Description
Book SynopsisThe first women’s football book on Latin America centring the perspectives of players brings rare interview material that cuts through the clichés to uncover the lived reality of women footballers. It includes the first large-scale survey of South American women footballers’ views into dialogue with institutional and media perspectives.
The early chapters consider the backdrop Latin American women footballers operate in, a media and institutional panorama that privileges a heteronormative athletic femininity whilst ensuring women’s football is never portrayed as anything other than an inferior version of the hegemonic (men’s) game.
Following this, drawing on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in which 33 semi-structured interviews were carried out with players and institutional figures, this pioneering book foregrounds the lived reality of women’s football in three strategic locations. Firstly, three months were spent in the Amazon region of Brazil where Esporte Clube Iranduba provides a fascinating alternative model for the growth of women’s football. This is contrasted with Santos FC, where women’s football tends to be constantly overshadowed by the presence of banal patriarchy, and finally with another fleeting glimpse of how another model is possible at Atlético Huila of Colombia, the surprise winner of the women’s Copa Libertadores in 2018.
Table of ContentsList of Tables and Illustrations
Glossary of Terms
Acknowledgements
Foreword from Silvana Goellner
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Mis-representing the agenda: The Case of Yoreli Rincón at the Women’s Copa Libertadores 2018
Chapter 2 – Football Institutions
Chapter 3 – Atlético Huila: The Champions of South America
Chapter 4 –Mermaids in the Land of the King
Chapter 5 –The Team from the Heart of the Amazon
Chapter 6 – Surveying the Field from the Players’ Perspective
Overall Conclusions & Policy Recommendations
Recommendations for Further Research
References
Semi Structured Interview List
