In November 1991, after seven unofficial FIFA World Cups, women’s football entered the football-business arena with the organization, in China, of the first Football Women’s World Cup, under the auspices of FIFA. The United States team triumphed in the final played against Norway in front of 63,000 spectators, later becoming the best international team, winning the 1999 and 2015 world titles, as well as four Olympic titles. Practiced in the Italian and Latin communities, the soccer1 has also developed in the United States as a female or mixed school sports activity. While American football, ice hockey or baseball are considered authentically national and inherently masculine sports, soccer became particularly popular with women in the late 1990s: half of the 8 million gamers of soccer Americans are women. An impressive success among women, which led to an average of 450 footballers per 10,000 inhabitants in North America in 2014, against just 71 in Europe.
In France, it was necessary to wait for a fourth place in the 2011 Women’s World Cup for the modality to timidly conquer the hearts of fans and athletes. After the deplorable sporting and media spectacle provided by the men’s team in 2010, during the World Cup in South Africa2, the public was delighted with the women’s team, so warm and talented. Some 2.3 million French viewers watched the semi-final between France and the United States, an unprecedented audience record for women’s football. «We had a real feeling of sympathy, people identified with this team», said Bruno Bini, coach of the women’s team during that World Cup. “It’s a kind of sociological phenomenon. In a society where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, where there isn’t much work, the French have seen 21 simple girls get their way. They saw 21 ordinary girls with an ordinary trainer, and they liked it.”
However, from 2005 onwards, with its insistence on trying to govern the players’ bodies, the FFF committed itself to a real policy of “feminizing” female footballers. French women had to pose nude as part of a campaign to promote women’s football in 2009; model and player wife Adriana Karembeu was recruited as an ambassador for women’s practice, ‘skirt days’ were organized at major clubs to teach players how to wear a tailor or make-up, and the FFF school program for girls was named ‘Le Football des Princesses’ (‘The Football of the Princesses’) in 2011, with an intense boost of pink.
Obsessed with the «femininity» of footballers, the Federation even tends towards lesbophobia. “All the girls who weren’t feminine enough were suspected of being gay and some were less selected for the French team”, says Annie Fortems. A discrimination against lesbian players that expresses all the anxiety of the Federation, which fears to see the figure of the footballer – as well as that of the player gay – come to disturb traditional social relations of sex and gender. «This injunction to femininity, declined in the singular as if there was only one way to be a woman, is permanent and crosses all sectors of life [das futebolistas]: having your hair tied back and long if possible, wearing make-up off the field, appearing on television or at events in dresses and high heels, etc.», says the sociologist of sport Béatrice Barbusse, indignant. «Athletes are primarily appreciated for their bodies seen, more than their bodies “for themselves”. In short, are they playing football for themselves or for men’s eyes? We are facing an institutional and political instrumentalization of the body of women and, therefore, of footballers.»
This systemic sexism and homophobia is driving feminist movements to enter the football field to better denounce male dominance in the sports industry. A first step was taken at European level during the Men’s Football World Cup in 2006 in Germany. The opening in Berlin of Artemis, a gigantic 3,000 square meter complex for sex workers, just months before the competition opened, drew the ire of some feminist groups. In January 2006, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women loudly denounced this sex hypermarket adjacent to the sports event in a media campaign dubbed “Buying sex is not a sport!”. For its part, the German association for the defense of the rights of sex workers decides to alert public opinion about the human exploitation of 40,000 young women from Eastern Europe. «When we see that the next Men’s Football World Cup is associated with prostitution, we feel doubly affected, as women and as former players and pioneers», protests Annie Fortems, in her capacity as president of the association Les Pionnières du Feminin Football. «35 years ago, it was the same people, with their absolute sexism, that we had to endure and fight before we could impose ourselves. Even today, women’s dignity is shamelessly sacrificed on the altar of the football God and the King of Money. This is the sad proof, if any were still missing, that sexism and contempt for women are hard to put down in the football world.”
