From Banned to Celebrated,

yet Relegated and Segregated:

The Struggles of the Female Footballer

A Thesis

Presented to

The Committee on Graduate Studies

Reed College

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

Gwendolyn Rector Herrin

May 2015

Approved for the Committee

(Graduate Studies)

Paul Silverstein

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful for the mentorship that I received from my advisor Paul

Silverstein, co-Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Reed College. His

insights into how to investigate cultural, social and political ideologies were

invaluable and his high standards helped me to question constantly my assumptions

and improve my analysis. His love of football also made for great conversations and I

truly appreciate the time he spent helping my through this paper.

I am also grateful to my husband Sean, who provided emotional support and

picked up the slack at home as I sat tied to his laptop, and to my daughter Kaia, who

not only is a talented footballer, but an empowered and intellectually-gifted young

woman, and a great friend.

Preface

Much of this paper will use the term “football” to refer to the game that is called

“soccer” in the United States and Canada. The word “football,” or a form of this word, is

used throughout the rest of the world, and is part of the name of its international

governing body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). The term

“soccer” will be used in the “Case Study – The United States” section of this paper

because it is referred to that way in most sources, and to differentiate it from American or

gridiron football.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction: More than just a game ......................................................................... 1

II. A review of scholarship on gender studies and sports .............................................. 3

A. Biological determinism and society-constructed gender assumptions ................... 3

B. Patriarchal power .................................................................................................... 6

C. Female objectification ........................................................................................... 10

D. Sports feminism .................................................................................................... 11

III. A brief history of the game of football .............................................................. 15

A. Early origins .......................................................................................................... 15

B. The spread of the game ......................................................................................... 18

C. FIFA – International governance .......................................................................... 20

IV. Case Study – The United States ......................................................................... 27

A. Origins – The U.S. ................................................................................................ 27

B. Early gender legislation and Title IX .................................................................... 29

C. Youth and recreational soccer ............................................................................... 32

D. Collegiate soccer ................................................................................................... 33

E. The women’s national team and the 1999 effect .................................................. 38

F. Professional women’s leagues .............................................................................. 46

G. Media coverage of women’s professional sports .................................................. 53

V. Case Study – Afghanistan .......................................................................................... 59

A. Origins - Afghanistan ............................................................................................ 59

B. Culture, politics, and gender legislation in Afghanistan ....................................... 60

C. The Afghanistan women’s national team ............................................................. 70

VI. Conclusion: Why Separate is Not Equal ........................................................... 77

Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 83

Abstract

This paper is a study of women’s football (called soccer in the United States) and

will investigate why the sport is played, give an overview of the origins and growth of

both the men’s and women’s game, and examine how female athletes are treated in

respect to their male counterparts. In order to fully examine the women’s game,

scholarship on gender studies will be surveyed, including how traditional ideas about

the inferiority of women stem from ideologies such as biological determinism, are

imposed by patriarchal power structures, and re-enforced by gender stereotypes and

objectification. This will form the framework for two case studies of the game’s

history and reception in both the United States and Afghanistan. Both studies will

look at how the sport developed and grew, despite governmental and institutional

restrictions. It also will look at how gender legislation, like Title IX in the United

States, has helped women’s opportunities, and how government control, by such

groups as the Taliban in Afghanistan, has hurt opportunities for women. An

assessment of the current state of the game in both countries will be made to examine

what challenges women still face of in terms of receiving equal resources, coaching,

training, broadcasting, media attention, and respect, despite deep-rooted biases

against female athletes and centuries of institutionalized and normalized sexism.

I. Introduction: More than just a game

“Football is a matter of life and death, except more important.” - Bill Shankly,

Liverpool Football Club Manager, 1959–1974

For many fans and players all over the world, football is more than just a game. It

is a consuming passion that is not only recreation, but also a re-creation of the human

condition. Scholars pose that play (and thus sport) is an essential component of being

human and critical to the development of human society, primarily because of its

ability to transcend everyday reality and function on a symbolic level, mimicking the

struggles and victories of life, albeit in a condensed and highly structured game.

While some may argue that football is just a game, simply a structured activity

that enables humans to get exercise and experience enjoyment, cultural historian J.

Huizinga, in his book Homo Ludens, writes that “play is more than a mere

physiological phenomenon… It goes beyond the confines of a purely physical or

purely biological activity… [it] transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts

meaning to the action" (Huizinga 1949, 1-9). This ability of game to transcend the

physical world and create important meaning shows that sport cannot be written off

and relegated to a lower status than what some might consider more serious and

worthy pursuits. Huizinga argues that “pure play is one of the main bases of

civilization”; it is “not foolish”; it is “a function of the living”; and lies within “the

sacred sphere”; and because play transcends our “ordinary” life and is based “on a

certain ‘imagination’ of reality,” it functions much like metaphorical language, myth,

ritual, and drama.

Football games, as ritual, function to help humans interact with each other and

make sense of the world. Anthropologist John MacAloon defines ritual as something

that “involves religious or sacred forces” and “effects social transitions or spiritual

transformations.” In fact, MacAloon argues that the founder of the Olympic Games,

Pierre de Coubertin, wanted the games to guide both individuals and society to a

higher morality (MacAloon 1984, 250-251). French anthropologist Roger Caillois, in

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his book Man, Play and Games, shows how sports, including football, become drama

(and a form of mimicry) when the players put on costumes (uniforms), participate in a

“solemn overture, appropriate liturgy, and regulated procedures” (Caillois 1961, 22),

which include the opening ceremonies and rules of the game. The players also take on

the role of sports heroes and play out for the audience both a symbolic ritual that the

audience can relate to and envision as their own, and the real struggle that the athletes

face in order to succeed. Laurent Dubois, in his book Soccer Empire: The World Cup

and the Future of France, writes, “The stage of football (and other sports) seems the

ultimate embodiment of the promises of egalitarian meritocracy, a place where the

mythological promise that any individual, of any background, can succeed if he or

she is talented and disciplined enough, can actually come true” (Dubois 2010, 6).

It is this ability of sport to symbolize these greater struggles and then showcase

them in front of an audience that gives it such power. Anthropologist Bradd Shore, in

his book Culture in Mind, describes baseball as “an American enactment of a mythic

journey. A lone hero sets out on a perilous adventure, with the hope of returning

home with newfound wealth and wisdom” (Shore 1996, 84). In football, although

there are individual heroes, the players must work together, since they are all out on

the field trying to advance as one to score, but they hope to return victorious all the

same. When the stage is a national or international one, it becomes even more than

just a game. It can act as an economic force that has the power to start or stop wars,

become a force for violence or a way to foster peace (Stormer 2006), be used to

inculcate social values or mores, become an agent for change and empowerment, or

even be a tool for segregation and discrimination.

Women’s football is more than just a game for many of those who play it. While

it can help improve health and fitness for those who play, it also provides a

mechanism for social interactions and networking, and can help individuals build the

skills necessary to navigate through the challenges they face. Through football,

women can experience victory, learn from defeat, and perform heroic acts. Because

women have been banned from playing the sport, or their game has been relegated to

a secondary status, they have been denied many of its benefits, including those of

self-realization, empowerment, fame, or economic success.

II. A review of scholarship on gender studies

and sports

From ancient times to the modern world, there has been a long history of male

domination of sports, based on assumptions about sexual, biological, and

psychological differences and society-constructed gender expectations, and due to

patriarchal political power structures. While these have changed over time, many of

the current biases and restrictions women experience in sport are based on these early

beliefs and constructions.

A. Biological determinism and society-constructed gender assumptions

Historically, in many societies the case for women’s subordinate status has been

based on the argument of biological determinism, a theory that there was “something

genetically inherent in the male of the species… that makes them the naturally

dominant sex; that ‘something’ is lacking in females” (Ortner 1996, 25).

In the nineteenth century, scientists tried to argue that women were inferior in

order to maintain society-constructed gender roles, which favored keeping women at

home to take care of the home and raise children or in menial jobs, which paid

considerably less and wielded little power. As a consequence, women were barred

from institutions of higher learning. Some scientists theorized that women’s complex

reproductive systems could not afford to lose any energy that might be siphoned away

by their brains for intellectual work, leading to reproductive illness or diseases.

Others argued that because women had smaller heads and brains, they were incapable

of higher intellectual thinking, as well as being fundamentally emotionally

imbalanced, and that their brains were comparable to that of children and animals

(McDonagh 2008, 81-83). This accepted “scientific” principle was used to discourage

women from both intellectual and physical activities (including sport) because “the

female sex was governed by a fixed degree of energy for all physical, mental and

social actions… too much brain activity would sap the absolutely fixed and limited

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energy resources of the female body to such an extent that pathological conditions

would result” (Hargreaves 1994, 45). If women participated in exercise or sports,

they could potentially damage their ability to reproduce, which was seen as their

prime biological function. In the Victorian era, physicians gave pronouncements

about the limits of the female biology, claiming to have scientific evidence that would

help solve many of society’s problems: “With claims to knowledge encompassing all

of human existence, they were the first to pass judgment on the social consequences

of the female anatomy and to prescribe the natural life plan of women (Ehrenreich

and English, For Her Own Good, p. 4)” (Vertinsky 1990, 7). Indeed, even female

physicians from the early 1900s, who were shaped by the social images and

stereotypes of the time, and who saw their inclusion into the medical field as a “gift

of gentlemen,” “accepted and promoted the very notions of Victorian delicacy and

decorum which were so strongly endorsed by their male counterparts, and which

contributed to keeping women enclosed in their separate sphere” (Vertinsky 1990, 12-

13). In 1910, Caroline Wormeley Latimer, a female physician, who wrote a book

called Girl and Woman: A Book for Mothers and Daughters, wrote, “No girl can risk

the strain of a match game without dangers of suffering from it sooner or later, not

only because of the extreme bodily effort, but because of the nervous tension arising

from the competition together with the emotional disturbance inevitably attending

success or defeat” (Vertinsky 1990, 21).

The belief in the inferiority of the female body persists even today, even though

Kate Millett, in her 1970 seminal book Sexual Politics, pointed out that physical traits

are not solely biological, but shaped by culture as well:

The heavier musculature of the male, a secondary sexual characteristic and

common among mammals, is biological in origin but is also culturally encouraged

through breeding, diet, and exercise. Yet it is hardly an adequate category on

which to base political relations within civilization. Male supremacy, like other

political creeds, does not finally reside in physical strength but in the acceptance

of a value system which is not biological. (Millett 1970, 27)

What Millet is pointing out is that all those assumptions about female physical

and psychological inferiority have helped to create an inferior status due to mating

5

preferences based on societal gender expectations, neglect, and willingness to be

subjected to a subordinate status due to internalized sexism.

Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano, authors of the book Playing With the

Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal, however, have found that this assumption of male

physical supremacy is not entirely founded, and that in many ways the female body

can have advantages in sport over the male body, especially in ultra-endurance sports.

They argue that while a history of cultural stereotypes and conditioning, as well as a

lack of adequate training and experience, have over time helped contribute to any

deficits the female body may have physically, “increased opportunities for training

and coaching for female athletes at all levels are narrowing the gaps in absolute

strength” (McDonagh 2008, 54). In fact, they cite research showing that when men

and women’s muscles are measured relative to lean body weight, there is no

significant difference in strength, although women had a greater lower body strength,

as well as “slower rates of fatigue and faster recovery between contractions”

(McDonagh 2008, 54). Studies also show that women metabolize energy sources

differently and more efficiently than men, which also may give them an advantage

(McDonagh 2008, 55).

As a result McDonagh and Pappano argue, “It may be a cultural habit to presume

males superior athletes, but it is a habit that it is time to quit” (McDonagh 2008, 58).

They claim that because of past beliefs in biological determinism, sports have been

traditionally organized at all levels to reflect outdated modes of thinking. They write,

“We assume boys throw balls better than girls. We assume males are physically

superior so their races and contest should be longer or more challenging to make up

for female limitations. Such accommodations are made without regard to

physiological fact or the abilities of individual athletes” (McDonagh 2008, 35-36).

They argue that while men, as a group, weigh more, are taller, have more and leaner

muscle mass, and have greater upper-body strength, these factors may be an

advantage in some sports (basketball and some positions in American football), but a

disadvantage in others. Likewise, women, as a group, may have bodily strengths

(lower weight, smaller height, lower center of gravity, higher percentage of body fat,

and the ability to better compensate for exterior temperature affects) that could

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possibly increase their advantage over men in other sports (field goal kicking,

wrestling, long-distance swimming, ultra-marathons, gymnastics, fencing, auto and

boat racing, equestrian sports, rock climbing, and dogsled racing) (McDonagh 2008,

58-61).

More importantly, however, McDonagh and Pappano argue that athletes should

not be judged based on group characteristics or averages. They write, “There is great

variability within genders and between athletes in different sports. There are males

with high percentages of body fat, just as there are women with little body fat”

(McDonagh 2008, 53) and that “individual variability… may trump gender-linked

characteristics, perhaps as a result of individual body makeup, training, conditioning,

diet, experience—or the physical challenge at hand” (McDonagh 2008, 64). Already

women have shown that they can compete at high levels in athletics, but with

increased opportunities and training, it may be possible for some women to compete

against men in sports that have been traditionally male-dominated in the past. To

exclude women simply because they are women, without looking at athletic ability or

merit, is simply discrimination.

B. Patriarchal power

While modern science has made great inroads into showing how past arguments

about biological determinism, which claimed to prove female physical inferiority,

were based on misinformation and ignorance, the subordinate position of women in

society and sports also has been based on patriarchal power structures.

Robert J. Stoller, in his book Sex and Gender: The Development of Masculinity

and Femininity, argues, “Gender is a term that has psychological or cultural rather

than biological connotations” and gender identity is learned and developed after birth

(Stoller 1974, 9-10). Throughout history, these gender assumptions have been shaped

and supported by patriarchal power structures. According to Sherry B. Ortner, “The

game of patriarchy has, over time been based on certain assumptions, or rules, that

have shaped its effectiveness, not only to keep men in power, but also to keep women

from seeking or achieving power" (Ortner 1996, 15). Ortner posits that it is a

7

universal fact that women always have had a secondary status in society, despite

cultural variations of female subordination. She acknowledges that, “the actual

treatment of women and their relative power and contribution vary enormously from

culture to culture and over different periods in the history of particular cultural

traditions,” and this subordination “exists within every type of social and economic

arrangement and in societies of every degree of complexity” (Ortner 1996, 21).

While theorists in the past have looked at gender through the lens of what Ortner

calls “unproductive binaries and constructionist theories that emphasize the

production of subjects,” Ortner proposes an improved brand of “practice” theory, “a

project, a way of trying conceptually and representationally to mimic social life itself

as a ‘moving unity of subjectivity and objectivity’” (Ortner 1996, 20), and one that

looks at how people act within culture to change culture. Ortner indicates that this is

especially needed when looking at the problem of female subordination, which she

says is “something very profound, very stubborn, something we cannot rout out

simply by rearranging a few tasks and roles in the social system, or even by

reordering the whole economic structure” (Ortner 1996, 21).

This new and improved way of looking at culture, for Ortner, is to frame it as a

“serious game.” Ortner posits that life contains a series of power relationships that

“are always in some sense contests, even if only with the self; that games always

entail including some people and excluding others; and that in most kinds of games,

some people get to be (or are forced to be) “It” and others not; and so forth” and that

the stakes are high. It is the understanding of the changing rules of the game and how

the games work, as well as how “players are defined and constructed (though never

wholly contained) by the game,” that helps one to understand culture. There also must

be the understanding that there are many games at play at all times and that “gender

games themselves collide with, encompass, or are bent to the service of, other games”

(Ortner 1996, 19).

One of the games that she says is especially relevant to question of gender is:

the game of power and authority we would call patriarchy, in which the role of

father as an essentially political role emerges. Fathers are constructed as

disciplined positions within a hierarchy, made responsible to the state as “heads of

household”; at the same time fathers are accorded tremendous power and

8

authority over the subordinates within their households, the women and the junior

males; and finally fathers are highly fetishized within the symbolic order, as

ancestors, gods, or God. (Ortner 1996, 52)

Because men have historically dominated sports in terms of having control and

power over access and resources, women have had to battle institutional and political

sexism, as well as their own internalized sexism, which has led women to believe in

their own inferiority. These beliefs not only can keep women from achieving any

power, but also lead to lack of self-confidence, low expectations, an avoidance of

fields or behaviors that have been traditionally perceived as male-dominated, and an

over-proportionate value on their physical attractiveness, as well as a host of other

destructive behaviors (Bearman 2009, 11). These behaviors not only are detrimental

to women in general, but result in an inability to compete at high levels athletically,

which then feed back in a vicious circle into the assumptions about women’s

inabilities.

Academic scholarship as well has had a long history of men asserting women’s

incompatibility with sports. Desmond Morris argued that aggression in sports is an

instinctive male behavior, which women were incapable of (Hargreaves 1994, 7), and

John B. Carroll, claimed that sports are the ‘natural’ domain of men because of the

innately different biological and psychological natures of men and women (Carroll

1986). As a result of these types of messages and societal pressures, McDonagh

argues, “Females are taught from a young age to check their aggression, curb their

passion to play hard, and, above all, not care about winning. Sports for women are

supposed to be social, for fun and fitness—or so has been the message” (McDonagh

2008, 36). If, from birth, women are taught not to have a sporting or competitive

nature, it is hard to prove that these are inherent sex or gender characteristics.

Research has shown that because of these traditional and internalized ideologies of

“acceptable femininity,” and fears about heterosexual desirability, girls and young

women are turned off from sports (Cockburn 2002; Chalabaev 2009), and thus take

themselves out of the game.

Deem also says another factor that affects why many women stop playing sports

is due to “their heavy burden of domestic labour and childcare (despite in most cases

9

having an adult male around), plus lack of decent money and transport. When women

do participate, it is often in a sport which reinforces traditional ideas about

feminism—yoga, swimming—compatible with stereotypes of beauty, grace and male

attractiveness.” She also argues that “the only way in which significantly more

women are likely to come to see sport as something which is both enjoyable and in

which they have a right to participate is to actually change the nature of the social

relationships and male power which surround sport itself” (Deem 2007, 353-354).

While some progress has been made, sexism in sport, and football in particular,

still exists at very high levels. In his article “Sport, Gender and Civilization,” Eric

Dunning reports that in England, Ted Crooker, former secretary of the Football

Association (FA), said at a meeting in 1988, (paraphrased) “Football is a game of

hard, physical contact, a form of combat. It is, and must remain, a man's game.

