GENDERKICKS 2011 Bag. Photo: Stephan Röhl - Some rights reserved CC BY-SA.
By Stefanie Groll
Overview:
- Women get more done
- Hoping for the big payday
- Is everyone (not) the same on the pitch?
- Significance of the clubs
- One-sided marketing strategies for female footballers
- Shortcomings of sports journalism
- The fruits of liberal feminism
- Footnotes
- Bibliography
Can football kick emancipation in the right direction? This was one of the key questions a "Getting to Know Your Opponents", an international series of events held in the run-up to the FIFA Women’s World Cup. “Getting to Know Your Opponents” represented an opportunity to explore the state of women’s football in Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria and Germany. It was a means of bridging sports and politics, and the practical and theoretical sides of the game. This article retraces some of the core lines of argument and develops their content further. The result is a recapitulation of “Getting to Know Your Opponents” and an overview of the critical phenomena in international football as seen from the feminist perspective.
Women get more done
What are professional footballers actually? Unlike amateurs, pros can make a living solely from practicing their sport. This is the customary definition at least. For female pros, a professional contract often is not sufficient. As Navina Omilade, who plays in defence for VfL Wolfsburg, explains, the number of female footballers who “can live really well” from combining a club salary and advertising contracts is on the increase, but she adds that a sizeable number of female players still pursues gainful employment at the same time: “They come in from eight to ten for their morning training, then go off to the office and return later that same evening for two more hours of training.” Other female players study or learn a profession while pursuing their career in football. The resulting double burden in terms of time and emotional strain (gainful employment plus X) is a typical situation encountered by many women (mothers, blue and white collar workers) in contrast to men.
Hoping for the big payday (1)
The opportunities to earn money in and through women’s football have increased over the last few years. Compared to the guest nations attending the “Getting to Know Your Opponents“ event, they are in fact very good in Germany, and not just because salaries in Germany are higher anyway, but also because women footballers here can rely on their salaries being paid. Aisha Falode, a sports journalist from Nigeria, lamented the fact that, in Nigerian associations and clubs, salaries that had been promised either never get paid due to rampant corruption in Nigeria’s football associations and clubs or are only paid after extortion. In Nigeria, women play football in the hope that they might earn money from it, i.e. that they might achieve financial independence, which they are otherwise denied. The culture of popular sports does not exist in this (partly) Muslim country. Sport has a different social standing, and the concept of leisure time as it is known in Europe, Scandinavia and North America does not exist. Actually playing football or having the opportunity to do so “just as a hobby” is the exception rather than the rule due to the lack of leisure time, economic resources and a sports culture.
Is everyone (not) the same on the pitch?
A further important aspect in professional football, in addition to the opportunity to earn money, is the training conditions. Here, too, active players in Germany are comparatively well off. Mexico’s coach, Ana Montenegro, spoke of tangible structural improvements, both in the league and within the national squad. According to Montenegro, a more professional approach is needed in youth development, and she is critical of the phenomenon of player immigration from the USA. Her criticism is directed at the fact that female footballers who are born in the USA and have either a Mexican mother or father are recruited into Mexico’s national squad. Says Montenegro: “They then represent a country with which they have little cultural association and whose language they don’t speak. How can they be expected to show passion?” Diana Asak, a sports psychology student and coach from Nigeria, recounted the adverse training conditions: the pitches are in poor condition; players have to pay for many things ranging from football boots to travel expenses; the good pitches are reserved for the men. Whilst the German national squad were attending training camps and playing friendlies, the Super Falcons were brought together a few weeks before the World Cup was due to start and played one solitary friendly – the training conditions and preparations could therefore hardly have been any different: on the pitch, not everyone is the same.
On the subject of (barriers to) professionalising the women’s game, a repeatedly raised issue was that the key posts in associations and clubs are held exclusively by men. In the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), the Federación Mexicana de Fútbol Asociación (Femex) and the Conferacao Brasleira de Futebol (CBF), not one woman can be found on the board or in any other executive position for that matter. The football experts from Nigeria and Mexico take their hats off to the German Football Association (DFB) for having one woman (Hannelore Ratzeburg) in their Presidium and for the fact that the girls’ and women’s football department is virtually in female hands. It is their hope that their national football associations will also find someone who is an equally strong advocate of women’s football as Theo Zwanziger.
