The 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.
Mark Biram is a Research Associate at Bristol University.
List of Tables and IllustrationsGlossary of TermsAcknowledgementsForeword from Silvana GoellnerIntroductionChapter 1 - Mis-representing the agenda: The Case of Yoreli Rincón at the Women’s Copa Libertadores 2018Chapter 2 – Football InstitutionsChapter 3 – Atlético Huila: The Champions of South AmericaChapter 4 –Mermaids in the Land of the KingChapter 5 –The Team from the Heart of the AmazonChapter 6 – Surveying the Field from the Players’ PerspectiveOverall Conclusions & Policy RecommendationsRecommendations for Further ResearchReferencesSemi Structured Interview List
‘the book is an innovative and necessary text, because when we write about football played by women, it is often said that we exaggerate the arguments about misogyny and patriarchy, this text has concrete examples with analyses justified by recognized theories, which will allow us to strengthen the studies and reflections on women's football, as well as broaden the debates on different possibilities in the future.'Gabriela Ardila Biela