Women have no place in it except to cheer on their men, wash and iron their kit, and

prepare and serve refreshments” (Dunning 2007, 325). Dunning says that women who

participate in combat or contact sports face additional obstacles not only to

participation, but acceptance of society and any sort of equal or equitable

opportunities (Dunning 2007, 326). Women who operate outside of what is seen as

acceptable gender norms have frequently had their heterosexuality questioned

(another outdated gender normative expectation) and have faced ridicule and

discrimination in other areas of their lives.

Traditional gender norms were also reinforced by male domination of sports.

According to sociologist Jennifer Hargreaves, “through sports, individuals learn the

dominant norms and values of a society—girls are socialized to behave in ‘feminine-

appropriate ways’—which results in inequalities between the sexes and

discrimination against women” (Hargreaves 1994, 9).

As the rights of women and the perception of their value in society have

increased, Hargreaves points out that because sport continues to be based on outdated

modes of thinking, there is little room for acceptance of “changing feminine and

masculine identities and different gender relations,” as well as the fact that the

masculine or “macho” perception of sports in the past “inaccurately presents all men

and all men’s sports as having similar characteristics” (Hargreaves 1994, 31-32). This

10

is not only destructive to women, but to men as well. If a young boy does not fit the

societal norm of being athletic and muscular, he too is seen as inferior, at least within

his own gender, and is more likely to face discrimination.

C. Female objectification

Due to the traditional ways that women have been viewed as inferior, women also

have been seen as an object or possession, something to be obtained and controlled.

She is valued not only for her ability to perform her domestic and childbearing duties,

but also for her appearance.

In the modern media, for decades women have been typically portrayed in narrow

and stereotypical ways, focusing almost exclusively on physical appearance and

sexual appeal, and have appeared mostly as housewives, mothers, or sexual objects.

According to L. Monique Ward and Kristen Harrison, “Women’s bodies are

habitually presented as objects for others’ viewing pleasure, objects used to beautify

and adorn. Although showing a woman as a loving mother or as a sexual being is not

inherently problematic, it becomes a problem if they are almost always shown this

way, which normalizes objectification and provides a limited perspective on woman’s

humanity” (Ward and Harrison 2005, 3). This is problematic because, as Gaye

Tuchman in her essay “The Symbolic Annihilation of Women in Mass Media”

argues, men and women learn a lot about who they are and how they are supposed to

behave through mass media (Tuchmann 1981, 175). These ideas are not only passed

down from generation to generation, but for young girls can negatively constrain

aspirations, affect body satisfaction (leading to eating disorders), and shape sexual

attitudes and behaviors. This also can foster young girls to endorse these rigid

traditional gender roles, which can lead to low self-esteem and depression (Ward and

Harrison 2005, 4-14).

In addition, research shows that when attention is focused on women’s

appearance, they are more prone to objectify themselves, perform less competently on

math problems, become more passive and less likely to stand up for themselves, and

speak less (Heflick and Goldenberg 2014).

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D. Sports feminism

Over the last few decades, women have gained increased opportunities to

participate and excel in sports due to progressive acknowledgements that biological

determinism and cultural expectations, as well a historically patriarchal power

structure, are outdated and discriminatory, but what equal or equitable women’s

participation in sports should look like is still debated.

Liberal feminists, according to Hargreaves, reject the assumptions of biological

determinism and believe that if societal barriers are lifted, women are capable of

participating in all sports. They seek “to provide access for women to traditionally

masculinized activities;” however, they don’t challenge “the conventional character

of modern sports or the ‘essential’ nature of modern capitalism and patriarchy”

(Hargreaves 1994, 26-27). Hargreaves asserts that liberal feminists see legal and

social reforms (such as Title IX, to be discussed later in this paper) as the way to gain

those additional resources for women, including “easier access and better facilities for

women in sports, improved funding and rewards, equal rights with men under the

law, top quality coaching on par with men, and an equivalent voice with men in

decision-making” (Hargreaves 1994, 27). Hargreaves argues, however, that while

increased resources and power can bring about some change, liberal feminism “tends

to overlook the limitations of legal reform and to underestimate the strength of

entrenched resistance to changing attitudes and behavior.” She argues, “It is

implausible to imagine that genuine equality will result from legal reforms when the

power of men over women subtly permeates society, or to think that sport could be

changed fundamentally by legislation which embodies gender as an organizing

principle” (Hargreaves 1994, 29). For Hargreaves, sports feminism should challenge

male sports rather than endorse them and asserts that liberal feminists “fail to

question and examine the moral and human consequences of the structures and

procedures which have been created by patriarchal society” (Hargreaves 1994, 29).

Like Ortner, she sees that in order to battle sexism, one must understand the

underlying historical power structures and their effects. By simply ignoring their

impact, change within culture is hard to enact.

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In the late nineteenth century, the ideology of separatism was the prevailing

structure for sports. It was accepted that sports for women were supposed to be

substantially different from men’s sports and were based on society’s accepted ideas

of the biological and psychological differences of women. According to Hargreaves,

“In order to survive, organized female sports tended to accommodate to traditional

biological assumptions, rather than openly challenging them.” Later, however,

feminists “advocated separate sports for men and women for ethical reasons… they

believed they concentrated too much on competition and were overly specialized and

corrupted by commercialism” (Hargreaves 1994, 30). These philosophies helped to

shape the way sports have been and are currently organized. This ideology of

separatism continues to flourish; however in recent years, according to Hargreaves, it

is “a reaction to the powerlessness, frustration and anger experienced by sportswomen

who have suffered serious discrimination and experienced blatant male chauvinism…

Opposition to men’s control of sports, rather than to their violent and aggressive

competitive character, is the resulting separatist position.” This new position asserts

that women have the ability to perform at high levels in all sports, even those,

traditionally believed to be male-oriented, but that by having control over the sports

themselves, women will have more access and more rewards (Hargreaves 1994, 29-

31).

Among radical feminists, however, there is the belief that women should not

emulate men’s sports, but build their own model, one that “celebrates differences

between women, [and] recognizes the centrality of issues around sexuality in

women's experiences of oppression.” Radical feminists have worked to set up their

“women-only clubs and leagues, some openly lesbian or lesbian-positive, which are

free to modify the rules and organize their play along explicitly feminist principles of

participation, recreation, fun, and friendship” (Hall 2007, 345). This strategy also

involves a radical reformulation of what is meant by sport, and whether competition

or commercialism should be key to its definition.

It is ironic that the very structure that kept women’s sports marginalized for so

long is the same structure that radical sports feminists have adopted, albeit their aim

is to increase their own power and accessibility to sports in order to challenge, and

13

not to maintain a subordinate role in society. This trend towards increased separatism

is also problematic and Hargreaves argues that a distinctly female culture is not

progressive. Hargreaves writes, “Separatist ideology carries the implication that only

women can bring about changes in favour of women and that there are fixed

limitations to the social changes which women might seek in sports.” (Hargreaves

1994, 32-33). It seems that this strategy of giving up, by assuming that equity or

equality is unattainable and that men inherently neither have the ability nor interest to

share in progressive changes to society, further separates the genders, creating deeper

divides and less understanding.

Authors McDonagh and Pappano, however, make a compelling argument against

sex segregation in sports, especially when it is coercive. They base their argument on

the same principles put forth in the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1954 Brown vs.

the Board of Education trial that ruled that “the mere existence of separate schools for

blacks and whites… constituted inequality,” and the 1971 Reed vs. Reed case that

challenged gender bias and “extended the separate is not equal principle, previously

applied only to race, to sex discrimination” (McDonagh 2008, 24). In today’s society,

a sport, or any activity, segregated by race would be seen as a violation of human

rights, yet when sports are segregated by gender, this is seen as natural.

They also argue that treating individuals as equals in the eyes of the law is at the

heart of the American system. Sports researcher Jean Williams agrees and says:

Nevertheless, in other aspects of our lives we ask that women be treated without

reference to gender… What does concern me is the ideological mystification of

sport so that we make exceptions in competitive, modern organised games that we

do not accept in other areas of our lives. My central concern is with institutional

and organizational discrimination; that is, where bureaucracies, associations,

governments and EU partners, justify both a philosophy and a practice that

discriminates against a particular group. (Williams 2006, 160)

Not only does Williams point out the complicit sexism that exists in sport which

prevents women from playing at the highest levels, those reserved for men, but she

argues there is an almost condescending attitude towards women when risk of injury

is the excuse for exclusion, which she says “disguises hostility to personal choice…

[and] infantilises women. The first woman who does sign for a male [football] team

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(whether she first of all has to go to court to invoke her right to do so) will be very

brave” (Williams 2006, 161). While women’s rights in all other aspects of society

seem to be improving, it is natural in the world of sports to treat women as

fundamentally inferior; so natural, in fact that there has not yet been a woman who

has been able to play with a professional men’s team. In 2003, an Italian men’s club

offered Germany’s Birgit Prinz a contract; however, she turned it down because she

thought it was merely a publicity stunt (Williams 2007, 22). In 2004, female

footballer Maribel Dominguez was signed by a second-division club in Mexico on a

two-year contract, but the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA),

the association that regulates football globally, issued an edict forbidding the contract,

stating “there should be a clear separation between men's and women's football”

(Balding 2005). Clearly, it will take more than just a brave woman to go up against

traditional prejudices against women, but she must also take on FIFA and its iron-grip

on the football world.

III. A brief history of the game of football

A. Early origins

The origins of football run thousands of years old, with the earliest games dating

back to China and Japan in the second and third centuries BC (FIFA 2015, "History

of Football - Britain"). Other early civilizations that played early versions of the game

include the Olmecs, Mayans, and Aztecs of the Americas (Craig 1961, 127). The

Greeks played an early version of the game, which the Romans adopted and

introduced to France, Germany and the British Isles (Craig 1961, 102).

It wasn’t until 1863 in England, however, that the sport formed its first governing

body, the Football Association (FA), to standardize and regulate its rules, which

called the sport “association football” to differentiate itself from other versions, such

as rugby football and, in Ireland, Gaelic football (FIFA 2015, "History of Football -

Britain"). According to historian J.A. Mangan, a standardization of these rules in

England was important because sports, and specifically football and rugby, were

being developed to prepare boys to become leaders for their empire. They wanted to

use sport as a way to teach “initiative and self-reliance,” as well as “loyalty and

obedience.” According to sociologist Michael Messner, sport “shaped the structure,

rules, values, and meanings of sports in ways that supported and furthered their own

interests… in hopes that these middle classes would adopt British morality, ethics,

and values and thus help solidify colonial control” (Messner 1992, 10). This supports

Hargreaves assertion that early football discriminated against women. In the early

days of English football, sport was purposely used as a way to prepare boys (not girls)

to become leaders for their empire. Not only were boys taught values like initiative

and self-reliance, loyalty and obedience, they were taught that women, through their

exclusion from sport, were inferior and not worthy or capable to be part of the

empire’s power structure.

While there has been much scholarship on the origin of men’s football in

England, women’s participation in the sport in England is less documented. Early

modern evidence of women playing football include games in Scotland during the

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17th

century in which married women played unmarried women, while prospective

husbands for the latter watched (Reilly, Cabri, and Araüjo 2005, 4).

The first-recorded women’s match took place in 1881 in Edinburgh against teams

billed as “Scotland vs. England” with a crowd of 5,000 spectators in attendance;

however, when the teams played a week later, they were chased off the field in the

second half in order to put an end to the game, and the police had to escort the players

away as the crowd became violent, which happened again at another game, causing

an end to the matches. Many of the women played under pseudonyms to protect their

identities. The sentiment expressed by the newspaper reports covering the event

showed less shock about the violent behavior of the men in the crowd than contempt

for the women who were playing the game, calling the exhibition “unseemly,” and

attacked “the girls’ utmost ignorance of the game” (Tate 2013, 7-11). The reaction of

the men seems to have been triggered by a fear that women were treading where they

ought not tread—that this was a men’s game and it was akin to sacrilege for women

to think they could claim the game for their own. Men believed that football was a

game that women, due to their inferior physical abilities and inability to grasp the

complexities of the game given their inferior intellectual abilities, would be unable to

play properly.

Later in 1894, a woman by the name of Nettie Honeyball (also thought to be a

pseudonym) founded the British Ladies’ Football Club. In an interview she said:

I founded the association with the fixed resolve of proving to the world that

women are not the 'ornamental and useless' creatures men have pictured. I must

confess, my convictions on all matters, where the sexes are so widely divided, are

all on the side of emancipation and I look forward to the time when ladies may sit

in Parliament and have a voice in the direction of affairs, especially those which

concern them most. (Lee 2008, 25)

The first game took place on March 23, 1895 at Crouch End, London, as the

second part of a double-header of a men’s game, with the London “North” team

taking on the “South” team, and a crowd of 10,000 watching. The women played

without corsets or high-heeled boots, but they “did still wear bonnets and the game

had to be stopped if any woman headed the ball and it dislodged either bonnet or

hairpins” (Laycock 2014). The team was a financial success and later went on a tour

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of the British Isles, playing hundreds of games from 1895-1903, some against men’s

teams, which they beat occasionally; however, these women’s teams also were

derided for playing a men’s game and mocked in the newspapers, for not only their

attire (women wearing trousers was unheard of), but for what was seen by a male

reporter as their inability to properly play the game (Brown 2013). The club

eventually folded due to a lack of finances, but the sport continued to be played at

British upper and middle-class girls’ schools.

When World War I broke out, women started to work in munitions factories,

which helped organize games between factories. The games were played to boost

morale, and the proceeds from ticket sales were given to war-related charities

(Mangan 2001, 157). The most famous of these teams, the ‘Dick, Kerr’ (the name of

the factory—comma included) Ladies from Preston, played in front of large crowds,

including a game in Everton with 53,000 spectators. In 1920, they played over 65

games, with a combined audience of over 900,000 (Newsham 1997, 73).

By 1921, there were over 150 women’s football clubs in England, and games

attracted thousands of spectators (Williams 2003, 46). That same year, the FA banned

women’s teams from playing on registered pitches and stadiums, claiming that

football was “quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged” (Football

Association 1921). This led to the cutting off of funding and formal coaching,

resulting in the existence of a very small subculture of women players (Williams

2003, 36). The ban did more than put a stop to the opportunities for the women’s

game to flourish and the opportunity for women to be viewed by society in a new

way; it impacted the way that football in general developed. Because there was an

acceptance that football was supposed to be for men, women also were discouraged

from being spectators at the men’s games as well. As supporter’s groups coalesced

around the men’s clubs, they became enclaves of what was seen as acceptable male

behavior: rowdy, at times violent, and disrespectful in general to women.

Misogynistic supporters’ chants such as “shag your women and drink your beer” were

more than ways for “lads” to assert their masculinity; they also effectively kept the

women from joining in, relegating them to the home.

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B. The spread of the game

The professionalization of the sport in England started in 1885, with the first

legalization of the paid British football player (Williams 2014, 16). In other parts of

the world, men’s professional leagues emerged in nearby Scotland, Ireland, and

Wales, and then outward, especially in places where British imperialism reigned

(India and parts of Africa), where British commerce was strong or Christian

missionaries travelled (Germany, Italy, China, Hong Kong), where there were

educational exchanges involving British students or students who studied in England

and then returned home (Switzerland, Portugal, Brazil), or where there were large

numbers of British immigrants (United States) (Murray 1998, 10-36).

In the early 1900s, the women's game started to spread to other parts of Europe as

well, although with limited success. In places like France and Germany, official bans

and public opposition kept it from flourishing. Official statements, declaring that

football was a man’s game and a woman’s place was not on the football field where

she could possibly injure herself, were accepted widely by the general public and

there was little to no outcry about the restrictions.

In France, the first recorded women’s game was played in 1917, but after they

started playing against boy’s teams, the country’s first amateur federation of athletics,

Union des Sociétés Françoise’s des Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), prohibited its

members from playing against women. In 1918 a women’s sports organization, the

Fédération des Sociétés Féminines Sportives de France (FSFSF), was founded, but by

1932 it stopped organizing women’s football games due to lack of money, fields, and

a propaganda campaign led against it by male players, journalists, doctors, and

politicians. There seemed to be a collective fear that women would become

“masculinized” by playing the game and that the “ideal woman” should adhere to the

traditional gender expectation that she stay in the home. During WWII, the French

government prohibited football for women. From the 1930s to the early 1950s, there

were sporadic games played against the Dick, Kerr Ladies from England, yet those

French teams were mostly made up of women who played other sports. It wasn’t until

the 1960s that women were encouraged to play football, but mostly as side-show

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exhibitions to the men’s games. In 1970, the men’s football association (FFF)

officially recognized women’s football due to growing participation and interest in

the game and they established a separate organizing commission within the

association (Prudhomme-Poncet 2007, 27-35).

In Germany, a women’s team started up in 1930, which caused a public outcry

against women participating in what was considered a male sport, and the team folded

in 1931. German Dr. Willy Vierath echoed public sentiment and wrote in his 1930

book Modern Sport, “All types of sport which go beyond a woman’s natural strength,

like wrestling, boxing or football, are unsuitable; furthermore, they look unaesthetic

and unnatural” (Pfister 2001, 47). In 1955, after a group of women tried to start a

national league, the German Football Federation (DFB) forbade its clubs from

founding women’s affiliate teams or letting women use their field, a rule similar to

the 1921 FA restriction in England. The DFB wrote, “The attractiveness of women,

their bodies, and souls will suffer irreparable damage and the public display of their

bodies will offend morality and decency" (Bosley 2007). It was not until 1970, that

the DFB officially recognized “ladies’ football,” which according to a DFB official

was due to the fact that women’s clubs were starting to form and the DFB wanted to

ensure control over it (Pfister 2001, 48).

During the 1950s and 1960s, the women's sport had grown all around the world

under the auspices of nationally sanctioned and un-sanctioned associations and

tournaments. The International Ladies' Football Association hosted what they called a

European championship in 1957 with five countries participating, which was won by

an amateur team called the Manchester Corinthians, who then went on a worldwide

tour over the years 1957-1966. The International Red Cross helped organize charity

matches, which were well attended. By the end of the 1960s, 13 countries (Austria,

Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,

Norway, Scotland, Sweden, USSR, and West Germany), had teams that played in

international games. In addition, an Asian Ladies Football Association had formed in

Hong Kong in 1968 (Williams 2013, 24-27).