Significance of the clubs
A good 370,000 girls and women are members of a football club in Germany. The clubs are personnel pools for the professional clubs. Karin Danner, who coaches the ladies team at FC Bayern Munich, underscores the significance of organised women‘s football in the clubs for youth development: “Street football alone can’t do this. We need the clubs.” And the DFB appears to have understood how these clubs need to position themselves in the future, and which target groups they need to open up to. Between 2005 and 2006, a research group at the University of Osnabrück was commissioned by the DFB to conduct an analysis of football clubs with a view to “allowing the DFB to reach scientifically supported decisions on club development”. The final report recommends that “great efforts should be undertaken to attract girls and women – especially those from migrant backgrounds (2) – to the clubs”. It goes on to say: “Given the demographic trends and rise in commitment to sports shown by girls and women, there is every reason to support the assumption that the future of football will (also) be female. [...] A possible stumbling block for the development of football could well be that girls and women tend to opt for non-competitive sports” (Wopp 2006:16).
One-sided marketing strategies for female footballers
It is this competitive character and physical exertion in football that has given women footballers a certain reputation. The attributes ascribed to normalised femininity were not compatible with the kickabout area. This was (is) a contradiction in itself: “Whilst men are totally oblivious to any contradiction between football and masculinity (…)”, writes Nina Degele. Of late, a few women professionals have shown that “femininity” and football are not a dichotomous pair of opposites. These women allow themselves to be portrayed sensuously and erotically in advertising campaigns or undress for Playboy magazine. Whilst no doubt music to the ears of individualising post-feminism, this approach leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of feminists critical of the system. In this instance, women are depicted as objects, in particular as objects of desire by men. This is befitting of a hypersexualised culture (cf. Walter 2010) where beauty in principle merely stands for sex appeal, and muscular or stocky women wearing no make-up simply do not factor in. One particularly blatant example of this occurred in 2008 when a Brazilian international, Laísa Andrioli, took all her clothes off and posed for the porn magazine “Sexy” in submissive positions. Sports journalists Jörg-Uwe Nieland and Daniela Schaaf define these and similar occurrences as a “pornographisation“ of the sport, an escalated sexualisation of the sport. Schaaf and Nieland expose a “sports, media and business alliance“ (3) which, firstly, guarantees the evolvement and perpetuation of male hegemony in football, and, secondly, ensures that female footballers are marketed and presented in the media within the meaning of a sexual aestheticisation strategy (Schaaf and Nieland 2011).
Shortcomings of sports journalism
Interestingly enough, these marketing phenomena also take centre stage when reporting about women’s football, especially in the run-up to the Women’s World Cup. That the respective media and sections of newspapers theorise on this is certainly understandable. What is not understandable, however, is that sports journalism on women’s football has, over the past few months, morphed into media and mainstream journalism and neglected its core task: reports on the sport as such are few and far between in the mass media. If anything, they are likely to focus on the German team. Those who care to delve further will learn how Silvia Neid organises the back four around Annike Krahn, or who has the potential to become a star forward. But full sports coverage of other teams? – None of that. Who, for example, are Cynthia Uwak, Faith Ikidi and Ebere Orijy? Why should Alexandra Popp keep a close eye on the left-footed, all-round defender from France, Sonia Bompastor? What makes the “Damallsvenskan”, the Swedish league, so attractive? Which teams are outstanding technicians or tacticians? The sports aspects of the women’s game should be given far greater attention when reporting on the Women’s World Cup. By doing so, sports journalists would be making a real contribution towards making women‘s football more interesting as a sport and towards its further emancipation. This would also be of benefit to the players, as they want to be seen primarily as athletes. The guests attending “Getting to Know Your Opponents” largely concurred on this.