In France, some feminist activists are gradually taking over the pitch, tired of the sexist or homophobic projections of players, sports commentators and French officials. The former 1998 world champion, Didier Deschamps, then coach of Juventus in Turin, said, in 2007, regarding the pink color of the team’s jersey: “I don’t like this color, because in France it is the color of gays.» As for Bernard Lacombe, manager of Olympique Lyonnais (whose women’s section is one of the best in Europe), in March 2013 he belched the following: «I don’t talk about football with women. […] Let them take care of their pots and pans and everything will go much better.”3
Created in 2012 in Paris, the Dégommeuses football team is a politically committed formation on the pitch in the fight against sexism, LGBT phobias and all forms of discrimination. «We try to fight through sport and within it, which means, in concrete terms, providing a serene space so that lesbians and trans boys, above all, can be peacefully on a football field», explains Marine Romezin, a Dégommeuse. And she adds: “The fact is this: if you don’t take your place, nobody will give it to you. Football is the metaphor for all of this, we invest the space on the field.» The team also pays very particular attention to access to sport for refugees and the most precarious, regularly calling on the governing bodies to combat homophobia and sexism in football. In addition to their sporting and political activities, the football activists invited, in June 2012, a delegation from the Thokozani Football Club4, a South African women’s team that brings together lesbian and transgender players from townships from Durban, to participate in a week of action against sexist and lesbophobic violence. Four years later, on the sidelines of the men’s Euro 2016, the Dégommeuses also organized the meetings named Foot for Freedom, which included a mixed football tournament, with refugees persecuted in their countries because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Many women’s teams no longer hesitate to «take their place», gathering in amateur competitions such as the Coupe Bernard Tapine, a Parisian futsal tournament5, which, since 2015, brings together teams such as Cacahuètes Sluts, Olympique de Marcelle or the Play Bonitas. «[Jogar futebol] it is a political issue because the bodies of women, and lesbians in particular, have at all times been the object of such social control and, in some way, such disapproval, that seeing these girls now reappropriate their bodies is a real pleasure”, adds Dégommeuse Veronica Noseda, before concluding: “There is still an enormous power exercised over us.”
From the first emancipatory furrows dug by the valiant pioneers of the 1970s to the militancy of the Dégommeuses, women’s football managed to crack the fortress of virility and heteronormativity embodied by the FFF, and outline an imaginary around football that is far from the model of femininity promoted by sports institutions. It is a long journey that is still full of pitfalls. “Thirty years later, the city of Reims has finally put up a plaque in the Stade Auguste-Delaune with our five French champions titles”, sighs former Reims center forward Ghislaine Royer-Souef. “Before, only those of men were included…”
This excerpt is part of the book “Uma História Popular do Futebol”, written by the journalist Mickael Correia and published in 2020 by Black Orpheus translated by Luís Lima. You can find it on site and Black Orpheus or in the usual places.
1- The word is a contraction of assoccerwhich, in the 19th century, referred to the association football player, as he was called rugger the rugby player. 2- If the Blues were quickly eliminated from the World Cup in 2010, they would also suffer the stigma of the public and the media due to their escapades, especially following a strike at training in support of the player Nicolas Anelka, expelled after having insulted the coach Raymond Domenech . 3- Three years after these sexist remarks, in November 2016, Nathalie Boy de la Tour would become the first female president of the Professional Football League. 4- The name pays tribute to Thokozani Qwabe, a young South African footballer who was murdered in 2007 because of her homosexuality. 5- Futsal is a variant of football that is played in teams of five, on a handball field and with two halves of 20 minutes each. Born in the 1930s in South America, futsal (a contraction of the Spanish term indoor soccer) began as a team sport for students of the Latin American Young Men’s Christian Associations (YMCA). The practice is governed by two bodies, the World Futsal Association (since 1971) and FIFA (since 1989), which organize their own competitions.
2023-08-02 14:55:41
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