Since the growth of the women’s game could no longer be stopped, the fear of

losing control of the women’s game led both UEFA and FIFA to include women’s

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football as a part of their associations starting in 1969 and 1971, especially since there

seemed to be a growing commercial interest in the sport (Williams 2013, 21). It was

not until 1971 that England’s FA was forced by UEFA (Union of European Football

Associations) to rescind its ban and remove its restriction on women’s playing rights.

An independent Women’s Football Association (WFA) was formed in 1969, but it

disbanded in 1993 so the FA could take full control of the top women’s competitions

(Williams 2003, 106).

C. FIFA – International governance

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in

1904 as the global governing body of the sport. Although it originally was comprised

of seven European nations (excluding England), it grew to twenty-four by 1914

(Murray 1998, 36-37). Currently, under FIFA, there are six regional confederations

(Asia, Africa, Europe, North/Central American & Caribbean, Oceania, and South

America), which help organize regional tournaments for the national football

associations. The 209 different national associations oversee football within their own

countries and operate their own leagues, which consist of both professional and

amateur players (FIFA 2015, "Confederations").

In 1971, FIFA officially sanctioned the first women’s match between France and

the Netherlands (Doyle 2014), yet it was not until twenty years later in 1991 that

FIFA sponsored the first women’s world championship in China, although officially

it was called the M&M's Women's World Championship (Williams 2013, 30). Over

65,000 fans watched as the United States beat Norway in the final. Afterwards in

1993, the International Olympic Committee voted to include women’s soccer in the

1996 Olympics, which saw the United States beat PR China with over 76,000 fans in

the stadium (Williams 2007, 65). In 1995, Norway won the first officially named

Women’s World Cup, a tournament that saw over 112,000 in attendance (FIFA 2015,

"FIFA Women's World Cup - Sweden 1995"). In 1999, attendance figures made a big

jump and topped 660,000 viewers, with an estimated 40 million television viewers in

the US who watched the United States beat China in the final. With 90,185 people in

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attendance at that single game, it broke records and was supposedly the most-attended

women’s sports event in history (FIFA 2015, "FIFA Women's World Cup - USA

1999"); however, a 1971 women’s world championship, one unrecognized by FIFA,

held in Mexico City reportedly had over 100,000 spectators watch Denmark beat

Mexico in the final match at Azteca stadium (Doyle 2014).

Attendance figures at the Women’s World Cup continued to grow, with overall

attendance at 679,664 for the 2003 tournament and 1,190,971 in attendance at the

2007 games, both won by Germany. In 2011, Japan won the cup with a smaller total

of 845,711 in attendance, but broke television viewing records (FIFA 2015, "FIFA

Women's World Cup Final"). The average global in-home audience per live match

was 13.2 million (a 17% increase over the 2007 tournament), while 62.8 million

viewers watched the final match (KantarSport 2011).

Large crowds also followed the Olympic Games in the intervening years, with

average crowds per game in the tens of thousands and overall attendance rates in the

hundreds of thousands for each tournament from 2000 to 2012. The final game of the

2012 London Olympic Games set attendance records in England for a women’s game

with 80,203 in attendance (FIFA 2015, "Olympic Tournament Football Women").

Canada, the host of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, hopes to break records with an

attendance target of 1.5 million (Kassouf 2014).

While spectatorship has grown significantly for women’s national team

tournaments, participation globally has grown as well. According to a FIFA survey of

member associations, over 30 million women around the world play football (FIFA

2014, "Survey results"), up from an estimated 26 million women in 2006, and a 22

million count in 2000. FIFA also estimates that while there was an estimated 238.6

million men who played in 2006, the rate of increase for men is only 8%, compared to

19% for women from 2000 to 2006. Additionally, the number of women officially

registered by FIFA who play football increased over 54% in those same six years,

compared to only a 21% increase for men (FIFA 2015, "Big Count").

Even though the women’s game is growing rapidly, and football associations are

trying to keep up, institutionalized sexism is still at play. In 1995, when he was a top

official at FIFA, Joseph S. Blatter said, “The future of football is feminine”; however

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in 2004, after becoming president, he suggested that the women’s kit (uniform)

should promote a more “female aesthetic” in order to increase the popularity of the

game. The Guardian newspaper reported that he said, “They could for example, have

tighter shorts. Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they

already have some different rules to men - such as playing with a lighter ball." Many

top women footballers responded, including Pauline Cope, England’s goalkeeper,

who said, “We don’t use a lighter ball for one thing, and to say we should play

football in hotpants is plain ridiculous” (Christenson 2004).

While this is an anecdotal example of how sexism still exists in the highest ranks

at FIFA, it is even more telling that in its yearly publication, FIFA publishes

the “Laws of the Game,” which are regulated by the International Football

Association Board (IFAB), a body that consists of eight board members, four of

which are FIFA representatives. In the opening page of the 2014-2015 document,

under the subheading “Modifications,” it states, “the Laws may be modified in their

application for matches for players of under 16 years of age, for women footballers,

for veteran footballers (over 35 years of age) and for players with disabilities.” In the

first full paragraph of the document, it is notable that women are put in the same

category as children, men who are considered past their prime, and the disabled. This

suggests that FIFA and the IFAB see women as fundamentally different and inferior

than men and reveals a deep ambivalence towards the issue of female equity.

In addition, sports historian Jean Williams points out that the attitude that

women’s soccer is secondary to men’s football is inherent in the organizational

structure of these associations. She writes, “One of the problems of course is that we

have an uneasy integration of women's committees, departments and sections within

existing administrations for men's football… Those women's associations which

preceded the recognition of women's football by FIFA have gradually given way over

the last thirty or so years to become committees within male administrative structures

or are recognized as affiliated to these bureaucracies” (Williams 2006, 160). The titles

to the World Cup and the Women’s World Cup, in and of themselves, reflect how

sports associations see the women’s game. The World Cup (for men) needs no

qualifier in its title, which designates it as the main tournament. This type of sexism is

23

not just reflective of FIFA, but of most organizations that started out for men

(including UEFA and the U.S. Soccer Federation—USSF), and their websites also

reflect this by setting the access to information about the women’s game as a side tab

and a category set aside from the rest of the main content.

Female representation in football association governing committees is also

problematic. Of the 25 members of the Executive Committee, there is only one

woman, Lydia Nesekera, president of the Burundi Football Association, and one of

only two women who are presidents of national football associations in the world

(FIFA 2013, "For women"). Nesekera was the first woman to be both appointed onto

FIFA’s Executive Committee for one year in 2012, and later elected to a full four-

year term in 2013, a position that was set up specifically for “women-only.” Two

other women, Moya Dodd of Australia (who FIFA president Seth Blatter publicly

described as “good and good-looking”) and Sonia Bien-Aime of Turks and Caicos

Islands, are “co-opted members for special tasks,” and are serving only a one-year

term (Kessel 2013).

At a Women’s U20 World Cup press conference, when asked why more women

weren’t involved in soccer governance, Blatter answered, “Football is very macho.

It’s so difficult to accept [women] in the game. Not playing the game, but in the

governance” (Missio 2014).

Another area where there is a blatant lack of equality is the disparity between how

much men and women are paid in prize money for FIFA’s World Cup tournaments.

The total prize money awarded in the 2014 men’s World Cup in Brazil pool was $576

million, with the winning team awarded more than $35 million dollars. In contrast,

the total prize money to be awarded in the 2015 Women’s World Cup is more than

$15 million (a difference of $561 million), with the winning team receiving $2

million dollars. It should be noted that the men’s tournament features 32 teams, while

the women’s tournament will feature 24 teams (up from 16) for the first time

(Kassouf 2015, "Women's World Cup"). While these differences are immense in

comparison, the 2015 cash award for the women is a 50% increase from the 2011

tournament which only awarded $7.6 million (Williams 2015). Despite the fact that

the Women’s World Cup debuted in 1991, it was not until 2007 that any of the

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women’s teams were compensated with prize money, initially receiving a total of 6.4

million total to share among the 12 teams in competition (FIFA 2011).

In the last couple years, FIFA has made a push to increase the development of

women’s football, most likely as a result of its growth and revenue potential. FIFA

holds “Women’s Football Symposiums” during each Women’s World Cup, and in

2014 they conducted the FIFA Women’s Football Survey. As a result of their

findings, they created their “Women’s Football Development Programmes and

Guideline 2015-2018,” and stated that they plan to make women’s football one of

their main development priorities. FIFA also created a “Task Force for Women’s

Football,” which held its first meeting in January 2015 (FIFA 2014, "Survey results").

Also new for 2015, FIFA held its first FIFA Women’s Football and Leadership

Conference on March 6, 2015, in order to “support the empowerment of women in

society and to promote gender equality. “ At the conference Blatter said, “It is our

duty to drive this growth to its full potential. It is our duty to make sure that there is

equal opportunity for all across our member associations.” FIFA has promised to

double its development funding for women’s football for the next four-year cycle,

2015-2018 (FIFA 2015, "Football experts voice need"), however, it remains to be

seen what it will take to increase the number of women involved in the governance of

FIFA, as well as what it will take to ever put women’s football on an equal footing

with the men’s game. To imagine that FIFA would allow women to participate in the

men’s game at all seems far-fetched at this point.

The women’s premier event, the Women’s World Cup for 2015, has been marred

by controversy even before its opening ceremony, which takes place in June. In order

to fight what they feel are sexist attitudes and policies, U.S. player Abby Wambach

organized some of the top female football players in the world and they banded

together to file a law suit against FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) to

protest the use of artificial surfaces planned for the 2015 Women's World Cup in

Canada, citing the fact that never have any of the men's World Cup competitions been

played on artificial turf, a surface widely thought to be inferior and hazardous. Men’s

national team members DeAndre Yedlin and Tim Howard supported the women, as

well as did other non-soccer celebrities. Wambach said, “We have to stand up and

25

put our foot down and say, ‘You know what? This isn’t good enough. This isn’t right.

And we deserve to be treated equally as the men’” (AssociatedPress 2014).

In 2015, the players decided to drop their case after FIFA and the CSA allegedly

threatened reprisal against some of the players involved, the Human Rights Tribunal

of Ontario denied an expedited hearing on the case, and FIFA rejected a compromise

proposal in which the players asked for only the semi-finals and the finals to be

played on natural grass. In a statement, their attorney, Hampton Dellinger, wrote:

Since a coalition of the world’s best female soccer players initiated legal action,

the tactics of FIFA and CSA have included: threatening protesting players with

suspension, doing everything possible to delay a final court ruling despite the

players’ need to know what surface the tournament will be held on so they can

train accordingly, suggesting they would either defy an adverse court ruling or

cancel the tournament and, most recently, rejecting the players’ undeniably fair

settlement offer. In the face of such irresponsible actions by FIFA and CSA, the

players have elected to end their legal fight. The players are doing what FIFA and

CSA have proven incapable of: putting the sport of soccer first. (Kassouf 2015,

"Players End Legal Battle").

Staging a premier event on turf is a first for a FIFA senior event in the sport of

football. Currently, there are no plans to stage FIFA men’s senior premier events on

artificial turf. In December of 2014, FIFA secretary general Jérome Valcke called the

female football player’s claims of discrimination “nonsense” and FIFA and the CSA

claim that when Canada bid for the tournament, the only country to make a bid, it was

clear that they planned to stage it on artificial turf, which the CSA president Victor

Montagliani called a “first-class playing field” (Kassouf 2015, "Players End Legal

Battle"). FIFA also argued that the weather in Canada makes artificial turf the best

choice (FIFA 2014, "Harrison: Football Turf"), although others maintain that the real

reason FIFA refuses to outfit the stadiums with natural grass is cost (McMahon

2014).

FIFA’s insistence on having the women at the highest level play on artificial turf,

while men play on natural grass, suggests that FIFA applies different standards to the

men’s and women’s tournaments. One could also equate FIFA and its president in

Ortner’s framework of the patriarchal father, the one who holds tremendous power

over not only the female athletes involved, but over the 209 FIFA Member

26

Associations (MAs) under its control, who must follow its rules and guidelines. FIFA

wields an almost godlike power, with its revenue of billions and over 265 million

people in the world who play football (FIFA 2015, "Big Count"). This is the ultimate

game of patriarchy, a game where the international federation wields enough power

to influence and control its MAs, as well as influence courts of law in its member

countries, to maintain policies that relegate women to different standards than that of

men. While FIFA has made efforts to include women in recent years in its

governance, the very small ratio of power (one full executive council position out of

twenty-five), truly emphasizes the power differential.

That disparity in influence and economic power is also apparent in the

professional leagues. In 2014, the English Barclays Premier League was the most

watched professional football league in the world, with a combined TV audience of

4.7 billion viewers (About the Premier League: What We Do 2015). The most

popular women’s football league, the National Women’s Soccer League, had an

attendance of only 445,072 spectators in 2013 (Gehrke 2014) and only had a fraction

of its games televised.

While some of the top male football players in the world make millions of dollars

playing the game, with Cristiano Ronaldo making a reported $73 million in salary,

bonuses, and endorsements in 2013 (Settimi 2014), in contrast, Alex Morgan, the

highest paid female player in 2013, made just over one million in salary and

endorsements combined (Wahl 2013), a 73 to 1 ratio.

IV. Case Study – The United States

A. Origins – The U.S.

The women’s game in the United States did not get established until after the

men’s game. The first written record of men’s football in the United States came from

a Harvard student who wrote a humorous poem called “The Battle of the Delta” in

1827. The game had emigrated from England and by 1840 there were records of

intra-collegiate games at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia. Inter-collegiate

games did not start until 1869, when Rutgers played Princeton in a variation of the

game that used both the hands and the feet and had 25 players on both sides. Other

games between colleges followed; however, in the 1860s Harvard banned the game

for being too violent. Later when it was re-instated, Harvard played against a

Canadian university and was introduced to rugby rules, leading them to adopt the oval

rugby ball, which evidently led to the formation of what is called American gridiron

football. When the codified association football from England arrived later, the

United States already had flourishing baseball and gridiron football leagues, and

association football had to compete with the emerging sport of basketball as well

(Goldblatt 2006, 96-97), a sport that originally was played with a round football that

was thrown into elevated peach baskets and was called Basket Football

(Basket Football Game 1892).

In the 1870s-1880s during the Industrial Revolution, thousands of immigrants

arrived in the United States and formed teams, leading many to think of the sport as

one that was mainly played by immigrants and the working classes. From 1894 to

1984, a series of professional leagues were started and then folded, many because the

clubs were losing money, starting with the American Football Association and ending

with the folding of the North American Soccer League in 1984. In 1996, Major

League Soccer was launched (adding to the indoor and minor league teams already in

existence), and continues to this day to manage a first division men’s league that is

growing both in popularity and the number of teams competing (History: Timeline

2015).

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A men’s national team did not compete internationally until 1916, two years after

FIFA admitted the United States Football Association (later renamed the U.S. Soccer

Federation in 1974) as a member association. The men’s team was one of thirteen

nations to play later in the first FIFA World Cup in 1930. In 2002, the men’s team

reached the quarterfinals of the tournament, their best showing since 1930 when they

came in third place (History: Timeline 2015).

The beginnings of the women’s game also took place in school settings—in both

high school and colleges it was a popular intermural sport from the 1920s to the

1960s. As more middle and upper class women attended college, a new “athletic girl”

ideal emerged, and college educators developed a philosophy of moderation which

promoted cooperation, fun and fitness, in order to keep women from injuring their

reproductive systems and to keep them from developing too much aggressiveness or

from being too competitive, which were deemed masculine traits (Cahn 1994, 24). An

October 1918 magazine from the Radcliffe College Athletic Association contains the

oldest modern reference to women’s football, which outlined the activities of their

field day, including tennis, hockey and football games (Williams 2007, 49-50). In

1931, Smith College in Massachusetts formed an all-star team from its inter-class

tournaments, which played a male faculty team at the end of the tournament (The

Growth of the Sport, 1920s – 1960s 2015).

Colleges were not the only setting that offered women the opportunity to play

football during this time period. In the 1930s, labor unions such as the International

Ladies Garment Workers (ILGWU) organized games for working women (Williams

2007, 59). During World War II, defense industry factories and states instituted sports

leagues to keep women healthy and happy, and in 1951 Father Walter Craig of St.

Matthew’s Parish, St Louis, Missouri organized the Craig Club Girls Soccer League,

which had four teams (The Growth of the Sport, 1920s – 1960s 2015).

From the 1950s-1960s, women played football primarily in community,

industrial, and educational intramural games. It was not until the 1970s and the

passage of Title IX that the sport started to flourish and grow rapidly.

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B. Early gender legislation and Title IX

Women’s secondary status in America was rooted in the assumptions of

biological determinism and cultural gender roles—women were thought to be not

only physically incapable of competing with men, but also intellectually incapable.

Although initially women were not admitted to institutions of higher learning, in the

early to mid-nineteenth century, women were admitted to sex-segregated colleges,

institutions “explicitly designed to reflect (socially construct) women’s presumed

difference from men… Women could be educated, but it had to suit their social roles,

not put them in competition with men” (McDonagh 2008, 84-85).

In the work place, during World War II, however, women were given increased

job opportunities. While a large number of men were off fighting, women were called

upon to fill the void in the work world and to help the war effort, as well as help

defend the country through military service. After the war, however, with the return

of the male workforce, women again faced sex discrimination in the workplace and

through university admission policies. Women were again expected to go back to

their gendered roles as mothers and subordinates (McDonagh 2008, 85-90).

It wasn’t until the passage of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that women

first achieved limited protection against discrimination in the work place, as the law

prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Interestingly enough, the author of the legislation, and opponent of the act in general,

Rep. Howard Smith (D-VA), “considered it so preposterous to think employment

could be organized without regard to sex, that he believed adding ‘sex’ to the

language would trigger the bill’s doom” (McDonagh 2008, 91-94). Apparently he

was wrong and ended up penning important legislation that would herald vast

opportunities for women.

Prior to that in 1963, Congress had passed the Equal Pay Act, but because women

still had less access to higher education, the chances that a women would be hired for

a job that was commensurate with a man’s responsibilities and training was low

(McDonagh 2008, 95).

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Opportunities for equal educational assess for women was not legislated until the

passing of Title IX of the Educational Amendments in 1972. The bill stated, “No

person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation

in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education

program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” (Stevenson 2007, 321).

The bill initially was not intended to pertain to sports and was contested by major

universities and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). They worked

to have amendments passed that would exempt “revenue-producing” sports from the

law because they worried that funding would be taken from men’s sports (McDonagh

2008, 80).

