Female football players in England: examining the emergence of third-space narratives

Abstract

This paper will examine the ways in which female football players negotiate and contest gender conventions practised in English football. I look at female participation through the application of Bhabha’s ‘third-space’ thesis, and argue that Bhabha’s work has utility in the context of this case study for understanding complexities and nuances ordinarily ignored by gendered discourse performed in English football culture. I utilize semi-structured interviewees with women who have or are still currently playing football across an age range of 17–45. I draw on a feminist ‘standpoint’ in order to attain critical narratives. Critiques arise in two key areas. Firstly, the impact of changes in governance under the Football Association. Secondly, the agency of players themselves to actively contest gender conventions, whether through playing football despite the negative connotations attached to female physicality, or through the provision of mixed football.

Notes

1. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 54.

2. The FA announces intentions to promote women’s football, FA announces five-year plan to boost women's football, http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport, 25 October 2012 (accessed October 4, 2013).

3. Since the development of women’s football came under the remit of the FA and consequent cessation of the WFA in 1993.

4. SKY Television’s Andy Gray commented on referee’s assistant Sian Massey prior to a match between Wolves and Liverpool (2010–2011), ‘Can you believe that? A female linesman. Women don’t know the offside rule,’ said Gray. Both Gray and his co-commentator Richard Keys were later sacked.

5. Leisure pastimes are a social commentary ‘a story they tell about themselves’ from Geertz, Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight, 448.

6. Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalisation and Football, 63.

7. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 165.

8. See Lipset and Rokkan’s ‘Frozen Space’ in Markovits and Hellerman, American Exceptionlism, 19.

9. Walvin, The People’s Game, 22.

10. Walvin, The People’s Game, 44; Winner, Those Feet: A Sensual History of English Football, 6–40.

11. The social purity movements that came from this warned of the dangers of ‘that horrible thing done in secrecy’ in Winner, A Sensual History of English Football, 20–1, 9. Also in Walvin, The People’s Game, 40.

12. Williams and Woodhouse, Can Play, Will Play? Women and Football in Britain, 7.

13. McLintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, 29.

14. Walvin, The People’s Game, 15.

15. Winner, A Sensual History of English Football, 16.

16. Buzuvis, ‘Caster Semenya and the Myth of a Level Playing Field’, 37.

17. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 165.

18. ibid., 8.

19. Stanley and Wise, Breaking Out Again: Feminist Ontology and Epistemology, 21.

20. Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid: A History of Football Tactics, 26, 39.

21. Giulianotti, Football: A Sociology of the Global Game, 5.

22. Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives, 119.

23. Bhabha, ‘The Commitment to Theory’, 20.

24. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 54.

25. Gadamer quoted in Prasad, Crafting Qualitative Research: Working in the Post Positivist Traditions, 33.

26. Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Construction’, 402.

27. ‘Strong objectivity requires that we investigate the relationship between subject and object, rather than deny existence of, or seek unilateral control over this relation’ in Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? 151–2.

28. Ikas and Wagner, Communicating in the Third Space, 2.

29. Sandvoss, Fans: The Mirror of Consumption, 6; Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 168.

30. The FA ban on women using facilities of affiliated clubs from 1921–1971.

31. Williams, A Rough Game for Girls? A History of Women’s Football in Britain, 68.

32. Hester and Francis, ‘Doing Data: The Local Organisation of the Sociological Interview’, 36.

33. See Giulianotti, Football: A Sociology of the Global Game; Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalisation and Football; Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid.

34. Giulianotti, Football: A Sociology of the Global Game, 140. Termed ‘street kid geniuses’.

35. ibid., 141–2.

36. The Bosman Ruling effectively increased the movement of players of FAs in the European Union subject to governance under Union Européenne de Football Association, saw the end to ‘quota systems’ employed to restrict the number of ‘foreign’ players in a given match. For further reading see www.liv.ac.uk/footballindustry.

37. Antonioni and Cubbin, ‘The Bosman Ruling and the Emergence of a Single Market in Soccer Talent’, 157.

38. The term coined by Ruud Gullit whilst working as a pundit for the BBC during Euro ’96 in Winner, A Sensual History of English Football, 8.

39. ibid., 36.

