of resources to foster
development of the sport in recent years, women’s football still struggles to build a solid
platform in terms of participation, professionalization and interest from fans, media and
sponsors. Thus, additional questions arise: Do governing bodies provide equal opportunities to
[Type here]
19
access and participate in the sport to both boys and girls? In more practical terms, does this
increased allocation of resources to women’s football reflect gender parity? Or should it be
tailored differently to encourage higher levels of participation and enhance the overall
development of the sport? In line with this, we believe that future research should discuss the
interest in and support of women’s football in different countries as well as identify, highlight
and compare the situation of women’s football with the development of other women’s sports.
Furthermore, we suggest that future studies take into account the evolution of women’s football
from managerial and business perspectives. Along with other lines of inquiry, it will be critical
to pose a question as to whether women’s football should seek to follow the path taken by men’s
football, that is to say, a path that has led to commercialisation (with the related issues that this
can generate) (Kennedy and Kennedy, 2012; Morrow, 2017), or, instead, identify and follow a
different path and business model reflective of the specifics of women’s football.
[Type here]
20
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Table 1 – Explanation of how themes emerged
Category Description Example
Subject area The broad discipline in which the article can be
allocated. It reflects the question that scholars
tried to answer in their paper.
Economics
Sociology
Topics The problem within the subject area that authors
attempted to direct.
Economics  Success
Sociology  Gender
Actors/levels The physical or abstract main focus of the article
which is expected to either directly answer the
question or inform the author about their research
enquiry.
Economics  Success  Country
Sociology  Gender  Players
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Table 2 – Organisation, definition and examples of articles according to subject, topic and level
Subject Topic Level n Definition Reference
Economics Attractiveness Players 1 The evaluation of factors
(e.g. game quality) related
to the ability of women’s
football to attract
spectators, media coverage
and sponsors
Hjelm (2011)
Competitiveness Federation 1 The analysis of factors (e.g.
home advantage effect,
competitive balance)
related to competition
fairness in women’s
football
Pollard and GomezRuano
(2014)League 1
Consumption Fandom 3 The study of the economic
determinants associated
with the consumption of
women’s football games
LeFeuvre,
Stephenson and
Walcott (2013)
Success Country 7 The study of socioeconomic
determinants
associated with sporting
success in women’s
football
Torgler (2008)
Historical Evolution Country 26 The analysis of sociopolitical
and historical
events that have influenced
the development of
women’s football and its
stakeholders
Bourke (2003)
Fandom 2
Players 1
Management Organisation Club 2 The study of organisations’
actions and strategies
operating within women’s
football
Aoki et al. (2010)
Policy Federation 3 The evaluation of plans,
initiatives and
opportunities intended to
influence and improve
women’s football
Kjær and Agergaard
(2013)
Marketing Branding Club 1 The study of brand
management in women’s
football
Melkersson (2013)
League 1
Consumption Fandom 5 The identification of
drivers and demographics
associated with
consumption of women’s
football games
Hallmann (2012)
Strategy Federation 1 The analysis and
evaluation of the marketing
strategies used to promote
women’s football
Southall, Nagel and
LeGrande (2005)League 3
[Type here]
32
Sociology Gender Administrators 2 The study of gender
representations, gender
identity and discrimination,
as experienced by
stakeholders in women’s
football
Hjelseth and
Hovden (2014);
Pope (2012);
Schlesinger and
Weigelt-Schlesinger
(2012); Welford
(2011)
Coaches 7
Country 2
Fandom 14
Media 6
Players 19
Players /
Administrators3
1
Referees 2
Migration Players 4 The analysis of players’
mobility and migration in
women’s football
Tiesler (2016)
Role models Players 1 The study of inspirational
figures for participation in
women’s football
Dunn (2016)
Federation 1
3
It is challenging to extract the fundamental actor/level in Scraton, Caudwell and Holland (2005) as they clearly
state that interviews were conducted with seven players and seven administrators.
[Type here]
33
[Type here]
34
Table 3 – Publications’ distribution over time
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Total
Economics Attractiveness Players 1 1
Competitiveness Federation 1 1
League 1 1
Consumption Fandom 1 1 1 3
Success Country 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7
History Evolution Country 1 1 1 1 15 1 1 2 1 1 1 26
Fandom 1 1 2
Players 1 1
Management Organisation Club 1 1 2
Policy Federation 1 2 3
Marketing Branding Club 1 1
League 1 1
Consumption Fandom 1 1 1 1 1 5
Strategy Federation 1 1
League 1 1 1 3
Sociology Gender Administrators 1 1 2
Coaches 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7
Country 1 1 2
Fandom 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 14
Media 1 1 2 1 1 6
Players 2 1 2 1 1 6 1 1 2 1 1 19
Players /
Administrators
1 1
Referees 1 1 2
Migration Players 1 2 1 4
Role models Federation 1 1
Players 1 1
Total 1 3 1 1 2 17 2 4 3 0 3 4 4 12 7 15 8 9 12 9
[Type here]
35
[Type here]
36
Table 4 – Themes with more than three publications
Total
Economics Success Country 7
History Evolution Country 26
Marketing Consumption Fandom 5
Sociology Gender Coaches 7
Fandom 14
Media 6
Players 19
Migration Players 4
Total 88
Table 5 – The first five outlets by number of published articles
Publication outlet Frequency
Soccer & Society 49
International Review for the Sociology of Sport 6
Sport in Society 6
Journal of Sport and Social Issues 5
The International Journal of the History of Sport 5
[Type here]
37
Table 6 – Publications’ distribution over geographical contexts where three or more studies were conducted
Denmark England Europe Germany International Korea S. Norway Scandinavia Scotland Sweden UK US Total
Economics Attractiveness Players 1 1
Competitiveness Federation 1 1
Leagues 1 1
Consumption Fandom 2 1 3
Success Country 7 7
History Evolution Country 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 13
Fandom 1 1 2
Players 1 1
Management Organisation Club 1 1 2
Policy Federation 1 1
Marketing Branding Club 1 1
League 1 1
Consumption Fandom 2 1 3
Strategy Federation 1 1
League 3 3
Sociology Gender Administrators 1 1
Coaches 2 1 2 1 6
Country 1 1
Fandom 1 4 3 1 1 2 1 13
Media 1 1 1 2 5
Players 3 2 2 2 5 2 16
Players /
Administrators
1 1
Referees 1 1
Migration Players 3 3
Role models Federation 1 1
Players 1 1
Total 4 16 9 9 12 3 5 3 3 3 11 12
[Type here]
38
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39
Figure 1 – Research designs utilised to study women’s football
2%
3%
73%
20%
2%
Research designs
Conceptual Mixed Qualitative Quantitative Review