One way that the law supposedly provides equity is that women can try out for

male teams if no female teams are offered, but only for noncontact sports (Stevenson

2007), so women would not hurt themselves and so that there would not be what was

considered “inappropriate contact” between men and women, which is based on

outdated sexist assumptions. To keep women from playing on men’s teams, and

especially ones that society deemed were too physical for women, schools developed

team sports specifically for women that had their own sets of rules and conditions,

instituting the prevailing framework for gender equity as “separate but equal” which,

according to researcher Ellen Staurowsky, “is structurally anchored in a value system

that not only emphasizes differences between females and males, but also continues

to value male experience more highly” (Staurowsky et al. 2007).

At the time, the National Organization of Women (NOW) argued that “the

‘separate but equal’ concept is inappropriate for any civil rights regulation,” but they

ultimately conceded because they desired instead “open access … with one exception

… where skill in the given sport is the criteria … separate teams should be provided

for them on the basis that the training and sports traditionally available to women

have been limited.” Fearing that women would not be able to play on men’s teams

because their skills were not as fully realized due to lack of training, NOW saw this

as a stopgap measure until co-ed teams could be a reality (Stevenson 2007). This

unfortunately had an unintended impact on the future of women’s sports.

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Implications of the law were highly debated, and it wasn’t until 1975 that final

regulations for enforcement were released, which required that high schools and

colleges would have to be in compliance by 1978. As schools struggled for

compliance, in 1979 the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare issued a

policy interpretation, based on comments by NOW and other interested parties, which

ruled schools must show either that:

1. The percentage of male and female athletes is substantially proportionate to the

percentage of male and female students enrolled in the school; or

2. The school has a history and a continuing practice of expanding opportunities

for female students; or

3. The school is fully and effectively meeting its female students’ interests and

abilities to participate in sports, and competition exists within the school’s

competitive region. (Staurowsky et al. 2007)

These rules led to many lawsuits and rulings, and by 1999, according to the Women’s

Sports Foundation, “80% or more of all colleges and universities [were] not in

compliance.” They reported that the proportionality test had not been met and that at

the time, male athletes received 31 million dollars more that female athletes in college

athletics scholarships yearly. They also reported that “no institution [had] lost any

federal funds as a result of non-compliance with Title IX. The Office for Civil Rights

[stated] that it [did] not have sufficient staff/budget to fully enforce Title IX” (Title IX

Media Helper 1999). What this means is that while the colleges were required to

make progress towards compliance, there has been no teeth to enforce it. There was

no urgency to make progress, especially since they only had to prove they had “a

history and a continuing practice of expanding opportunities,” even if that expansion

was miniscule and the ratio of unequal opportunity still was large.

Another problematic aspect of the law is that it also includes many exemptions

that keep institutions from full compliance and enforcement, ensuring that women

remained segregated by sex rather than offering equal opportunities. It allowed

religious, military, and “traditionally” single sex institutions to continue to

discriminate based on sex, as well as perpetuating a sex-segregated system for sport

in educational settings (McDonagh 2008, 102). According to McDonagh and

Pappano, forced sex segregation in sports is harmful to women and limits their

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opportunities and “the use of federal funds to support sex-segregated sports teams

should be unconstitutional.” They go even further to write that the federal

government would have prohibited Title IX if it had applied to race rather than sex

(McDonagh 2008, 27).

Despite the inequities in the legislation, it did much to provide an unprecedented

growth in women’s participation and opportunities, especially since women were

almost totally excluded from intercollegiate sports and received little to no funding

prior to the law. According to the National Women’s Law Center, at colleges in 1972,

women received about 2% of the schools’ athletic budgets, while men received more

than 97% of the budget. By 2010-2011, women received about 40% of the athletics

budget, even though women made up 53% of the student body. High schools also saw

increased participation rates. In 1971, 294,015 girls competed and by 2010-2011, the

number was 3,173,549. (“Title IX at 40: Working to Ensure Gender Equity in

Education” July 2014). While initial opponents of aspects of Title IX have argued that

there would be little interest from women to take advantage of increased opportunities

at the expense of men’s programs, the incredible growth in participation disproves

that notion.

C. Youth and recreational soccer

In the United States, soccer is the fastest growing sport for children. In 1980,

there were over 900,000 players (Litterer 2011), but this number quickly grew to over

3 million by 2012, 48% of which were women (US Youth Soccer at a Glance 2012).

Participation in girl’s high school soccer grew even more significantly over that time

period, with only 10,000 girls playing in 1976 and 346,545 playing by 2014 (Gillis

2014).

There are three national associations (the USYSA, the USL, and the American

Youth Soccer Association--AYSO), which work with local affiliates to organize both

local and national competitions. In addition, the U.S. Soccer Development Academy

was created in partnership with the USSF in 2007 to develop and identify elite male

players for the national team and college programs (U.S. Soccer's Development

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Academy Frequently Asked Questions 2007). Because the federation was not willing

to establish a similar program for female players, the ECNL, a non-profit member-

based organization, was developed in 2009 to develop and identify female elite soccer

players, giving them an opportunity to play in a national competitive league (About

the Elite Clubs National League ("ECNL") 2015). In order to help grow the program

for the women’s side, however, the USSF is currently exploring a national residency

program for girls, already in place for the boy’s side, and has increased the fulltime

women’s youth national team staff from zero to eleven in 2015 (Kassouf 2015, "With

world caught up").

There also have been large increases in the number of women who participate in

recreational sports. In 2000, more than 55 million women reported that they

participate in sports and fitness activities regularly, and women represent 41 percent

of all soccer players (Lopiano 2000). In addition, co-ed recreational soccer also is

becoming popular. The United State Adult Soccer Association (USASA) sponsors

local adult associations; however, it is hard to find any reports that quantify how

many participate in these leagues, although an Internet search reveals that most adult

leagues and clubs in the United States offer co-ed competition.

D. Collegiate soccer

Prior to Title IX, the few women’s soccer programs that existed on college

campuses competed as club teams, usually organized by the players, with no paid

coaches and little to no support from the colleges. One of the first women’s soccer

teams to gain varsity status was at Castleton State College in Vermont in 1966

(Women's Soccer: Archives 2015; Litterer 2011). As female students formed more

and more club and intramural teams, pressure was being put on colleges to officially

sanction varsity programs. Brown University started its first varsity season in 1975,

playing only five games. In 1977, only 2.8 percent of colleges had programs for

women (Stevenson 2007), and in 1978 Brown hosted the first Ivy League

Championship, won by Harvard University, who also won the first Eastern Regional

championship in 1979 (Williams 2007, 60).

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The first collegiate national championship in 1980 was hosted by Colorado

College, whose women’s team had achieved varsity status just two years earlier, but

they did not compete in the tournament. Seven teams competed and Cortland State of

New York won the inaugural championship. The tournament was not officially

sanctioned by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW),

which was the sole collegiate women’s collegiate sports association at the time, but

complied with their guidelines so that it would be sanctioned in the future (Colorado

College Women's Soccer History 2011).

In 1981, the University of North Carolina won the first and only women’s

tournament administered by the AIAW. In 1982, the National Collegiate Athletic

Association (NCAA), which had administered the men’s collegiate national soccer

championship since 1959, took over the event. This was controversial because it

meant women would not have any presence at the administrative level and there was

a fear that the NCAA would put more emphasis on men’s teams, leaving the women’s

programs at a lower tier (Litterer 2011). In 1982, North Carolina became the first

NCAA Division I national champions and as of 2014 have won 21 of the 31

championships.

Over the next couple decades, more and more colleges added soccer teams. The

number of women’s programs sanctioned by the NCAA grew from 77 in 1981 to

1,028 in 2014, while the men’s programs grew from 521 teams in 1981 to only 824 in

2014 (Williams 2007, 61; Composition and Sport Sponsorship of the NCAA

Membership 2014). During this time period, some men’s soccer programs were

discontinued, and many blamed Title IX and the women’s programs as the villains,

refusing to acknowledge that men’s gridiron football and basketball programs ate up

the majority of resources allocated to men’s sports. Others argued that Title IX was

also inequitable to men because the women were forcing the men to downsize their

previously dominant programs. New York University professor Richard Epstein in

2003 argued in the Michigan Law Review that after thirty years many universities still

were unable to fulfill the dictates of Title IX, and that because there are more women

proportionately attending colleges and universities and less women proportionately

participating in college athletics, colleges should have more authorization and

35

autonomy when applying the measure. Epstein writes, “The clear implication is that

68,000 male athletes have to be eliminated and a like number of female athletes

added to achieve Title IX’s required proportionality. It cannot be done without

wrecking men’s programs.” He also cited the inferiority of women’s programs due to

“a long tradition of sex-segregated athletics because of the unequal physical skills of

men and women” (Epstein 2003, 1372-1374). Epstein ignores the fact that women’s

collegiate sports have seen a rapid increase in participation, which is exceptional

considering the low numbers prior to Title IX, and that participation hasn’t caught up

because of inequities that still exist in the system. His comments belie an insistence to

hold onto the “long tradition” of notions of male physical superiority and he does not

see a problem with halting the growth that women’s programs have made since Title

IX. He also doesn’t take into account that the law does not hurt men’s programs like

football, because under what is called the “Jarvis Amendment,” increased

expenditures are allowed based on the “nature of the sport” and if the equipment or

resources needed by one sport costs more, then the school can spend more. Title IX

does not require that equal dollars be spent on men’s and women’s sports, except that

the same dollars must be spent (proportional to participation) on scholarships, and

maintains that the “quality” of “treatment” and “benefits” are more important than the

dollars spent (Title IX Media Helper 1999). So while millions can be spent on men’s

teams, much less can be spent on women’s teams as long as an institution can argue

that it provides an “equitable” difference.

Despite these inequities, the number of women’s programs increased in other

associations that govern college sports. The National Association of Intercollegiate

Athletics (NAIA) formed in 1937 to govern athletics at smaller colleges. In 1984, it

held the first women’s soccer national championship, and in 2014 there were 202

women’s teams who competed (PlayNAIA — Soccer 2014). The National Junior

College Athletic Association was formed in 1938 after the NCAA refused to admit

junior and community colleges from competing with four-year colleges (Krugg

2012). In 2014, there were 197 college women’s soccer teams competing (Colleges:

Women's Soccer 197 Colleges 2015).

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With all three associations combined, in 2014, there were 37,760 women and

37,890 men competing in 1,667 sanctioned college soccer programs (PlayNAIA —

Soccer 2014), which shows that at least in soccer Title IX has had an equalizing

effect on opportunities for participation at the college level.

It is important to note that even more students play at the intramural level. The

National Intramural Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA) serves as a resource for

collegiate intramural programs and estimates there are 8.1 million students who

regularly participate in campus recreational sports programs (About NIRSA 2014). In

2014, the association held the 21st Annual NIRSA National Soccer Championships,

and 96 teams (48 men’s teams and 48 women’s teams) competed (NIRSA National

Soccer Championships 2014). Because intramural sports are sanctioned and managed

by universities, they also need to make progress toward compliance with Title IX

requirements. Some colleges, in an effort to encourage women to participate,

instituted policies that are recently coming under fire for being sexist. The intramural

co-ed soccer program at Appalachian State University has a policy of awarding two

points if a female scores a goal and one point if a goal is scored by a male. In 2014,

when female players complained, saying the rule perpetuated gender stereotypes and

was outdated, ASU’s activity coordinator Chelsea Watson said the policy was an

“industry standard” and that the “majority of intramural programs at different

universities play that way as well.” Although ASU originally instituted the rule to

encourage women to play, Watson did acknowledge that the co-ed program was the

largest division in the intramural system and that participation was no longer an issue.

One of the players, Sunnit Ryan, said:

Women do not need an incentive to play. We are athletically capable beings with

an honest desire to compete alongside our male peers in an environment of

equality. I personally do not want to be rewarded because I am perceived as

weaker and less likely to score a goal. I want to play the game I love the way it

was meant to be played. (Lit 2014)

What this suggests is that there are even more cultural shifts starting to happen at

the grassroots level. Some women are finding more confidence in themselves as

athletes, and in their ability to compete on the same level as the opposite sex, even if

it is at only the intramural level. These rules were initially established to ensure that

37

women would be included in the game, have the ball passed to them, and be able to

make a difference on the field; but this comes at a cost: their implied inability to

compete with men, something that women are starting to realize is an outdated

cultural construct.

While participation has increased at all colleges and athletes are fighting

stereotypes, the opportunities for female coaches and administrators have declined

since Title IX. In the early 1970s, 90 percent of women’s collegiate teams were

coached by women. By 2012, only 43 percent of women’s programs were coached by

women, and since 2000, 90 percent of all hiring of coaches for women’s teams have

gone to men. Opportunities for women to coach men are virtually non-existent, and

women have held only 2 percent of these positions at a steady rate for over 30 years

(“Title IX at 40: Working to Ensure Gender Equity in Education” 2014). In 2015,

Erika True, the head coach of women's soccer at Indiana State University, said,

"There are an absolute ton of heartbreaking stories that I hear day in and day out

about females that are being forced out. There is a stigma that females are not as good

as or as strong of coaches as their male counterparts." Since Title IX, as women’s

programs grew and coaching positions became paid positions, men started applying

for the jobs. Another factor, according to Beth Goetz, executive associate athletics

director for the University of Minnesota, “It's a factor that men are still doing most of

the hiring and often end up selecting from the networks from which they are most

familiar, which are majority male" (Hunsinger Benbow 2015). In 2002, 83 percent of

all athletic directors were male, and the more prestigious the job, the higher the

percentage of male administrators (96.1 percent male in Division I) (Women and

Sports in the United States : A Documentary Reader 2007, 347).

Another reason women don’t get coaching jobs is due to stereotypes about women

and sports, specifically fears that a woman may be homosexual, especially if she is

not married, according to Erin E. Buzuvis, director of the Center for Gender &

Sexuality Studies at Western New England University School of Law. Buzuvis

reported, "In general, it is perceived that lesbians are bad for the image of women's

sport. Lesbians are saddled with negative stereotypes such as sexually seductive and

predatory, masculine, aggressive and harmful toward children" (Hunsinger Benbow

38

2015). The reasons behind these stereotypes are laden with a long history of

discrimination towards homosexuality, but also but can also be seen as a reaction

towards gender stereotypes that see women as a threat to male control over sport and

patriarchal sports hierarchies. When NBA Washington Wizards’ player Jason Collins

announced that he was homosexual in April of 2013, The Atlantic reporter Garance

Franke-Ruta wrote about why that was such a big deal. She writes, “Female

professional athletes are already gender non-conforming. Male ones are still

worshiped as exemplars of traditional masculinity. Extremely sporty women have to

fight stereotyping that they are lesbians and ignore all manner of unkind commentary

about how they are mannish, while sporty men are seen as participating in a form of

the masculine ideal” (Franke-Ruta 2013). It is interesting that this form of hetero-

normative bias is prevalent at the highest levels of collegiate athletics and

administration. The pressure to conform to what are seen as “feminine-appropriate

behaviors” is what Hargreaves maintains helps maintain male-dominant structures

and results in inequality and discrimination.

The lack of female presence in paid positions is not only prevalent in collegiate

sports, but around the globe. In the FIFA “Women’s Football Survey” results that

came out in 2014, the estimated total number of women on association executive

committees is only 8 percent, women only represent 7 percent of all registered

coaches, and account for 10 percent of all referees in the world (FIFA 2014, 11-

14"Women's Football Survey"). While these numbers are climbing, they are doing so

at a slow pace.

E. The women’s national team and the 1999 effect

While participation and competition for women’s collegiate soccer grew at an

incredible rate from 1972 to 1981, it wasn’t until 1985 that a women’s national team

was formed. In 1984, Marty Mankamyer, the first and only woman on the executive

committee of the U.S. Soccer Federation at the time, threatened the association with a

lawsuit unless they began a women’s national team. Other pressures, including

corporate sponsorship from Nike that indicated funds should be used for women as

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well, led to the establishment in 1985 of the first women’s national team that was put

together quickly to participate in an international tournament in Italy, which consisted

of four games. The team lost three of their games to Italy, Denmark, and England, but

then tied a second game with Denmark. Prior to the tournament, the players only

trained for three days together as a team and there no salaries were paid to the

players, the new coach Greg Ryan wasn’t reimbursed for his expenses for six months,

nor did the team have their own uniforms—they had to use men’s uniforms and the

night before their flight, the players had to mofify them to fit (Longman 2000, 62-63).

According to player Michelle Akers, “We received ten dollars per diem (for meals

and expenses) the few days a year we got together, fifteen dollars a day when

traveling overseas” (Akers 2000). While this was a breakthrough for the women, it is

also an example of how the women’s efforts were undervalued.

In 1986, the team received a new coach, Anson Dorrance, who was also the coach

of the University of North Carolina’s team which had won the first three NCAA

national championships. In those early years, the national team rarely played. In six

years, from1985 to 1990, the team only played 36 games total, playing only one game

in 1989. Most games were played out of the country and the team survived on a shoe-

string budget, flying to Italy once on a cargo plane, staying in hotel rooms that had no

running water and infested with roaches, and living off junk food to avoid eating food

they couldn’t identify (Longman 2000, 64-69).

1n 1991, when Akers was asked to give a speech at the Soccer Industry Council

of America, something no woman had done before, she talked about how her

teammates had postponed careers and families and took breaks from their education,

in order to play for the national team, yet the U.S. Soccer Federation did not fully

support the team. Afterwards, the federation decided to give each player one thousand

dollars per month in expenses from July to November (Akers 2000, 117-118), as they

readied for and competed at the first ever Women’s World Cup in China, which they

won by beating Norway. There was little media interest and when they arrived at the

JFK airport, there were only four people to welcome them, which according to Akers,

were “two reporters, the coach of the Men’s National Team, and a friend of mine”

(Akers 2000, 140).