The reluctance shown by sports journalists stands in contrast to the activities undertaken by FIFA, which has raised the bar in terms of television production and dissemination in 2011. Huge amounts of cameras were installed in and around the stadium. Never before has the tournament been broadcast to so many countries and regions as in the case of this Women’s World Cup. This has been made possible thanks to a marketing trick adopted by FIFA: the broadcasting rights for both the men’s and the women’s world cups are sold as a joint package. Commentators are torn between hope and scepticism as to whether or not this strategy has a long-term future. Ana Montenegro hopes, for example, that the exposure in Mexico will greatly boost the Mexican team’s popularity and recognition status. To date, women’s football in Mexico has actually been pared down to Leonardo Cuéllar (coach and former footballer) or Marigol (Maribel Dominguez, forward). The notion that the media hype surrounding the world cup impacts the everyday running of women’s football and the professional leagues is precluded by virtually all experts. Unattractive and poor-quality matches or empty stands are then deemed “unready for television” or “undeserving of press coverage”, even in Germany. There is, of course, good reason to contest this argument, since the public broadcasting companies also provide radio and TV coverage of poorly-attended third and fourth division men’s football games.
The fruits of liberal feminism
Can football kick emancipation in the right direction? What findings emerged from “Getting to Know Your Opponents”? The first-hand reports from Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria and Germany all support the thesis proffered by Andrei S. Markovits and Lers Rensmann which maintains that the (social) advancement of women’s football in Europe and North America is due to the success of liberal feminism in these regions and the cosmopolitan and cultural effects of the second globalisation. Accordingly, it is more difficult for women’s football to develop in traditionally Muslim or machismo-laden countries. Nonetheless, football – as a professional sport or street soccer – at times also provides a niche for individual emancipation, for self-development, empowerment or financial independence (4). The discussion on the extent to which women play the game differently when they play football is still in progress (5). Markovits and Rensmann write that women engaging in “men’s sports” such as boxing and football create their own, but not an autonomous, space in the sense that their existence in these sports is detached from the traditional male rites, practices and speech forms (6). Not so long ago, SPIEGEL, one of Germany’s leading news magazines, ran the following comment: “Female football players want to be seen as independent and not comparable to their male counterparts, but they're also still looking for their own identity, their own profile.” (Kramer 2011:97) It can only be hoped that women footballers get exactly this – their own space in history, the right to be a part of the world of sport.
- Cf. article in dossier by Katrin Gänsler “Hoping for the big payday”
- For more on the subject of football and the integration of girls/women from migrant backgrounds, see also: (Kleindienst-Cachay 2009)
- This alliance comprises people in the presidiums of the top sports associations (80-90% male), at sports editorial desks (92% male) and in sports sponsorship departments of advertising companies and agencies (where 80% of the decision-makers are male).
- See also the Article by Diana Sousa from Brazil.
- See, for example, the series of events “Frauen kicken anders” (Women play the game differently) at the University of Konstanz or the research findings of theLeon Root
Motion Analysis Laboratory in New York - For example, even in the women‘s game, the terms “man-to-man marking” and “last man” are used (instead of “woman-to-woman marking” and “last woman”) and hardly any gender-sensitive language can be found in football.
- Kleindienst-Cachay, Christa (2009): Mädchen und Frauen mit Migrationshintergrund im Sport – aktuelle Situation und Perspektiven für die Integration (Girls and women with migration backgrounds in sport – current situation and prospects of integration). „Wir sind dabei!“ Mädchen und Frauen mit Zuwanderungsgeschichte im Sport (“Count us in!” Girls and women with migration backgrounds in sport), Düsseldorf: Innenministerium des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen Landesportbund NRW.
- Kramer, Jörg (2011): Germany Hoping for Another Summer Fairytale. Der Spiegel, Hamburg.
- Schaaf, Daniela und Nieland, Jörg-Uwe (2011): Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung: Zur Sexualisierung des Frauenfußballs (Taming of the shrew: sexualisation in women’s football). das argument, 61-66.
- Walter, Natasha (2010): Living dolls : the return of sexism, London, Virago.
- Wopp, Christian (2006): Research project: Analysis of football clubs in Germany. Final report. Osnabrück: University of Osnabrück.
-----------
Stefanie Groll
She also writes articles on colleges and universities, science, the climate movement and current socio-political topics. In 1987, she was on the Borussia Oedt team of 5 to 7 year olds that won the youth championship in the district of Viersen. Today, she is a member of various Berlin clubs where she boxes and plays football and other sports.
GENDER KICKS 2011
- Overview: Gender Kicks 2011
Country focus: