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

足球在拉丁美洲和拉丁美洲的经验中发挥着关键作用，无论是作为日常实践，作为构建社区的手段，还是作为参与地方倡议或国家叙事的模式。近年来，这些问题得到了越来越多的学术关注，而巴西最近举行的涉及足球的大型体育赛事（2013年联合会杯、2014年男子世界杯和2016年奥运会）确保了大众媒体对该地区前所未有的报道。然而，绝大多数人的注意力都集中在男子足球上，以及足球作为男性的领域。本项目将探讨妇女和女孩作为球员和观众参与足球运动的（障碍），以及通过性别书面和视觉文本介导这种参与的方式。因此，它将提供对足球（以及更广泛的体育运动）对拉丁美洲所有公民的作用的新理解，特别是在涉及不平等、包容和机构的发展问题方面。该网络研究的核心是分析妇女和女孩通过足球的经历，利用人类学和人种学（由莫雷拉领导）和体育史（由戈尔纳领导）的专业知识。与此同时，对他们参与的文本和视觉表现的研究，以及向国内和国际观众展示这些内容的框架，将利用文化史和文本分析方面的专业知识（由Goellner和Wood领导）。除了这些学术观点之外，以足球为基础的社会发展项目和足球博物馆的领导者将成为该网络研究活动的不可或缺的参与者。通过结合跨学科和多向的方法，这项研究将形成新的认识，推动性别平等和增强妇女和女童权能（可持续发展目标5）、减少不平等（可持续发展目标10）以及良好健康和福祉（可持续发展目标3）等问题。这将通过将各个部门的行为者聚集在一起的国际伙伴关系来实现（可持续发展目标17）。自联合国宣布2005年为国际体育运动年以来，足球与国际发展之间的关系蓬勃发展，同年，英国政府文化、媒体和体育部长发表声明，肯定“体育可以用来解决困扰发展中国家的许多问题”。2008年，威尔弗里德·莱姆克被任命为联合国秘书长体育促进发展与和平问题特别顾问，这进一步推动了这一领域的发展势头。2015年9月，第70届联合国大会确认了体育在国际发展中的重要作用，确定了通过2015年后发展议程的成果，并确定了体育作为实现可持续发展目标手段的地位。这个项目将是第一个研究这种趋同在拉丁美洲的表现方式，并对其他区域产生更广泛影响的项目。这项研究的结果将对妇女和女孩有好处，因为它突出了妇女和女孩平等参与足球的障碍，足球是个人福祉的重要场所，也是围绕文化公民身份的国家叙事的包容（或排斥）。研究结果将产生产出，包括对地方和国家体育组织的建议，以改善妇女和女孩在足球领域的机会平等和代表性，以及更广泛地参与足球网络的国家。虽然这些将最直接地适用于研究将以其为基础的国家，但它们在拉丁美洲和其他地区具有更广泛适用的巨大潜力。

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.