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In 1995, under their third coach, Tony DiCicco, the U.S. team came in third place

in the second Women’s World Cup and their rivals Norway took first. The two teams

met for a rematch in the semi-finals at the 19996 Olympic Games when the Olympic

Committee decided to include women’s soccer for the first time. The U.S. team beat

Norway and won the Gold medal (Longman 2000, 71-72). While over 65,000 people

were in attendance to watch the team beat China in the final, NBC’s coverage of the

Olympic games only showed thirty seconds of highlights. In a broadcast following

the games, sports journalist Dick Crepeau admonished NBC, noting that while three

women’s team sports won gold medals, combined they only received minutes of

broadcast coverage. Crepeau said:

The NBC Olympics seemed to be driven by many of the traditional visions of

women and sport… Instead what NBC presented was hour upon hour of

swimming and gymnastics, two traditional women’s sports displaying women in

swimsuits and little women in tights… There is a market for and interest in

women’s sports, including women’s team sports and women athletes over four-

feet six-inches tall. (Women and Sports in the United States : A Documentary

Reader 2007)

Despite the successes of these athletes, the media coverage of the event demonstrated

how the media continued to reflect prior society-constructed gender viewpoints. In a

study titled “Gender Bias in the 1996 Olympic Games,” published in the Journal of

Sport & Social Issues, researchers noted that in the 1996 games, the media portrayed

only sports that depicted a “feminine image… enhancing existing societal norms

“which “effectively shapes the public agenda and influences the public’s judgment

about the world of sport, and the athletes that are a part of that competition.” They

concluded that the media reports on men’s and women’s sports in different ways,

which “reinforces messages that amplify male hegemony not only in sport but in

other realms of life.” They did, however, report that when compared to the 1992

Olympic games, the coverage of women’s sports did improve both quantitatively and

qualitatively, yet “Despite the ‘cultural messages’ that suggest that sport is an

appropriate avenue for women to now compete in, there remains an underlying

message that while competing, women should still conform to society’s image of

what is deemed appropriate. Until the media can totally view women as ‘athletes’ and

41

not ‘bodies,’ it is likely that this situation will continue” (Higgs, Weiller, and Martin

2003, 52-64).

It wasn’t until the 1999 Women’s World Cup that took place in the United States

that the media began to change the way that women’s soccer was covered. The final

game, in which the U.S. beat China in penalty kicks, was held at the Rose Bowl in

Pasadena, California and had 93,000 spectators in attendance and worldwide media

television coverage. In China, between 100-200 million people watched the coverage,

(Longman 2000, 79) and in the U.S. an estimated 40 million watched the game (FIFA

2015, "FIFA Women's World Cup - USA 1999"). Prior to the tournament, the U.S.

national team members had gradually received more support from the U.S. Soccer

Federation: they were being paid an average of $30,000 to $40,000 in 1999, many of

the players had corporate endorsement deals, and the team had been in training camp

for 6 months prior to the World Cup. The federation also spent 5 million dollars on a

television promotional campaign prior to the World Cup (Longman 2000, 34).

The women also had something else to spur them on. Young girls would flock to

their exhibition games in big numbers. Midfielder Kristine Lilly said, “I want these

girls to know that they can play at the highest level. We didn't wait for autographs

because there wasn't anyone to wait for” (Longman 1999). Since the women’s

national team had been established, the players themselves had to work to promote

their sport, not just for themselves, but to ensure that future generations of girls could

have the opportunities that weren’t there for them when they started. Player Julie

Foudy, ESPN women’s sports journalist, reflected back on the 1999 World Cup and

said that the players knew even before the games that the game was fundamentally

more about women’s rights than it was about soccer (Heywood and Dworkin 2003,

viii). Mariah Burton Nelson, author and former professional basketball player, also

saw how the 1999 World Cup and the growing popularity of women’s professional

sports had changed culture:

Little girls could see successful women athletes as role models. Little boys could

see how talented the women were and how they were being taken seriously by

other adults. All of that makes a huge impression. Boys were wearing jerseys of

female players, having female athletic role models; that’s new, in the last 10

years. It changes how boys think about women. It will change their relationships

with women. (Longman 2000, 21)

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In their book, Heywood and Dworkin discuss a radio call-in show that they were

part of after the 1999 victory, and reported that some of the early callers argued that

the U.S. would never support women’s professional leagues because “women just

aren’t as interesting players, and that when the American consumer shells out their

hard-earned dollars for sports entertainment, it will never be for girls. We argued

otherwise, and the amazingly affirmative calls that followed those of the naysayers

indicated that our cultural landscape has in some ways shifted for good.” Male callers

talked about bonding with their athletic daughters and how the sport had taught them

valuable lessons. Others talked about how much they loved to watch women play

(Heywood and Dworkin 2003, 32-33).

With the World Cup victory, many of the players became overnight stars,

receiving media coverage and covers in Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, People and

Time. Players appeared on Wheaties boxes and Nike commercials, including a

Gatorade commercial in which player Mia Hamm competed against NBA basketball

player Michael Jordan to the tune “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better”

(Heywood and Dworkin 2003, 34). Hamm was called by sports reporter Jim Litke the

“first real team superstar that women's sports produced, and as such, she's

undoubtedly inspired more girls to step onto a playing surface than all other female

athletes combined” (Litke 2004). When Hamm retired in 2004, she was the reigning

all-time scorer, male or female, in the history of international football with 158 goals;

however, David Zirin, sports editor for the Nation Magazine, bemoaned the fact that

there was very little media coverage or tributes in the broader media. Zirin wrote:

This stands as yet another example of women’s place on the back of the athletic

bus. Call it the “Kournikova effect” (named after Anna Kournikova who made it

to the cover of Sports Illustrated without having won a single tournament). It’s

not enough for a woman to have blistering athletic talent. She also has to date

cheesy celebrities, strip to her skivvies, and basically become Paris Hilton with

muscle tone to generate any attention. (Zirin 2007, 46)

The women were also guests on Late Night with David Letterman, both before

and after the tournament, and Letterman referred to them as “hot” and “Babe City.”

Some saw this as sexist because he emphasized their physical beauty more than

athletic achievements, which is not typically the focus when interviewing male

43

athletes. The players played along with Letterman, however, knowing they were

getting publicity for their sport and the tournament in over 4 million homes

(Longman 2000, 34).

Foudy said that even after the team garnered a lot of media attention, “some

critics claimed we were just getting all this attention because we were an attractive-

looking group. Some people said the emphasis was on our looks, not our athletic

achievements. Since the World Cup, that question has come up frequently in

reference to women’s sports— valuing female athletes for their bodies and looks, not

for what they have accomplished” (Heywood and Dworkin 2003, viii). Prior to the

1999 victory, Foudy and her husband, coach Ian Sawyer, appeared together running

in swimsuits in the 1999 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, although her muscular

athletic body in the photo is different than the typical provocative model poses

usually seen in the issue. Foudy, who has served as the president of the Women’s

Sports Foundation and is an advocate for women's rights, said in 1999, “I like to think

that, as this book says, my teammates and I and all my other fellow female athletes

have contributed to a world where I can express myself through competition and no

one tells me not to be aggressive or tough, a world where no one thinks athletic

women are unnatural or unfeminine” (Women and Sports in the United States : A

Documentary Reader 2007, ix).

What made the most noise in the media was how player Brandi Chastain, after

scoring the winning penalty kick, took off her jersey in celebration, exposing her

sports bra, a moment that was captured and featured on the covers of Newsweek,

Sports Illustrated, and Time Magazine. While some saw this as a gesture of

empowerment, others saw it as too revealing and a reinforcement of cultural

stereotypes of women as sex objects and not athletes (Heywood and Dworkin 2003,

34-39). Chastain herself called it a spontaneous act: “It was truly genuine and it was

insane and it was a relief and it was joy and it was gratitude all wrapped into one”

(Gee 2014). Chastain noted “that taking off one’s jersey to celebrate a goal is

common in men’s soccer at all levels, all over the world” and that while she doesn’t

regret doing it, “I do wish more attention could be paid to the many other things my

team and I have done” (Chastain 2004, xiv-xv). Like Foudy’s picture in Sports

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Illustrated, the photo of Chastain showed how muscular and fit she was, and Chastain

reveled in how her body appeared. She said, "I ran my ass off for this body. I have

biceps and shoulders as big as my dad's. I'm not going to hide it” (Longman 2000,

37).

Prior to the World Cup, however, Chastain had posed naked (with a soccer ball

mostly covering her up) for Gear Magazine. This made some of her teammates

uncomfortable, including Foudy and Akers, especially since after the World Cup the

magazine printed more of the pictures from the shoot which were considered more

provocative. Chastain maintains that while she did the shoot for what she thought was

“the right reason. If I had known what kind of magazine it was, I wouldn't have done

it. That's my fault. I'm always naive.” In 2000, Burton Nelson maintained that posing

nude is problematic for women.

I don't think women can retain their dignity--or it would be in rare circumstances

if they did--if they take off their clothes. We make up lots of excuses. We try to

show off power. To redefine beauty. But we can't control what people do with

those images. There is still a struggle about who's going to define female beauty,

who's going to define what women should wear and how they should behave.

Women's sports will not have arrived until we are writing about those rules

ourselves. (Longman 2000)

Controversies over how members of the national team let themselves be portrayed

continued in recent years and reflect an evolving view of how athletic women look at

their bodies. In 2011, goalkeeper Hope Solo posed nude and was the cover

photograph for the ESPN magazine’s Body Issue, an annual publication whose stated

purpose is to celebrate athletes’ amazing bodies, and has featured nude photos of both

male and female athletes from many different sports. Solo said she wanted to do the

photo shoot because, “Growing up, I felt insecure about my build. I didn’t feel very

feminine. But as time when on, I learned to completely embrace my body. It’s helped

me attain all my dreams and goals. I didn’t have an issue posing nude, because now I

see my body as empowering.” When asked about her status as a sex symbol, she said,

“My entire purpose is trying to be the best in the game, and if that exudes beauty too,

that’s pretty powerful. It means the image of the typical female body type is finally

evolving” (Ain).

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In 2012, player Alex Morgan appeared wearing only body paint in the Sports

Illustrated “Swimsuit Edition” and again in 2014 wearing a bikini. She also appeared

for the magazine’s “Music Issue,” and dressed like pop singer Katy Perry. Morgan,

like Solo, said that she wanted to do the Sports Illustrated shoots because of the

exposure it gives the U.S. women’s national team and “for young girls to see the

confidence that I am showing and that I am expressing.” Also, like Solo, she

expressed pride in her athletic and muscular body, but acknowledged that sexism is

still a problem: "Being objectified, for a female, is going to happen no matter if you're

posing for a magazine or walking down the street, that's just going to happen in every

female's life" (McGowan 2015). According to Morgan’s agent, Dan Levy, fear of

objectification and the fight for legitimization as a female athlete is no longer as much

of a pressure as it used to be. Levy says the new pressure for female athletes is the

ability to achieve financial security through commercial endorsements because they

don’t make as much money as male athletes (Griffin 2013), something that Morgan

has excelled at. Morgan is more than just a soccer star; she is also a brand. She made

over a million dollars in 2013 with endorsements from Nike, Panasonic, AT&T and

Coca-Cola, and has over one million followers on Twitter, more than any male soccer

player (Wahl 2013). Since then, she has become a spokeswoman for ChapStick, has

been on the cover of Cocoa Pebbles cereal, and has written a top-grossing book for

young girls (AlexMorganSoccer.com Updates 2015). Morgan is now the face of the

U.S. women’s team, not only for her prowess on the field, but because of her shear

exposure, proving that female athletes could be accepted by mainstream America,

appreciated for their strength and their muscles, but could also achieve celebrity and

make large profits for themselves and the companies they endorse.

It was the 1999 Women’s World Cup that started the cultural shift regarding the

viability and marketability of women’s soccer, but it also made the sport’s governing

bodies, including FIFA, stand up and take notice and put further investment into the

sport. Since 1999, FIFA has organized a symposium on women’s football every four

years at the FIFA Women’s World Cup to further develop the game. A FIFA U-19

Women’s Championship was first held in 2002 (later renamed the U-20 Women’s

World Cup in 2006), and a U17 Women’s World Cup was added in 2008. In 2003,

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FIFA officially started ranking women’s national teams. In addition, FIFA increased

the percentage of funds dedicated to women and has launched new women’s football

development programs and initiatives to encourage participation worldwide (FIFA

2013, "Women's Football: Progression"). FIFA also started to include women in their

Player of the Year awards (which they had been awarding to male players since

1991), choosing Mia Hamm as its first female recipient in 2001. Michelle Akers was

named the first women to receive the FIFA Player of the Century award in 2000.

Akers was on the original 1985 U.S women’s national team, the first woman to play

professionally overseas, and the first women to sign a shoe-endorsement deal. She

helped the U.S. win two World Cups and one Olympic gold medal (“Michelle Akers

Named FIFA Player of the Century” 2015).

The U.S. Women’s National team continued to dominate into the 2000s; however,

they have not been able to win a World Cup since 1999. In 2003 and 2007, Germany

won the titles, with the U.S. placing 3rd

both times. In 2011, The U.S. team fell to

Japan, in what seemed would be a penalty kick shoot-out reminiscent of the 1999

final game, but this time the Japanese team came out victorious (FIFA 2011, "FIFA

Women's World Cup™ History"). Younger stars emerged like Morgan and Abby

Wambach, who as a young girl had pictures of Mia Hamm on her wall and once got

Hamm’s autograph. By 2014, Wambach has scored more national team goals (178)

than any other player in the world, both male or female, and won the 2012 FIFA

Female Player of the Year award.

F. Professional women’s leagues

The success of the 1999 Women’s World Cup led many to believe that

professional women’s soccer leagues would be financially viable as well, and that the

league would be able to garner some of the large crowds that the women saw in the

World Cup and attract lucrative endorsement and advertising sponsors.

National amateur leagues already had been established, but many thought the time

had come to have a division one professional team. Earlier in 1994, an amateur W-

League had been established by the United States Interregional Soccer League

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(USISL), which had organized amateur and semi-professional leagues for men. It

later changed its name in 1999 to the United Soccer League (USL). Many of the

national team players and several international stars played in the W-League (or the

Women’s Premier Soccer League which was formed in 1998) in order to continue to

compete and hone their skills, and both leagues continue to operate today (Williams

2007, 64-65). These were the only other options elite players (who weren’t still

playing collegiate ball) had, unless they wanted to play overseas. With little to no

pay, players had to subsist on the help from family and friends in order to subsidize

their playing.

In 2000, the first attempt at a professional league was called the Women's United

Soccer Association (WUSA). Its first season started in the Spring of 2001, with

twenty of the U.S. national team players (who also were shareholders) spread across

eight teams. The league only lasted three years and lost over $100 million dollars.

Attendance initially averaged about 8,000 per game, but slipped to 6,700 near the

end. According to Jean Williams, “Some blamed player wages, others a failure to tie

in investors for long-term partnerships and all agreed that the economic downturn

after 11 September 2001 added to the league's demise. The failure of the league was

read in some quarters as a synecdoche for the lack of viability of women's football,

and female sports spectacle, globally” (Williams 2013, 42-43).

The national team players, however, were not ready to abandon their dreams for a

viable professional league. Former Yahoo, Inc. executive Tonya Antonucci, who also

played collegiate soccer at Stanford with Julie Foudy, rallied investors, but also stated

that “we can be a little more realistic about the development of the business side of

the sport,” realizing that corporate America would not fully support the league. The

new league, however, was optimistic about attracting youth players as fans (“U.S.

Women's Pro League Prepares to Blast Back Onto Soccer Scene” 2006). The new

league, Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), did not start up until 2009, with seven

teams competing during its first two years, and six during its third and final season.

Players were paid an average of $32,000 per season, and teams played in smaller

stadiums (“L.A. team folds; Marta, players to be dispersed to new homes” 2010).

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After three years in which four teams folded and three were added, the WPS

folded after a costly legal dispute with Dan Borislow, owner of the MagicJack team,

who sued the league. The league accused him of a range of violations, including

"unprofessional and disparaging treatment of his players to failure to pay his bills,"

but later reached a confidential out-of-court settlement (AssociatedPress 2012).

Sports Business Daily reported that bad television ratings and attendance, lack of

support from the U.S Soccer Federation, problems with the league’s business model,

high overhead costs relative to the league's respective teams' total revenues, and a

lack of resources as other reasons for the league’s failure (AssociatedPress 2012).

At this point, many thought that any additional efforts to revive a women’s

professional league would be a failure, again citing the public’s disinterest in

supporting women’s sports. While Fox Soccer Channel did air one WPS game each

Sunday afternoon, there was little other media to support the league. The Women’s

Sports Foundation reported that in 2009 network affiliates dedicated only 1.6% of

airtime to women’s sports, down from 6.3% in 2004. With little broadcast revenue,

teams had less money to spend on marketing efforts. They also cited the men’s Major

League Soccer (MLS) as an example of how hard it is to actually start a new league:

MLS reportedly lost an estimated $250 million during its first five years. But

then, Adidas injected $150 million into MLS over 10 years. The league started

building soccer-specific stadiums and investing in their talent and equipment.

They signed a television deal. The average franchise is now worth $103 million,

up more than 175% over the last five years, and the league keeps growing.

(Zetzman 2015)

While the $100 million loss of investment by the WUSA seems like a lot, it is

much less than the $250 million lost by MLS in its first five years.

The third attempt to start a women’s professional soccer league (National

Women’s Soccer League – NWSL) has proven to be more successful than its

predecessors, due to a new business model and support from the U.S. Soccer,

Canadian, and Mexican Soccer Federations. Each federation pays the salaries for its

own national team players, and the U.S. Soccer Federation fully funds each team’s

front office expenses, including websites, referees, and public relations. At the start of

the new league’s first season in 2013, Foudy said she believed this business model

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would work, but worried that the lower salaries for non-national team members (an

average of $15,000 per player and a range of $6,000-$30,000) might hurt the quality

of the league and keep international stars from wanting to play in the league, as well

as lose U.S. players who might be lured away to play for more money overseas

(Foudy 2013). The low salaries of NWSL players (who are not national team

allocated players and earn about $200,000 a year) are not enough to earn a living, and

when compared to the salaries of men in the MLS (the lowest paid players in 2013

received $31,125), (Player Salary Information 2014), the disparity for women is

apparent, as the lowest paid man made more than the highest paid non-subsidized

woman player.

At the end of the second season, some young NWSL players retired, including

Courtney Jones, 24, who said, “We don’t get compensated like the men so it’s

difficult to decide if you’re going to make your life out of soccer or figure out another

way to make a living” (Lauretta 2015).

Another thing that set the third incarnation of a professional women’s league apart

was the ownership of teams by MLS franchises. In the first year, 2012-2013, Merritt

Paulson, owner of the Portland Timbers in Oregon, became the owner of the Portland

Thorns, and the new team benefitted from the established fan base for soccer in the

city, and the ability to share resources with the men’s team. Since joining the MLS,

the Timbers have had sell-out crowds at every home game and its supporters group,

the Timber’s Army and its earlier incarnations, have a long history of supporting

soccer in Portland (Goldberg 2014).

