Football, nation, and women in argentina: Redefining the field of power

Abstract

Who has featured in the stories about the nation? Who has been able to narrate the histories of sport, football, and the fatherland? What institutions have been central to this construction? But where are the women? Which arguments have been used to exclude them from the field of play? These and other questions guide this article which aims to reflect on sport as a gendered and gendering practice, as a space of production of inequalities as well as opportunities. This article builds its arguments upon data drawn from the analysis of interviews and informal discussions the authors have carried out with football players from Argentina’s women’s national team and the official Argentine Football Association’s (AFA) Women’s League as well as articles from the online edition of the daily sport publication Olé during the FIFA 2019 Women’s World Cup in France.