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

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.

The research undertaken by the network seeks to have a positive impact on gender inequality as a major obstacle to social and economic development in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, the 2015 UN Gender Inequality Index ranking these three countries at 77, 92 and 89 respectively. Issues of gender equality will be explored and addressed via the inclusion of academic and non-academic partners in the workshops at the heart of the network's activities and by a focus on participation (practical and symbolic) in football as a key marker of cultural citizenship.

Primary beneficiaries of the research will be women and girls who daily experience gender inequality through their participation in sport (as participants or spectators), understood as a key public discourse across the nations in which network events will take place. By working together with academic and non-academic partners across national contexts, examples of good practice and impactful programmes will be identified that will lead to recommendations for both football-related social development projects and for regional and national football federations. The comparative nature of the project will bring about awareness of the situation across the region in ways that hitherto have not been realised, and will provide a stimulus to the implementation of positive models for empowerment and the agency of women and girls, regardless of race, sexuality and social class.

The network will contribute to the dissemination and implementation of successful strategies for challenging gender inequality through football-based development initiatives (including La Nuestra in Argentina, the Guerreiras project in Brazil and Football for Peace in Colombia). The participation of leaders of such social projects alongside academic researchers, as well as football federations (Brazil) and the Ministry of the Interior (Colombia), will ensure that the network's findings and recommendations can be put into practice, thus contributing to a regional raising of the bar for women and girls in terms of daily practice and access to a key symbolic resource. In addition to reducing gender inequality through the implementation of practice-based recommendations arising from the network's research, there will also be benefits around health and wellbeing through regular participation in sport.

Research undertaken by members of the network through participation in its activities will lead to new understandings of the ways in which women and girls in football are represented to national and international audience through printed and visual media. This will increase awareness of inequality of representation and contribute to changes in these modes of representation, leading to benefits for women and girls as agents in a key national narrative. The anticipated incorporation of outputs arising from the project in the physical and virtual collections of the Museu do Futebol (São Paulo) and LUME (Porto Alegre) will play an important role in this goal by bringing the findings of this research to a wide public audience. Moreover, the media profiles of network advisory group members/ workshop participants Quitián (Colombia) and Alabarces (Argentina) will enable workshops - and the recommendations of the research arising therefrom - to enjoy excellent levels of dissemination and associated potential for broad public influence.

Local and national football federations, and their registered players, will benefit from the network's policy recommendations arising from its research activities. These will draw attention to existing obstacles and challenges around participation and representation, and provide successful models and strategies for overcoming them. Women and girls will direct beneficiaries of these recommendations, while the nations involved will benefit more broadly as greater equality of participation and representation will contribute to the development of more equal and inclusive societies.