In its inaugural year, the Thorns not only won the first league title, but also set

unprecedented attendance records. At the season home opener, 16,479 fans were in

attendance, and the average attendance for the season was 13,320 (Goldberg 2014),

which was better than two men’s MLS teams, the San Jose Earthquakes and Chivas

USA (2013 MLS Standings and Leaders 2013, 4). According to Foudy, "The model

is the healthiest we've seen because of that support. Now you have to show you can

sustain it. You see what a difference having a Merritt Paulson makes — already they

have an incredible franchise on their MLS side. To bring in an owner who has the

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infrastructure, who has the staff, who has a lot of the stadiums, that makes a world of

difference" (Murphy 2013).

In an article titled, “Are the Portland Thorns the first ‘real club’ in women’s

football?” published by The Guardian newspaper, author Zach Dundas writes,

“female sides attract no significant constituency and often exist at the fringes of

established (i.e., male) clubs, connected to famous names like Arsenal and Barcelona

by frail threads of branding and co-sponsorship,” citing the fact that even in other

countries attendance at women’s games are dismal: Germany’s Bundesliga averages

1,185 spectators per match; England’s FA Women’s Super League averages 728;

Japan’s Nadeshiko League draws fewer than 2,000 per match; and France’s most

successful women’s club, Olympique Lyonnais, plays their games in a stadium that

seats 2,200 (Dundas 2015). Unfortunately, in 2013, the NWSL’s other seven teams

combined (without the Thorns numbers factored in), only drew an average attendance

of 2,978 per game (Goldberg 2014), and in 2014 the other eight teams only drew an

average of 2,966 per game (Gehrke 2014).

Dundas writes that the Thorns are different than other clubs due to its supporters

group, the Rose City “Riveters, [who] took advantage of the Army’s existing

infrastructure to get their own merchandise, tifo, and away support operations up and

running,” creating a club culture similar to what exists in the men’s game. It also

helps that the Timbers organization provides the women’s side with an established

infrastructure, and respect. Canadian international Christine Sinclair, one of the top

players in the world and a Thorn, said, “We’re treated as professionals. We play and

train at world-class facilities. We’re treated like soccer players” (Dundas 2015).

This respect is also shown in other ways. Paulson, said, “The club crest is up on

the side of the stadium, the same size as the Timbers’ crest. It’s not a side project. It is

as full-on as we can make it.” And while many consider the Thorns an outlier,

Paulson is optimistic about the future of the league. Paulson said, “I think the big

takeaway from the Thorns so far is that it’s not impossible. There are skeptics who

say that the women’s club game will always be a fringe deal. Well, we draw crowds

that many men’s club teams would love to draw” (Dundas 2015).

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The team hasn’t been without some, if minor, controversy. In the first year that

the Timbers organization started to market and create merchandizing for a women’s

team, they entered new territory. A t-shirt sold at the team store had the slogan,

“Feelin’ Thorny?” When fans complained and set up a Facebook page to protest,

saying the shirts inappropriately sexualized the female athletes, Mike Golub, the

Timbers/Thorns chief operating officer said, "We were surprised. Yes. Definitely," he

said. "You know, we've honestly never had a conversation, 'Do we do things

differently because they're men or women?' We were just thinking about soccer.”

Golub confessed that he “saw the humor and irreverence in it, as did most people. But

I understand some of the basis for the complaints" (Griffin 2013). The Oregonian

reporter Anna Griffin wrote, “Historically, sex appeal has been a larger part of

marketing women's sports than men's. Playing off a player's physical attributes is a

way to reach casual fans… Packaging female athletes as sex objects -- or playing

with sexual innuendo in the marketing of women's sports -- is also a way to fight any

underlying discomfort some fans might feel at the notion of women competing with

the same sweaty intensity as men” (Griffin 2013). The t-shirts had been one of the

top-selling items in the Timbers store before it was pulled. At the inception of the first

women’s professional team in Portland, this type of marketing was a successful way

to reach men, who might not otherwise buy t-shirts for a women’s team, as the shirts

were tied to heterosexual imagery.

Comments posted on the OregonLive website ranged from, “Who cares if certain

groups are offended?” to “Lighten up” or “Get a life,” to “just because some filthy-

minded puritans with no sense of humor get their knickers in a twist is no reason to

even acknowledge them, let alone abandon a product that can help spark interest in a

team that is already facing an uphill struggle.” Twenty-five posts were written

making fun of those who were offended by the t-shirts, some who saw the pun as

simply lighthearted and clever, while only three were written supporting the team’s

decision to pull the merchandise. Yet, because women have to battle sexism and

objectification on a daily basis, and because women’s sports have a history of not

being taken seriously, the slogan struck some as unprofessional and juvenile. One

person wrote, “the last thing we need is for the team to be used for sophomoric, sexist

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marketing purposes. i have a great sense of humor, which is part of the reason the t-

shirts were so offensive: they're not funny. sexist crap is never funny. it's just sexist

crap.” Within twenty-four hours of the Facebook page protest, which already had 135

likes, Golub pulled the shirts from the store (Brettman 2013). It is hard to know if the

organization wanted to show a greater sensitivity in its portrayal of female athletes, or

if it was simply re-thinking its marketing strategies in order to not lose potential ticket

sales. It seems to have succeeded, as the Thorns sold about 8,000 season tickets its

first year, and 10,000 its second year (Bird 2015). The shirts, however, silently made

their way back onto the team store shelves and a newer version was in plentiful

supply at the April 11, 2015 season-opener.

In the second year of the league, another MLS franchise, the Houston Dynamo,

encouraged by the popular and financial success of the Timbers/Thorns franchises,

launched the second women’s team to be affiliated with an MLS team, expanding the

league to nine teams (Goldberg 2014). Richard Farley, who covers women’s soccer

for NBCSports.com, said, “Portland made a ton of money last year, and Houston is

going to make money this year. They’ll be able to leverage their MLS resources

without significant commitment. They control the facilities, and that’s traditionally

been the debilitating thing” (Just 2014).

While the Houston Dash had an attendance of 8,097 at their first home game,

which they lost 1-0 to the Thorns, during the second NWSL season, overall they had

the second-highest average attendance at 4,539, behind the Thorn’s 13,362 average.

While second year attendance numbers for the league dropped, they fell only 3.5

percent, which is much less than the 14 percent decline the WUSA and the 23 percent

decline the WPS experienced in their second years, which according to Plush is

typical after the excitement generated by an inaugural season (Gehrke 2014).

In April of 2015, the NWSL started its third season and the outlook for the league

is good, according to its new commissioner Jeff Plush. All nine teams from the

previous year will compete, and Plush is in talks with a six other cities who are

considering joining the league, including interest for a team that that would be owned

by MLS’s Real Salt Lake in Utah. Plush hopes that, even though the summer season

will be interrupted and affected by players missing games due to the Women’s World

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Cup, the league will benefit from the increased exposure and popularity of the event.

“All eyes of the soccer-viewing population will be focused on the Women’s World

Cup, and it’s our opportunity and responsibility to capture that,” Plush said.

“Importantly, I want us to realize it’s not a one-off situation. We’re going to have the

World Cup every four years; we’re going to have the Olympics every four years.

There are other marquee soccer events. We can take advantage of them” (Bird 2015).

Another sign that NWSL teams are optimistic about their future is that some of

the teams are starting development teams for youth. Currently, the Boston Breakers

have an academy team competing in the only national girl’s youth league, the Elite

Clubs National League (ECNL), and the Portland Timbers/Thorns have taken over

management of the state’s Olympic Development (ODP) teams, as well as academy

teams for both the boys and the girls (Bird 2012).

Plush said, “When you get to the point where you have young girls aspiring to

play not just professionally, but play professionally in their market, that’s an exciting

development and one that will really act as an accelerant toward the long-term growth

of our league” (Bird 2015). While many young girls might not yet be aware of the

increased opportunity to play at a professional level, the thousands of players

competing in college now have a chance to play professionally after graduating. At

the 2015 NWSL draft, Jim Gabarra, coach of Sky Blue FC was quoted in a FIFA

WWC tweet, “Today, 160 players were striving for 30+ @NWSL draft spots. Shows

how many players dreaming of playing in league" (@FIFAWWC 2015). An increase

in competition for roster spots should also help increase the quality of players for the

league.

G. Media coverage of women’s professional sports

While the Thorns still outpace the other teams in the league for fan support, it

remains to be seen how mainstream women’s soccer will become for the rest of the

league. During the first season of the NWSL, games were available for viewing via

YouTube or through individual team's websites. Fox Soccer Channel agreed to

broadcast 9 games, including the final (“NWSL, FSMG announce national TV

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agreement” 2013). During the second year, the NWSL announced a new one-year

deal for ESPN2 to broadcast six games, and provide live-streaming on the internet of

three additional games through ESPN3 (“NWSL and ESPN announce national

broadcast agreement” 2014). For the 2015 season, no broadcasting deals had been

made prior to the start of the season, although the NWSL announced the games would

be streamed through the NWSL’s YouTube channel (“NWSL to live stream 2015

season via Youtube” 2015). Unfortunately, as the league looks toward expansion,

media broadcasting deals and media exposure for the teams is not growing with the

league. While during its first couple years the NWSL had deals with cable broadcast

channels, those games reached only its premier customers or were available to

viewers who had a fast enough internet connection to watch the games, which makes

the games much more difficult to access and less appealing if the broadcast quality is

inferior.

While some might argue that the lack of media exposure reveals that there is no

market for women’s professional soccer, researchers Michael Messner, Margaret

Carlisle Duncan, and Kerry Jensen argue:

To gain popularity a sport must be visible, which in our society means gaining

television and print media attention. But for networks to assume the cost of

televising a sport, they must be confident that advertisers will pay to promote their

products during telecasts. Marketers base their decisions on the perceived

popularity of the particular sport or league as they try to gauge market size and

potential profits and losses. This becomes a vicious circle for promoters of

women’s sports: sports promoters need adequate media coverage to attract an

audience for a sport, yet promoters cannot interest the media in covering a sport

unless it is already deemed popular. (Messner, Duncan, and Jensen 2007, 265)

They also note that while there has been an increase in female participation in sport,

the media has not caught up. The authors cite studies that show in the 1980-1990s that

over 90 percent of newspaper sports sections and 90 percent of television newscasts

covered men’s sports, and only 5 percent on women’s sports, and that in Sports

Illustrated Sports for Kids, male athletes appeared in visual images twice as much as

female athletes (Messner, Duncan, and Jensen 2007, 265-266). This sends a message

to the general public about the importance (or lack of importance) of women’s sports,

and fuels the arguments that keep the media from changing what and how they cover

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sports. It also affects young girls interested in participating in sports. When female

role models are few and far between, or when girls see that there is a prejudice in

society against female athletes, they may not see sport as a viable option and might be

dissuaded from seriously pursing sport, much less participating.

In 2013, the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sports, reported

that while “forty percent of all sports participants are female, women’s sports receive

only 4% of all sport media coverage, and female athletes are much more likely than

male athletes to be portrayed in sexually provocative poses” (“Media Coverage &

Female Athletes” 2014). And according to University of Amherst professor Janet

Fink, "Another thing we are finding, and this makes sense, is that each time a female

athlete is pictured in a sexualized way, it diminishes the perception of her athletic

ability" (“Media Coverage & Female Athletes” 2014). Sexualized images of women

also affect the way a woman looks at herself and her chances of success in the larger

society. When women buy into the idea that their worth lies in their appearance or

value as a sexual object, they start to devalue other parts of themselves, like their

ability to get an advanced education or aspire to achieve positions of leadership or

power.

In 2013, Cooky, Messner, and Hestrum reported that over the last 20 years the

proportion of coverage for women has actually decreased. The report also noted that

in order for this trend to reverse itself, “power relations and perceptions of gender

will have to continue to change within sport organizations, with commercial sponsors

who promote and advertise sports, and within the mass media. These shifts in

perception will not come about by themselves but will involve changes and pressures

from a number of directions.” The researchers recommended increasing the number

of female sports reporters and commentators, because “there is some evidence to

suggest that women sports reporters are less likely to cover women athletes in

disrespectful ways, and more likely to advocate expanding the coverage of women’s

sports.” The report also suggested that viewers should complain directly to producers

of sports programs about the lack of coverage and any sexist treatment they view

(Cooky, Messner, and Hextrum 2013).

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The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF) also reported that the media

is not keeping up with the interests of sports spectators. In a WSFF survey, 61% of

fans said they believed “top sportswomen were just as skillful as their male

equivalents and over half said women’s sport was just as exciting to watch” (K.S.C.

2014).

What is even more interesting is that in 2012, the World Bank declared that

women are the next emerging global market, controlling $420 trillion in consumer

spending, which is 65 percent of all global spending, and more than 80 percent of

U.S. spending (Wallace 2011). If women supported women’s sports, the potential for

its financial viability is immense and it would seem that the media would want to find

a way to capitalize on that.

Why don’t women watch women’s sports? In her doctorate thesis, Annemarie

Farrell reported that the women interviewed mainly watched sports in order to

connect with the men in their lives, and because the men in their lives were not

interested in women’s sports, they did not seek to watch them on their own, especially

since women’s sports were hard to access, not talked about at work, and not visible in

the media. The women also reported that when they did see stories about female

athletes, it was either for non-sport related reasons or they “were featured due to their

sexual appeal to men, rather than for their athletic accomplishments.” Farrell

concluded, “The influence of men in the spectator lives of women span generations

creating a pattern of influence that prioritizes and values men’s sport, while ignoring

women’s sports, leaving an indelible impression on life-long female spectator habits”

(Farrell 2006). These findings highlight some of the difficulties that professional

women’s sports have to battle. While attitudes about the role of women and female

athletes continues to change, patriarchal ideology still holds a dominant place in the

American psyche. Marketers of women’s sports must learn to attract and convince

male spectators of the legitimacy of female sports in order to attract female

spectators, who have internalized a sexism that privileges male over female sports.

In the United States, the men’s game has had a much longer history than the

women’s game, but has not garnered as much success by international standards. In

its first century, the men’s game struggled to find a mainstream audience and many

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professional leagues were established and then went out of business. In recent years,

MLS has seen increasing success, growing in audience, revenue, and adding

expansion teams. The men’s national team, despite some early success, has had little

success competing at the World Cup until 2002, when it made it to the quarterfinals.

The women’s game, on the other hand, did not get started until much later, but has

garnered much more international success. The early national team players have been

heralded as pioneers who have influenced millions of young girls around the world to

take up the sport and who now make up nearly half of those playing. The rapid

growth of the women’s game would not have been possible without gender-specific

legislation, most importantly Title IX in 1972. While the women’s national team was

not established until 1985, sixty-nine years after the men’s team was formed, they

have won two World Cups, and four Olympic gold medals, and have been ranked by

FIFA either number one or two since rankings for women started in 2003. When the

team competed in and won the 1999 World Cup in front of record numbers of

spectators and a worldwide television audience, organizers decided to establish a

women’s first division professional league, although it and a second league both only

lasted three years each. The newest incarnation of the league, the NWSL, is in its

third year and overall attendance numbers are higher than for the previous two

leagues; however, that increase is due in part to the Portland Thorns, which is owned

by the MLS Portland Timbers franchise, and the Thorns have averaged over 13,000

fans per game each season, more than some MLS teams.

Unfortunately, the women’s game has not garnered the same popular success as

the men’s game in terms of games being broadcast and media respect. In its third

year, the NWSL currently does not have a national broadcast agreement with a

national network and receives a small fraction of media coverage compared to the

men’s league. While broadcasting companies do not want to risk expenditures to

support a league with low viewership, viewership will continue to remain small if

games are not easily accessible to viewers. Another problem inherent in the media is

the way it has historically devalued female athletes, heralding back to outdated

gender assumptions about women, leading to assumptions that the women’s game is

both at a lower level and not worth covering or watching. To exacerbate this problem,

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female athletes are usually portrayed in a sexualized and objectified manner,

reinforcing gender stereotypes and a devaluing of women in general.

While the women’s rights movement in the United States has made major strides

in the last few decades, sports remains one of the main arenas were discrimination

and inequality have been normalized, and women are marginalized and have fewer

opportunities to excel at elite levels.

V. Case Study – Afghanistan

A. Origins - Afghanistan

While women’s soccer in the United States has been one of the most successful

examples of growth and popularity in the world, the women’s game in Afghanistan

has only recently gained any level of acceptance, and the sport itself has had a rocky

history due to the three decades of war the country has endured.

In the Middle East, the game had been introduced by the British, who set up posts

in the region to protect their oil interests and trade routes (Murray 1998, 144). The

Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) was formed in 1933, became a member of

FIFA in 1948, and a founding member of the Asian Football Confederation in 1954.

The team played in the Olympic Games only once, in 1948, and lost to Luxembourg

6-0 (Dunmore 2011, 20). From 1984 to 2002, however, the men's national team did

not compete internationally due to tensions during the last years of the Soviet War,

which lasted from 1979 to 1989, their own Civil War from 1992-1996, and when

under the rule of the Taliban from 1996-2001. Although men in Afghanistan were

able to play football during this time, the Taliban sometimes staged public executions

in Ghazi Stadium prior to games and banned the men from wearing shorts and short-

sleeved jerseys (Dunmore 2011, 20), and women and girls were banned from playing

any sport (Ayub 2009, 135). The men’s team made a bid in 1999 to play in the 2000

Olympic Games, but the International Olympic Committee banned them from

competing, citing their prohibitions against women as a major factor. In 2002, when

the men's team played again internationally, competing at the Asian Games in Busan,

they were outscored 32-0 (Ayub 2009, 135). In 2004, 9 players defected in Italy,

causing the AFC to disband the team for one year (Dunmore 2011, 20).

As of 2015, the men’s team has yet to qualify for a World Cup tournament or win

an Asian Cup; however, in 2013, they won the South Asian Football Federation Cup

(Mitra 2015), making a big jump in FIFA's world rankings from 196th in the world in

2003 to 140th in 2013, and are currently ranked 137th

(FIFA 2015). Plans for a

women’s team were not made until 2005, and the team first competed in 2010.

