A Level Playing Field? The Practice and Representation of Women's and Girls' Football in South America

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Football plays a key role in the experience of Latin America and of Latin Americans, be this as a daily practice, as a means of constructing communities or as a mode of engagement with local initiatives or national narratives. Such issues have received increased amounts of academic attention in recent years, while recent sporting mega-events in Brazil that involved football (2013 Confederations Cup, 2014 men's World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games) ensured unprecedented levels of coverage for the region in the mass media. Overwhelmingly, however, the focus has been on men's football and on football as a male domain. This project will explore (obstacles to) women's and girls' participation in football, as players and spectators, as well as the ways in which that participation is mediated via gendered written and visual texts. As a result, it will provide new understandings of the role that football (and sport more widely) plays for all citizens of Latin America, especially in relation to development issues around inequality, inclusion and agency. At the heart of the network's research is analysis of the experience of women and girls through football, drawing on expertise in anthropology and ethnography (led by Moreira) and the history of sport (led by Goellner). At the same time, a study of textual and visual representations of their participation, as well as the frameworks within which these are represented to national and international audiences, will draw on expertise in cultural history and textual analysis (led by Goellner and Wood). In addition to these academic perspectives, leaders of football-based social development projects and football museums will be integral participants in the network's research activities. By combining interdisciplinary and multi-directional approaches, this research will develop new understandings that drive at questions of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls (Sustainable Development Goal 5), the reduction of inequality (SDG 10), as well as good health and well-being (SDG 3). This will be achieved through an international partnership that brings together actors from a range of sectors (SDG 17). The relationship between football and international development has blossomed since the United Nations declared 2005 to be the International Year of Sport and Physical Education, the same year seeing a statement from the UK government's Minister for Culture, Media and Sport that affirmed that 'sport can be used to tackle many of the problems afflicting the developing world'. The appointment in 2008 of Wilfried Lemke as Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General on Sport for Development and Peace generated further momentum in this field, and the important role of sport in international development was confirmed at the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly (September 2015), which set forth the outcomes for adoption of the post-2015 development agenda and identified the position of sport as a means to achieving the sustainable development goals. This project will be the first to undertake research into the ways in which this convergence manifests itself in Latin America, with broader implications for other regions. The outcomes of this research will have benefits for women and girls in terms of highlighting obstacles to their equal engagement with football as an important site for personal well-being and for inclusion in (or exclusion from) national narratives around cultural citizenship. Findings of the research will result in outputs to include recommendations for local and national sports organisations with a view to improving equality of opportunity and of representation for women and girls, in football as more broadly across the nations involved in the network. While these will be most immediately applicable to the countries in which the research will be based, they have considerable potential to be more widely applicable in Latin America and beyond.