Between School and the Field: Football, Gender and Disputed Corporalities

Abstract

The article assumes that football is a historically masculinized sport where characteristics of hegemonic masculinity predominate. Consequently, women who have practiced it have been virtually invisible and marginalized. This exclusion is based on biological and medical-scientific discourses that have contributed to limiting female participation and constructing narratives that act as mechanisms for legitimizing certain corporalities. One of the spaces where clear control and configuration of bodies is observed is in the sports and school environments. In this sense, this article aims to analyze how the practice of football is inscribed in the bodies and femininities of the interviewees, as well as the role that schools play in controlling these bodies. A qualitative methodology with a biographical approach was used, based on in-depth semi-structured interviews to recover the life stories of current and former football players from different clubs in the city of Mar del Plata. The results indicate that playing football entails a transformation of the body, but not necessarily its ways of conceiving itself as a woman or its femininities. In conclusion, although school and sport have historically functioned as devices for the production and reproduction of gender inequalities by shaping, regulating, and hierarchizing bodies, practices also emerge that challenge and challenge the gendered bodily order, requiring schools to reconfigure their practices and contribute to promoting gender equity.