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B. Culture, politics, and gender legislation in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, the freedoms and opportunities available to women have varied

over the last one hundred years. Afghanistan is made up of various ethnic, religious,

and tribal groups, including the Pashtun, who make up about 40 percent of the

population, with the next largest groups being the Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and

Aimaq. Within these groups, women play an important role. Customary law has

historically taken precedence over religious and constitutional laws, and marriages

have traditionally been seen as power alliances between and within tribes. Women

were expected to be obedient, were not allowed to divorce, and were not allowed to

be educated, although the restrictions varied by tribe, class, and rural/urban

differences. They were seen as “receptacles of honor,” expected to stay in the home

and wear a veil when in public or in mixed gender settings. Their behavior reflected

the honor of their family (Ahmed-Ghosh 2003, 2-3). The structure of their society

was deeply patriarchal and gender roles were highly constrained. Women were seen

as fundamentally different in relation to men and integral to the honor of the family

and community, their behavior was a reflection of the prestige of the men who

protected them, and they helped families form alliances and achieve social mobility.

King Abdur Rahman Khan, who ruled what is considered the first centralized

nation of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901, believed that women should be subservient

to men, but believed they should be treated justly. He tried to change tribal laws that

forced a woman to marry her deceased husband’s next of kin, raised the age of

marriage, and gave women rights to divorce under specific circumstances. Women

also were given limited rights to their father’s and husband’s properties, in

accordance with Islamic tenets. He is thought to have been influenced by his liberal

wife Bobo Jan, who was involved in political missions, wore European clothes

without a veil, rode horses, and trained her maidservants in military exercises. His

son, Amir Habibullah Khan, continued to try to enact reforms for women and opened

a school for girls with English curriculum, which tribal leaders saw as an affront to

tradition.

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Leaders also saw interference in marriage institutions and education for women as

a challenge to their power and patriarchal kinship systems, and Habibullah was

assassinated in 1919 (Ahmed-Ghosh 2003, 3-4). He was a ruler who tried to make

changes that went against the deeply held social and religious beliefs of his people,

and he threatened the patriarchal systems that affect the way tribal families and

communities are structured, so it is no surprise that there was fierce opposition. The

changes he proposed also challenged political beliefs and a historical distrust of

Western European powers. According to Hargreaves, “Modern Islamization arose in

opposition to European colonialism, and has condemned 'Westernization' and the

effects of modernization and secularization. For Muslims across the world there is a

conflict in the way in which they live their lives between the Islamic tradition and

pervasive influence of Western culture” (Hargreaves 2000, 49). Because Afghanistan

was still under the colonial control of Britain, the liberal reforms made by Rahman

and his son Habibullah were seen as further attacks on tradition, which Ahmed-Ghosh

argues pushed tribal leaders towards even more conservative views and mandates.

Apparently unconcerned for his own safety, Habibullah’s son, King Amanullah

Khan, known for liberating Afghanistan from Britain, and who reigned from 1919 to

1929, made great strides in improving the rights of women, including enacting laws

that abolished forced marriage, child marriage, bride price, and laws to restrict

polygamy. He also stressed the importance of compulsory education for both genders

(Ahmed-Ghosh 2003, 4). Amanullah and his wife, Queen Soraya, were proponents of

making economic and social advances for Afghanistan. After a well-publicized tour

of Europe, they returned to try to enact more reforms, including more rights for

women, but were met with resistance from powerful tribal leaders who initially

forced Amanullah to re-enact laws in rural areas about veiling and marriage and close

down schools for girls. Not long afterwards, tribal leaders finally forced him out of

office and out of the country (Ahmed-Ghosh 2003, 4-5). Again, Amanullah paid for

his reforms because they caused tensions between those who valued conservative

ideologies and those who wished to adopt more liberal policies.

It wasn’t again until the 1950s that Afghanistan leaders saw the need, or had the

courage, to go against tribal leadership and bring about reforms that might lead to the

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cultural shifts in the country. Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud declared veiling a

“voluntary option” and women were encouraged to contribute to the economy,

becoming nurses, doctors, and teachers. In 1964, women were given the right to vote

and could run for elected office. In 1965, the first women's political group, the

Democratic Organization of Afghan Women (DOAW), worked to eliminate illiteracy

among women, ban forced marriages, and do away with bride price (Ahmed-Ghosh

2003, 6).

Things changed drastically in 1978, when the Soviet-supported People's

Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) rose to power and they initiated rapid social

and economic change, including mass literacy programs for men and women of all

ages, and changes again in marriage practices. In a decree, they promised to ensure

equal rights for women, but on the streets women only experienced increased

violence and harassment. As the Afghanistan public rebelled against the PDPA’s

rapid social measures, Soviet forces invaded, resulting in a war that lasted for ten

years. As the Mujahedeen, or Afghan “freedom fighters,” backed by the United

States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China, fought against the Soviets, they called

for a reversal of all socialist policies, including all reforms enacted to ensure women’s

rights, under the name of Islam (Ahmed-Ghosh 2003, 6-7). At this point, tribal

leaders purposely tied Islamic religious beliefs to political policies in order to rally

leaders and the public to support a return to old ways, using the Quran as its source.

According to Hargreaves, “The Quran provides a basis for a moral order and way

of life which has become both doctrine and divine law… It discourages change and

emphasizes calmness and stability--over postmodern Western world's promotion of a

culture of change, youth and consumerism, embracing noise, movement and speed”

(Hargreaves 2000, 49). Ironically, it was the United States, the embodiment of many

of these Western postmodern values, that facilitated these changes, motivated by their

opposition to the Soviet Union and communism, and which again heralded a new age

of repression and violence against women. In the United States during this time, the

women’s rights movement was making some advances; however, government

leadership was still based on conservative Christian and patriarchal values, and

ensuring the rights of Afghan women was not an important concern in foreign policy.

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By 1989, when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the Mujahedeen took

over Kabul and declared Afghanistan an Islamic state. They burned down the

university, the library, and schools, and forced women to wear the burqa, an

outerwear that covers the entire body except the eyes and hands. There were

widespread reports of killings, amputations, and other violence, and some women

resorted to suicide to avoid forced marriages and rape (Ahmed-Ghosh 2003, 7).

In 1996, the United States, Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia supported a group

called the Taliban, who took over rule of the country and instituted new and stricter

reforms. Women no longer were allowed to go outside, except to buy food, and only

if accompanied by a male relative. If women did leave home they had to be

accompanied by a mahram (male relative). Women were required to wear the burqa

and could not wear makeup or fancy shoes. They were restricted from going to school

or visiting male doctors, forced marriages were still common, and men who raped

women were not prosecuted (Ahmed-Ghosh 2003, 7).

After September 11, 2001, the United States, with support from some of its allies

and the North Atlantic Treaty Association (NATO), assisted the United Front (known

in the West as the Northern Alliance) and led an invasion to overthrow the Taliban,

who harbored al-Qaeda, the terrorist group claiming responsibility for the 911 attack

on the United States. By December 18, 2001, these forces captured the capital city of

Kabul and the southern stronghold of Kandahar. Members of al-Qaeda, including

leader Osama Bin Laden, and some leaders of the Taliban escaped into Pakistan, but

the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan was over. The United States military remained in

the country and directed the formation of the new government that emerged (Ball

2014). Hamid Karzai, a powerful majority Pashtun leader, led the country's interim

government and was later elected president in 2004 (Pan 2006). In 2010, Karzai

enacted a law banning violence against women, but according to the United Nations,

“ in the first year that Afghanistan enacted the law banning violence against women,

from March 2010 to March 2011, there had been 2,299 complaints of gender-

motivated abuse registered with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission,

but that only 7 percent of those cases ended up in a prosecution,” including attacks in

rural conservative areas where men have thrown acid on young girls on their way to

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school or on women who refuse to submit to arranged marriages (Rubin and

Nordland 2011). The United Nations also reported:

Based on extensive research and interviews carried out in 2010 in 29 of 34

provinces of Afghanistan with women, men, Government authorities, religious

leaders, women's rights and civil society activists and community groups,

UNAMA Human Rights (HR) found that such practices are pervasive, occurring

in varying degrees in all communities, urban and rural, and among all ethnic

groups… Many Afghans, including some religious leaders reinforce these harmful

customs by invoking their interpretation of Islam. In most cases, however, these

practices are inconsistent with Sharia law as well as Afghan and international law,

and violate the human rights of women (UNAMA 2010, i).

While tribal leaders tried to defend customary laws by tying them to religious

mandates, certain groups in Europe and the United States started to view the problems

as a religious obstacle, blaming Islam for violence against women and other extremist

actions. For the women caught in the middle, they were asked to choose between

religious and family obligations or fight for their rights.

After a series of attacks, abductions, and assassination attempts on female

officials, including the killings of four female police officers, as well as concerns that

Karzai was secretly negotiating with the Taliban (Nordland 2014), the European

Union ambassador to Kabul, Franz-Michael Mellbin, in March of 2014 criticized the

Karzai government for its inability to protect women’s rights, including a failure to

end prosecution of women for “moral crimes” (such as the prosecution of rape

victims) and a cutting of quotas for women on provincial councils. He blamed the

government for conceding to conservative viewpoints opposed to women having any

role outside the home. Mellbin said he believed that women in Afghanistan were

worried about the withdrawal of foreign forces, which could lead to conservative

groups gaining more power. Mellbin said he planned to make women’s rights a

priority, noting that women in Afghanistan are pushing for reform. He said, "All over

Afghanistan women today are 'first movers'. Some will be the first woman in their

family to go to school, others to open a business or take public office. There is a

tremendous awareness among Afghan women that they are trail-blazing for the next

generation, for their daughters” (Graham-Harrison 2014).

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Fears that Afghanistan would lose foreign aid and military assistance ended when

a new president was elected in 2014. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai was an anthropologist

who studied at Columbia University and worked as a professor at universities in the

United States and Kabul, as well as time working for the World Bank. In his

acceptance speech, he thanked his wife, Bibi Gul Rula, a Lebanese-American

Christian, which was a first in Afghan politics (Alexander 2014), as Karzai never

even appeared in public with his wife, much less acknowledged her. Ghani, on the

other hand, promised that his wife would wield political influence, and put her in

charge of an effort to improve conditions for the country’s quarter of a million

internally displaced people. Rula, who is college-educated and has worked for

government agencies in Kabul in the past, has been compared to Queen Soraya for

her modern ideas and her progressive views on the role of women in Afghan society.

She has been criticized by conservatives, including religious scholars and political

foes, for not being from Afghanistan, for not being Muslim, and has been accused of

not approving of the burqa or chadari. Rula countered and said, “Chadaris, as far as

I’m concerned, I think should be a personal choice of the women and the members of

her family. I personally would not wear a chadari” (Engel Rasmussen 2014). Rula

does wear a hijhab, a scarf that covers the head and neck, but leaves the face clear. A

chadari also does not obstruct the face, but covers the entire body. These traditional

garments are different than the burqa (which was enforced on Afghan women when

the Taliban was in control), and is a veil that covers the entire face and has a small

mesh screen through which a woman can see (Amer 2015).

Recent escalations in violence in 2015 are happening at the same time as groups

like the Islamic State are recruiting more and more supporters in Afghanistan, and are

imposing stricter modesty laws on women, saying they must wear full-face veils,

cover their hands and feet, wear loose clothing, and not use perfume, or face severe

punishments. In a statement, the Islamic State claimed that these mandates are

necessary “to protect society from harm and to maintain the necessities of religion.”

In addition, they added, “This is not a restriction on her freedom but to prevent her

from falling into humiliation and vulgarity or to be a theater for the eyes of those who

are looking" (Reuters 2014). In places such as Afghanistan, as women slowly gain

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some power and voice in society, these measures work to reverse that process. As

politics are increasingly tied to religious conservativism and anti-secularism, the

means of control increasingly become more violent.

In March of 2015, a woman in Kabul who spoke up at a mosque against the

selling of good luck charms, which she saw as against Islamic values, was set on fire

by a mob and killed after she was falsely accused of burning the Quran. Shahla Farid,

a law lecturer at Kabul University, reported that she saw a decrease in female students

attending classes afterwards, saying they were afraid to be in public. Farid recounted

a student telling her, “How can I sit here in class with boys? I’m afraid of them”

(Goldstein 2015).

Women in Afghanistan are again caught between two historically-charged forces

that seek to improve the lives of women and reduce the violence against them: one

calls for women to be protected from what they see as the excesses of Western

culture, while the other seeks to educate the populace, both male and female, in order

to get more people to contribute to its economy. In April of 2015, the United Nations

Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) sponsored a workshop in Paktika to

promote discussion on gender issues, and religious scholars and community leaders

identified illiteracy as one of the biggest barriers to development, citing that 98

percent of school-age girls had no access to education (UNAMA 2015).

Since the end of Taliban rule, women in the urban areas of Afghanistan have had

more freedom, can obtain jobs, do not have to wear a burqa, and even have limited

political influence. In rural areas, however, women are still subject to traditional

practices and limited freedom. According to Dr. Huma Ahmed-Ghosh, professor of

Women’s Studies, “Despite the apparent increased oppression that women have

encountered with the emergence of fundamentalism in many Muslim states, many

women prefer their lives to Westernized women who are projected as corrupt,

licentious, and anti-family” (Ahmed-Ghosh 2003, 8) While some might view this as a

sort of internalized sexism, women in Afghanistan see the fundamental value of

family ties and kinship as the basis of their society, one in which the well-being of the

group is valued over that of the individual. Through the media they have witnessed

how women in the Western world are objectified, and they have been witness to the

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violence and war that has been a part of Afghanistan’s relationships with counties like

the United States. According to Helen Hardacre, women are drawn to these religious

practices because they support anti-colonial and pro-nationalist ideologies, they don’t

want to weaken family ties, they are economically dependent, and they are pious.

(Hardacre 1993, 141). According to Ahmed-Ghosh:

Given the present conditions of life in Afghanistan, religion may be perceived as

the only force able to reinstate a sense of nationhood, kinship solidarities, and

economic and political empowerment against what are seen as corrupting western

ideologies and forces As a result, women who accept ‘fundamentalism’ as a way

of life do not blame Islam for their impoverished and oppressed lives, but blame

the corrupt government, patriarchal controls, and distorted interpretations of the

Quran. (Ahmed-Ghosh 2003, 9)

This makes it even more difficult to improve conditions for women in places like

Afghanistan. Women are caught between their obligations to family and faith, and

their inability to fight for or instigate change due to the power structures in place. In

addition, they see the secularism of the West as divergent from their own values, and

when ideas about feminism or equality are promulgated by Western cultures, they

distrust its value due to its source.

Ghosh believes that the solution to creating change is not by challenging the

religious or family structures, but through education and economic empowerment.

She writes, “The solution lies in strengthening these bonds by insisting on women’s

economic participation. The expectation of such a strategy is that along with

legislation, in the long run, educated women will be able to negotiate their roles in the

family and society through their heightened economic participation” (Ahmed-Ghosh

2003, 11).

While increased education and economic agency for women will shift cultural

values, women who want access to sports have an uphill battle, not only due to lack

of freedoms, but “because sport insinuates Westernization, it presents women with

particular cultural and bodily uncertainties” (Hargreaves 2000, 49), or so it is feared.

Images of female athletes in the West often show women wearing what Muslims

would consider immodest attire, and therefore against social norms and religious

dictates, as well as a challenge to gender assumptions about women, including their

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inability to compete due to physical and intellectual limitations. While many women

lack basic rights, are still forced into marriages, denied an education, or experience

physical and sexual abuse, the battle to be able to play sports may seem like a less

important pursuit, but as discussed at the beginning of this paper, participating in

sports for many is the embodiment of freedom, especially when they have been

restricted from it in the past.

According to Hargreaves, in Muslim communities, women who play sports are

seen as “heroines who offer promise and possibility for their sex; or conversely, in

more traditional Muslim communities they are branded as sinful and decadent women

who are distorting the truth of Islam” (Hargreaves 1994, 49). Because sport is also

seen as a product of the Western ideals of competition, when female athletes are

encouraged to unveil, it is seen by some as another form of imperial control.

While sport is gaining acceptance as a way for women to exercise and keep

healthy in order to fulfill their roles as wives and mothers (as prescribed in the

Qur’an), some Muslims have blamed Western organizers of sports of depriving

women from competing on an international level because the competitions do not

adhere to what they claim are Islamic notions of modesty, which include the covering

of the body and the total segregation of women’s sports, so that women can compete

without the gaze of men to objectify them (Hargreaves 2000, 65). In fact, the

Women’s Islamic Games, started in 1993, was organized so that Muslim women

could compete internationally, while still adhering to those Islamic codes. According

to Hargreaves, the “Games are celebrated as a signal to the West that Islam is a

forward-looking community that protects and nurtures its women” (Hargreaves 2000,

66). Some Muslim women see the veil or additional coverings in a positive way and

wear them as a deliberate, politicized choice. According to Hargreaves, “For them,

exposing the female body in sport is immoral and the veil signals a rejection of

arguably provocative and public displays of the body,” and this is especially true for

Muslims living abroad, who want to emphasize their Muslim identities (Hargreaves

2000, 53), keep men from focusing on their bodies, and as a way to distance

themselves from what they see as Western consumerism that pushes women into

obsessively focusing on their own appearance (Hargreaves 2007). Something that

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female athletes have found problematic, however, is that sports include vigorous

exercise, which is hampered by the additional clothing prescribed by Muslim codes.

As some Muslim feminists have tried to negotiate a compromise between differing

ideologies, ironically, sports manufacturers are trying to capitalize on this growing

market. While Nike and Adidas have come up with sporting goods lines specifically

for Muslim women in order to break into a new market, these clothes have helped the

women to compete. In 2007, FIFA instituted a ban on athletes wearing a hijab, which

kept many women from competing, but the new sports hijabs and Muslim sportswear

lines convinced FIFA in 2012 to overturn the ban (Khaleeli 2012), making both

competitive athletes eligible to play, and making an active lifestyle for Muslim

women more appealing and accessible in general.

These advances might seem minor, but if Muslim women are able to both

compete and adhere to their religious beliefs, it is a major advance that should pacify

both feminists and traditionalists. Hargreaves points out, “Cultural relativism suggests

that one has to be sensitive to the cultural conditions of each country and that it is

wrong for predominantly White, Western, non-Muslim women to

interfere in the traditions and values of cultures other than their own” (Hargreaves

2000, 73)

The problem comes, however, when women in Islamic countries don’t want to

adhere to what they might see as old-fashioned dictates, yet fear reprisal; they want to

be able to compete internationally in events such as the Olympics, yet they lack

power and need support from outside of their country (Hargreaves 2000, 73). The

most outspoken Muslim feminists live in Western countries, and some have had

“fatwas” (legal religious statements) issued against them (Hargreaves 2007, 82).

Because of this, it is difficult to determine how many Muslim women don’t speak out

due to fears of reprisal.

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C. The Afghanistan women’s national team

In most places around the world, like the United States, the creation of a women’s

national team would come after many years or decades of establishing and growing

the sport, and organizers would be able to choose from an existing and talented pool

of athletes. This was not the case in Afghanistan. In 2003, with help from FIFA, the

German, English, and Iranian Football Associations, the AFF rebuilt their football

program, vowing to establish a women’s program as well (Ayub 2009, 135).

In 2004, Abdul Saboor Walizada, who played on the men's national team for 10

years, was hired as the first coach of the Afghanistan Women’s National Team, but he

had a difficult job because, as far as he knew, there had never been any women’s

teams, and few women who had even participated in any sports (Ayub 2009, 135).

Walizada worked with Shamsi Hayat, director for Women's programs for

Afghanistan's National Olympic Committee, who had been directed to develop a

comprehensive women’s sports program in order for Afghanistan at regain its status

to compete at the Olympic Games, and had already set up basketball, volleyball, and

other sports for women. They contacted principals of schools in Kabul to see if they

could find potential players; however, more than half of the principals refused to help,

even though the organizers promised the girls would be dressed modestly, have their

arms and legs covered up, a cap over their hair, and train at Ghazi stadium, which

would be well-supervised and guarded (Ayub 2009, 137-139). Through this process,

Walizada learned of eight girls who had just returned from a trip to the United States

through the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange (AYSE), which had been set up by

Awista Ayub, an American who had been born in and emigrated from Afghanistan as

a child. The girls trained in the U.S. for six weeks and then competed in the

International Children’s Games, an international tournament that originated in 1968

in Slovenia, Yugoslavia with teams from nine towns competing, but now has over 70

countries who compete annually (Ayub 2009, 157-158; 149).

Ayub wanted to teach leadership to young Afghan girls through sports, and chose

football due to the popularity of the sport for girls and the success of the women’s

national team in the United States. Ayub also thought that it would be a good choice

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because she assumed it was a “gender-neutral” sport and easy to organize, needing

only a ball and open-space. Ayub wrote:

What I didn't know was that there had never, ever, been a girls' soccer team in

Afghanistan. The difficulty in finding girls who were playing it, I would later

come to understand wasn't based, as I'd assumed, of the dislocations of war.

While the girls did play basketball and volleyball, soccer was the game of men.

Call it naïveté, but I didn't fully appreciate how my project would challenge

Afghanistan's assumptions about female athletes, putting a group of young Kabul

girls at the center of a struggle for acceptance—a struggle that continues today.

(Ayub 2009, 157-158).

Ayub made contact with Duaine Goodno, an American director of a non-

governmental organization (NGO) called The Afghan Center in Kabul, who was able

to recruit players, not based on their athleticism or experience, but on their maturity,

ability to handle a trip to the U.S., leadership potential, and parents’ acceptance of the

program (Ayub 2009).

When Ayub wrote about the girls’ experiences in the program in her book Kabul

Girls Soccer Club, she changed the names of the girls and some identifying details in

order to protect the girls and their parents. (Ayub 2009, “Note to the Reader”). Once

they returned to Afghanistan, many of the girls faced harassment, which increased

once they started playing on local teams that were formed under the encouragement

of Walizada. "Ariana," while training by herself at Ghazi Stadium where the men's

national team practiced, was told by male players, "You don't have the energy to

play," "Soccer's not a sport for girls," and "Don't come here everyday." “Ariana”

responded to their taunts, "You have two legs, so do I. The energy that you have, I

have also—but I need practice. You've practiced a lot because you could, anytime

you want. But I'm a girl. I can't leave my house and practice anytime I want. That's all

I need. But if I practiced hard, I could play against you. Our games would be equal"

(Ayub 2009, 145). Not only did Ariana face down the male players with what to her

felt like common sense counter-arguments, but she articulated what researchers in the

Western world are only starting to discover—that women are indeed capable of

competing with men, and that it has been the lack of opportunity, experience, and

proper training that has held them back.

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Other girls who had been on the U.S. trip reported that on their way to a game

wearing their uniforms, neighborhood boys commented, "It's not good for them....

They're becoming boys... How can they play—what if their shirts come up?" (Ayub

160-161). These ideas, probably learned either directly or indirectly from their

families or community, very succinctly echo the ideology of biological determinism,

a fear of non-gender conformity, and a focus on women’s bodies as a primary

concern.

Outdated sexist ideologies are not the only obstacles the girls encountered.

"Miriam," one of the original eight girls, was later prohibited from playing by her

family over concerns about how the family would be viewed by their community and

by how her participation would affect her future. Her older sister asked her, "How

will soccer help you when you get married? Nobody will ask, 'How well do you play

soccer?' They will ask, 'How well do you do chores around the house?" (Ayub 2009,

174). In Afghanistan, women, despite their slowly changing roles in society after the

end of Taliban rule, still are expected to take care of the home first, although with the

civil war and continued violence, they likely also had to take over increasingly male

forms of labor just to make ends meet.

In 2005, Walizada organized the first tournament in order to identify girls to be on

the first national team (Ayub 2009, 113), pulling from teams that had been

established only recently through schools and the eight girls who traveled to the U.S.

with Ayub’s AYSE. Once established, the team still had to deal with both harassment

and unwillingness by many to accept the team. During one practice, a group of men

and boys scaled the wall and threw stones at the girls. At another practice, Walizada

reported that the military personnel charged with guarding their session taunted him,

and at a tournament, outraged university students tried to storm the field. After six

months of coaching the team, Walizada himself was pulled from his car by two armed

men and beaten. He said he was not surprised by the attack, but only glad that he

wasn’t seriously injured. He added, “People laugh at me for training women and

mock me for what I am doing. I can't say I am completely comfortable with my

position for that reason. I do get public harassment… I am very tired. I'm tired of the

73

continuous struggle... Sometimes it is beyond my tolerance. But still, I love soccer"

(Ayub 2009, 229-230).

In 2008, eighteen women players trained in Germany as part of an ongoing effort

by the German government to develop football in Afghanistan, which had been

sending German coaches to the country for years to coach both men and women,

saying that they had to do a lot of work to convince the parents of the players that “it

is totally normal for girls to play football” (Dowling 2008).

In 2010, the team first competed internationally in a game against Nepal, and lost

13-0 (FIFA 2015, "Afghanistan: Fixtures"). In 2011, they were kicked off their home

field by officials and told to play on a patch of concrete at one end of the stadium.

NATO officials felt sorry for them and offered them a small patch of grass just inside

the outer walls of their headquarters in Kabul, but the space was also a helipad, and

the team’s practices were continuously interrupted by the landing of Black Hawk

helicopters. Many of the girls also reported that they continued to receive threatening

text messages, phone calls, or direct threats, as well as pleas from family members to

stop playing. Team captain Khalida Popal said," "I love football and football is

everything for me and when I come and feel the football I forget everything and I

become very happy when I see my team. When my family stopped me to play

football, when they said, 'No, just stop playing football,' I tried suicide." Other players

debated quitting the team due to the negative pressure. Khattol Khan, another player,

said, "I might get more threats, so I'm thinking about quitting. Two other girls did and

fled the country. My family wants me to and doesn't even know I'm here today"

(Paton Walsh 2011). Another distraction for the players was the constant worry about

whether their head covering or clothes would slip, revealing their hair or skin. A

defender, Raffura, said, “I am always thinking, I have to take care when I jump so

that nothing shows. We are thinking about our hijab [head covering] instead of

concentrating on our game" (Johannsen-Rubin 2011).

The influence of Western media and the success of the United States national

team players have influenced the Afghan players as well. Player Hadissa Wali, in

2012, said, “"It's quite important for me to play in the World Cup. I just want to play

as a world player like Alex Morgan. I'm really a fan of her playing. That's my dream

74

— to be like those players. Not that famous, just to play like them." And while the

team does not win many games, player Zahra Mahmoudi talked about the bigger

purpose of the game: “It doesn't matter for us if we lose the game. It's not important

for us. The [important] matter is being a team and existing, because being a soccer

player in Afghanistan is a fight against the Taliban and all the people who don't want

females to be in society or to work or to study” (Carberry 2012). These are good

examples of how sports became so much more than just a game for these women, and

functioned as a way of protesting their position in society and a way to empower

themselves and see hope for their futures.

By 2014, the women’s national team had won only two international games,

against Qatar and Pakistan, but government sponsorship and acceptance of the team

continues to grow. In 2014, the AFF brought in five players who live abroad to

strengthen the team when it competes in international events, including a player from

the United States (Gul 2014). Another breakthrough in 2014 was the establishment of

the first four-team female league, as part of the Afghan Premier League (APL), which

was in its third year of play. One spectator, Weheeda Bahrami, a 17-year-old high

school student, wearing a replica shirt of one of the team’s, said, "I came here to

support my team because football is not only for men. Backing the girls is so

important for us. Football is good for health and we need to show girl power." In the

past, women were not allowed to play or watch football, but now even men could

watch them play. Nasir Ahmadzai, press officer for the APL, said that there was no

ban on men attending and watching the game, but there was not a lot of interest. He

said, “We wanted as big a turnout as possible. We've advertised on TV, put it on

social media. It's the best turnout we've had for a women's game. Hopefully it will

improve next year." After the women’s championship game, however, the mostly-

empty stadium filled with men to watch the men’s championship, a phenomenon that

happens around the world, including in the United States. (L’AgenceFrance-Presse

2014). While they did not have a large audience, it was a big advance for women’s

football in Afghanistan, considering that in Iraq, although it has a strong women’s

program, women are allowed only to play in a segregated environment out of the

view of men. In addition, women are not allowed into stadiums to watch men play,

75

unless they have a passport from another country, and are not allowed to watch the

men’s game on television in public places, such as cinemas, restaurants, or coffee

shops (Shahrabi 2014). It also shows that the general public is becoming more

accepting, since the organizers felt they could publicly advertise the match, rather

than denying its existence.

The Afghan women’s team currently is ranked by FIFA 128th in the world, out of

138 ranked member countries. Although there are 179 member nations registered

with FIFA in the women’s game, 41 teams are unranked because they have played

fewer than five matches against ranked teams, or have been inactive for more than 18

months (FIFA 2015, "Women's Ranking"). While the Afghanistan women’s national

team has not yet competed in a World Cup, if the political climate remains amenable

to women athletes and more opportunities become available, the national team could

see greater success. The AFA and FIFA currently list Zahra Mahmoudi, past captain

of the team, as the current women’s national team coach, and the first woman to

coach at both the U16 and first-team national level.

VI. Conclusion: Why Separate is Not Equal

In 1998, Sugden and A. Tomlinson wrote:

Yet in spite of mass participation and elite success, women’s football remains

separate and unequal in terms of resources, participation and prestige. The

perceived ‘feminization’ supports the view of soccer as a game for second-rate

athletes unable to contend with the masculine rigors of the home-grown variety of

football… as long as football is viewed as a game for foreigners, rich white kids

and women, its chances of becoming established as a mainstream professional

sport there are minimal (Williams 2007, 66).

While there have been improvements in opportunities, prestige, and resources for

women since 1998, including the establishment of professional leagues for women in

many countries, the opportunities for women are nowhere close to equal to that of

men, nor has society fully accepted female athletes, who are either sexualized, not

taken seriously in the media, or seen as abnormal because they don’t adhere to

traditional gender expectations. In today’s world, sports remain one of the main areas

where outdated gender assumptions are proliferated and accepted.

In their book Playing With the Boys: Why Separate in Not Equal, McDonagh and

Pappano outlined four stages of sex desegregation (McDonagh 2008, 34-35), with the

initial stage being the banning or prohibition of participation, which we see clearly in

the cases of early European football, with bans on women’s teams in England,

France, and Germany from playing on registered pitches and stadiums, which

essentially shut down the growing sport in these countries. It is even more evident in

places like Afghanistan, where an outright ban on sports for women was dictated by

the Taliban, and there has been a long history of cultural and religious proscriptions

against women playing sports. Even in the early days of women’s soccer in the

United States, women were either prohibited from or had limited access to playing,

until the passing of Title IX.

The second stage, which allows women to participate on a coercive sex-

segregated basis, is currently the norm in women’s football. In the United States, Title

IX opened up opportunities for women to play soccer at the secondary and collegiate

levels, but only on teams that adhered to strict sex-segregation policies. At almost

78

every level, it is rare for women and men to play together. Co-ed soccer does exist for

the very youngest players, on recreational teams, and some college intramural sports.

At the elite levels, however, women have no opportunity to compete against men,

either in club soccer, professional soccer, or on the national team level. This is also

true for women footballers around the globe, which limits women from the same

resources, training, facilities, coaching, and pay as male footballers.

The third stage, which allows women to play on a sex-integrated basis, and the

fourth stage, which allows women the option to voluntarily choose between sex-

segregated or sex-integrated options, have, in the most part, not been reached. Again,

in the United States, there are some opportunities for mixed-play at the recreational

and intramural level, but they are sometimes rife with policies that further perpetuate

gender stereotypes. In Europe and Asia, there are some youth sports that allow mixed

teams up to the age of 18, but most mixed football programs are restricted to children

under the age of 12 (Williams 2006, 160).

Historically women have been restricted from playing with and against men for

what McDonagh and Pappano refer to as the three I’s: inferiority, injury, and

immorality (McDonagh 2008, 33-34). Women were seen as intellectually and

physically inferior, based on a biological determinism that relegated their position in

a patriarchal society to that of mother, housewife, or sex object. Sports were seen as

the domain of the dominant sex, which required physical brawn, aggressiveness, and

an intellectual capacity for strategy, none of which were attributed to “the weaker

sex.” These attitudes are due to decades of cultural gender assumptions and

“scientific” claims that women would be at high risk of injury if they engaged in

sports, especially if they tried to compete with men. Recent research, however,

shows that in many ways women may have physical advantages over men, especially

in ultra-endurance sports. In football, a lack of size and the ability to move expertly

in tight spaces can be a great advantage. Smaller male players like Diego Maradona

and Lionel Messi (who is 5’ 6” tall and who suffered from a growth hormone

deficiency) are generally considered some of the all-time greatest players and are said

to benefit from a lower center of gravity, allowing them to have better control of the

79

ball and better overall coordination, and an ability to quickly change direction and

accelerate (Monti 2010).

Could women play with and against men in football? When Michelle Akers was

excelling on the U.S. Women’s national team, her coach Tony DiCicco said, “People

like Pele and Franz Beckenbauer saw her play and realized that women could play the

game as skillfully and tactically proficient as men could" (Akers 2000, 214). Coach

Leo Cuellar, commenting on Mia Hamm’s skills, said, "Her quickness off the ball,

her passing, dribbling, cutting, are up to the level of high-class men in the world”

(Longman 2000, 19). New York Times writer, Rob Hughes, in an article about

Brazilian footballer Marta, who has won the FIFA Women’s World Player of the

Year Award five times, in 2011 wrote, “Marta has that balance, that movement, that

touch and imagination that makes her an artist on the field. I confess, I don’t say this

often about the women’s game, but Marta could, apart from the brutality, play in most

men’s leagues in the world. It’s almost heresy to admit it. Soccer, from the FIFA

executive office on down, is a chauvinist’s bastion” (Hughes 2011). Many of the top

U.S. women players, including Hamm, Chastain, Akers, and Wambach, report that

when they were younger they played against the boys and excelled. And one woman,

Wambach, has done something no man has—scoring 177 international goals (Iran’s

Ali Daei has only scored 109) (Abby Wambach 2015). It is hard to know whether

these players could compete on and against men’s teams because the opportunity is

not there and, as Hughes admits, to suggest that a woman has the skills to play in a

men’s game still amounts to perceived heresy.

The third justification for restricting mixed play is the concern about the immoral

nature of letting men and women compete together. Some feel this could threaten the

“natural order,” especially if it meant that there might be inappropriate physical

contact, especially in contact sports such as football and wrestling. This apprehension

is the main motive behind restrictions against sport for women in Afghanistan. While

there is a complex history involving tribal family structures and codes, political

control, and religious beliefs, much of these concerns revolve around the role of

women in society and a debate about modernism and modesty. Women in

Afghanistan are caught in the middle, and are asked to choose between religious and

80

family obligations, or fight for their rights. As conditions for women in the country

have improved or declined based on politics and war, it is clear that it will take

substantial shifts in cultural mores and a shift to a more educated populace to affect

widespread change. In the urban areas, women in Afghanistan are gaining more

opportunities in the work world, contributing to the economic health of their families,

and making gains in the sporting realm. Unfortunately, violence against women and a

lack of control over their own lives, including who they can marry or what careers

they can aspire to, still remain the norm in many parts of the country, especially rural

areas.

A comparison of the women’s game in the United States and Afghanistan shows

that the effects of a global pervasive and traditional patriarchal system and deep-

rooted biases against women in general, have affected women in both countries,

although the Afghan women risk much more just to play. In the United States women

footballers have been pioneers in the growing success of the women’s game and have

influenced young girls all over the world to participate, although they still struggle

against fundamental inequalities and a deep conservatism. In Afghanistan, young

women are helping to create fundamental shifts in culture that may benefit the next

generation of Afghan girls, and are creating an awareness of women’s growing

economic and social power.

Women athletes around the world continue to challenge what used to be socially

fixed boundaries. Playing football, for a woman, is more than just a game. It is a

political act that questions the traditional subjugation of women, creates new

paradigms for economic and political power, and empowers young women to be

strong and successful participants and leaders in society.

Some of the biggest obstacles female athletes and women in general must

overcome are both institutionalized and normalized sexism, and the misrepresentation

and over-sexualization of women broadcast through the media for a mass audience

that is highly susceptible to its messages. Throughout history, the media has been

dominated by the male voice, and there will only be change when women obtain

increased positions of power within its different mediums. Women must understand

the barriers to equality and not bend to economic pressure or internalized sexism and

81

become a pro-active voice in the traditionally male-dominated sports organizations,

from FIFA down to its member associations and local clubs, in order to help ensure

that women are given the same opportunities and resources as men. While it will take

a major shift in global football politics and societal mores for women to be able to

play on the same field with and against men in the “beautiful game,” it will not be

until that time that women can claim to be treated equally and with equal respect.

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