40. It is not then the authorization of femininity, but that aesthetic ‘adjustments’ are instigated as a result of the implementation of governance sanctions. Also see Witt, ‘Do Players React to Sanction Changes? Evidence from the English Premier League’, 623.

41. Witt, ibid., 635.

42. The top female team participation sport in England and currently has 1.38 m women and girls up and down the country playing the game regularly. Source www.thefa.com, accessed October 4, 2013.

43. Herdt, Third Sex, Third Gender, 25.

44. Azzarito, Solomon, and Harrison, ‘”… If I had a choice, I would …” A feminist poststructuralist perspective on girls in physical education’, 222; Cashmore, Making Sense of Sports, 12; Shilling, The Body and Social Theory, 10.

45. Caudwell, ‘Women’s Experiences of Gender and Sexuality’ in Sport cited in Wagg, British Football and Social Exclusion, 2004, 130.

46. Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’, 19–20.

47. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 37.

48. It will be interesting to see how this develops with the establishment of the Women’s Super League.

49. In 1978, the parents of 12-year-old Theresa Bennett took the English FA to court for not allowing girls to play mixed football in a local league. Bennett lost the case, but the FA changed its rules in 1991 to allow under-11 mixed football (the English Schools Football Association also included girls’ football in their legislation). Notably, this was 15 years after the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) took effect.

50. Hargreaves, Sporting Females, 176.

51. Lord Denning, Theresa Bennett vs. The Football Association, 4–5.

52. Gartner, The Reasons for the Absence of Women’s Football in England, 54.

53. At the time of writing, ‘the FA is pleased that the resolution to amend its Rules to extend mixed football in the U13 age group received approval from The FA Shareholders at the AGM today (25 May). The resolution was fully supported by The FA Board, FA Executive and FA Council and the result means that girls and boys will be able to play in the same teams at U12 and U13 level from next season (2011–2012).’ FA Statement on Mixed Football, 25 May 2011. The raising of the age limit to under-15 was sanctioned by the FA as of 17 May 2013, ‘The resolution to increase the mixed football age limit from U14s to U15s was approved on Thursday by The FA shareholders at their AGM after The FA Board, FA Executive and FA Council agreed the proposal’, from www.thefa.com, 17 May 2013, accessed October 15, 2013.

54. Skeggs looks at the generation of social capital that has an exchange value in Skeggs, ‘Exchange, Value and Affect: Bourdieu and “the Self”’, 75.

55. In 2008, The FA commissioned Brunel University to evaluate these trials to determine the key issues involved in mixed gender football (www.thefa.com, 10 March 2010, accessed February 7, 2012).

56. Caster Semenya was forced to undergo a ‘sex verification test’ because of her ‘masculine’ appearance. This is indicative of the tension between athleticism and sexuality for female athletes. Presumably, failure to conform to a conventional standard of western femininity was licence for the International Olympic Committee to conduct a series of demeaning ‘gender verification’ tests.

57. Herdt, Third Sex, Third Gender, 25.

58. Caudwell, ‘Women’s Experiences of Gender and Sexuality in Sport’ cited in Wagg, British Football and Social Exclusion, 131.

59. Mennesson, ‘Hard Women and Soft Women: The Social Construction of Identities Among Female Boxers’, 21–33.

60. Thing, ‘The Female Warrior: Meanings of Play-Aggressive Emotions in Sport’, 276.

61. In breaks and leisure time.

62. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 184.

63. Coddington, One of the Lads: Women Who Follow Football, 57; Fiske, op cit, 168; Caudwell, ‘Women’s Football in the United Kingdom: Theorising Gender and Unpacking the Butch Lesbian Image’, 401; Cox and Thompson, ‘Multiple Bodies: Sportswomen, Soccer and Sexuality’, 7.

64. Coed (mixed) soccer in the USA is bound by specific rules intended to ‘equalise’ gender differences on-the-field play. The outlawing of the slide tackle is a good example of this. It is considered one of the most potentially dangerous skills in football and is not allowed in most coed and women’s leagues. See Henry and Comeaux, ‘Gender Egalitarianism in Coed Sport’, 280.

65. Denzin and Lincoln, Handbook of Qualitative Research, 222–4; Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives, 275–84.

66. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 54.