“13 Goals are Cool, Equal Pay is Cooler!”: Fan Activism and Leisure Identities at the 2019 Women’s World Cup

Allison, Rachel

doi:10.1007/s41978-023-00138-w

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Rapinoe, long an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, had generated public controversy in 2016 by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem to protest racist police brutality. Further, a comment about not visiting the Trump White House released partway through the 2019 tournament, as well as the then-President's taunting response on Twitter, put an enormous spotlight on Rapinoe (Allison 2023a). Further, and likely considering the U.S. Women's National Team's highly visible public campaign for equal pay to men (Culvin et al 2022), U.S. fans uniquely tied players' status as role models to their work towards greater resources for women's sport.…”

Section: Role Modelling For Social Changementioning

confidence: 99%

‘They are doing it because they love it’: U.S. and English fan perceptions of women footballers as ‘role models’

Allison,

Culvin,

Pope

2024

Sport in Society

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We draw from 102 interviews with American and English adults who attended the 2019 Women's World Cup to examine how fans perceive women footballers as 'role models,' with attention to the operations of gender ideology. Despite the recent professionalization and commercialization of women's football, there is a dearth of research on fan perspectives of players as role models. Our findings show that most fans perceive role modelling as women's accessibility and authenticity in interaction. Fans naturalize women's often uncompensated labor as role models through a supposed love for their sport and desire to see its future growth, endorsing a gender essentialist view of women as notably caring and giving in comparison to men. However, a minority of fans embrace a more critical view by identifying role modelling as an expectation placed disproportionately on women within an already unequal resource environment. We conclude that role modelling is a gendered expectation for elite women footballers and that fans can be a source of pressure towards its enactment.

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Section: Role Modelling For Social Changementioning

confidence: 99%