‘You look like a machito!’: a decolonial analysis of the social in/exclusion of female participants in a Colombian sport for development and peace organization

Abstract

This article critically explores the relationship between the gendered nature of sport in Colombia and girls and young women’s social in/exclusion in football (soccer) through the lived experiences of female participants involved in a local Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) organization. Building on 6 months of ethnographic fieldwork and Lave and Wenger’s theory of Community of Practice (CoP), I explore the complex and connected gendered social elements that constrain girls and young women’s participation. Analyzing these processes and mechanisms through a decolonial lens, I reveal the existence of colonial residues that perpetuate and reinforce females positioning as peripheral actors in sport. The findings demonstrate how female participants are required to negotiate spaces with contradictory gendered meanings and confirm that social transformation within masculine structures is difficult to achieve. This research encourages SDP researchers to further engage with decolonial theory.

Keywords:

• Social inclusion
• sport for development and peace
• Colombia
• Sport
• gender and development
• decolonial theory
• community of practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

Notes

1 The organization extends itself beyond community-sport programming. Its leaders, coaches, social workers, and psychologists reach out to parents, siblings, and community members through community events, such as parent meetings where coaches demonstrate daily activities and social workers talk about values and goals. Teaching and practicing ‘good values’ is central to the SDP organization’s mission and community. Participants, parents, and volunteers rattled off values that align with the neoliberal ‘good, active citizen’ such as ‘self-control’ and ‘personal responsibility’ at the beginning of interviews.

2 “The inclusion of girls in sport and play activities alongside boys is a powerful means to alter gender stereotypes at the community level”; “Sport activities give women and girls access to public spaces that allow them to gather together, develop social networks and meet with each other in a safe environment”; and, “Training female teachers as ‘coaches’ effectively develops and mobilizes female community leaders and role models, and increases community commitment to include girls in sport” (Read and Bingham, 2009, p. xvi).

3 Many feminist researchers are now using the terms “sex/gender” or “gender/sex” to “emphasize that when you compare the sexes you are always looking at the product of an inextricable mix of biological sex and gender constructions” (Fine 2017, 26). This differentiation does not create smooth reading however, and often the terms are conflated. The focus of this text is gender ascriptions, not biological sex.

4 This research is timely, as scholars such as Chawanksy and Itani (2017) request more diverse research on the colonial power matrix in contemporary physical culture and Darnell and Hayhurst (2011) suggest scholars embrace a decolonizing sporting praxis.

5 Although aspects of Spain’s governing systems were not completely foreign to Amerindian groups, the exploitative application of these systems was. Spain’s systematic abuse of peoples, coupled with European diseases, decimated the indigenous populations in Colombia (Viveros Vigoya and Gil Hernández 2006). The ramification of community destabilization was far reaching as people lost community protection. By the 1560s, 90% of the indigenous population had died, meaning only 300,000 people survived the destabilization of their communities (Mahoney 2010). Relocation programs and population collapse resulted in scattered communities, lost cultural identity and lost knowledges; ‘the dwindling populations then became intertwined with the Spanish population, driving high rates of miscegenation’ (Mahoney 2010, 107). By the mid-1600s, the growth of the settler population and institutionalized ways of life stemming from the metropolis such as Christianity, Spanish festivals, entertainment and markets revealed the extent of Spain’s influence and authority (Mahoney, 2010).

6 Post-colonial theory and the decolonial option both criticize colonial rule, but there are key distinctions between the two. Decolonial thinking emerged from intellectuals located in the South (Latin America and Africa). It places emphasis on Spanish and Portuguese invasion starting in the fifteenth century. It exposes how the modern-capitalist world system continues to exploit the colonized through racial logic. And, it calls for a disruption of the Western/European epistemological status quo.

7 For example, if any number of women is in a room, they are addressed in the plural word for women, ‘ellas’; however, if a single man enters and joins those women, the pronoun changes to a male-associated term, ‘ellos’, meaning men.

8 Yuliza also taught me that among groups of friends some derogatory slang words, such as marrica, which means fag, gay or pussy, are used as terms of endearment.

9 Although these derogatory slang words felt extremely familiar in my vocabulary (consider that I am not a native speaker, so I learned slang words at the research locations), I do not recall and have zero notes demonstrating female participants labelled with derogatory words—tomboy, lesbian, and dyke. My engagement with these words is derived from formal interviews and casual discussion alone.

10 For example, a young man not associated with VIDA faced me, mere inches, on a semi-full public bus when leaving Chévere. When I moved away from him, he followed me, staring at my eyes. I publicly asked a man I knew to stand between us, and he left me alone. On another occasion, when I managed the field office, a group of young men not associated with VIDA arrived at the door when participants received bread. When I denied them bread, they subsequently mocked my Spanish accent and publicly harassed me.