Negotiating Gender in Professional Soccer: An Analysis of Female Footballers in the United States

Abstract

Youth soccer is thriving in the United States but the country's professional soccer leagues over the past couple decades have had mixed results in terms of commercial viability with some leagues surviving (e.g., MLS) and others ceasing (e.g., WUSA). While scholars and practitioners may offer explanations regarding the reasons for the specific challenges facing women's professional soccer leagues, the present study looked at this subject by examining one group of stakeholders -female elite athletes -and the players' perceptions of gender in the USA professional soccer program. The findings of this qualitative analysis were concentrated into three interconnected themes. The first theme involved the participants' perceptions of role models and their socialization as soccer players. Media images and the invisibility of the female athlete formed the second theme. The third theme was the sexualization of elite female bodies and transgressions of compulsory heterosexuality boundaries. The analysis of the interviews revealed an interesting paradox of elite female athletes using gender to understand sports. The interviewed athletes used stereotypical notions of masculinity to increase their legitimacy as elite athletes, while at the same time devaluing the abilities of female coaches by using stereotypical notions of femininity. In addition to discussing the empirical results and interconnected themes, the implications of the findings are also detailed.

Elite women coaches negotiating and resisting power in football

“…These findings echo those of Harris (2005) and Kristiansen et al. (2014) who also found that professional women football players preferred to be coached by men. In the above example, we note the FA had also subverted the dominant discourse about male superiority in football by hiring a woman while the athletes drew on it.…”

Fotball som kjønnet mulighetsrom

“…Forfatterne konkluderte med at vi ser en «new age of media coverage of women's sport in the UK, with a shift towards greater gender equality» (Petty og Pope 2018:486). At utviklingen er positiv, betyr imidlertid ikke at kvinnelige spillere og lag får like mye oppmerksomhet eller har tilgang til de samme ressursene som mannlige (Pielichaty 2019).…”

The Palgrave Handbook of Feminism and Sport, Leisure and Physical Education

“…For many participants, it was clear that a particular challenge was to recognize and challenge gender stereotyping that had become normalized in their own lives (Kristiansen, Broch, & Pedersen, 2014), whether this was an assumption that men were needed in the social network because of their inherent power, or because women who step outside normal gendered patterns of behaviour are themselves problematized (Sartore & Cunningham, 2010;White & Brackenridge, 1985). One participant described her experience of being in a female-only environment as 'It was something new and different, but you can realize that there's all kinds of woman, some of them look like men'.…”