Gender trouble on the German soccer field: can the growth of women’s soccer challenge hegemonic masculinity?

Abstract

Soccer in Germany represents a social sphere for the expression of masculinity and features significant ideological battles over gender roles. This paper discusses whether the growth of women’s soccer can challenge the prevailing hegemonic masculinity in an area that represents an important economic aspect of consumer culture and social identity. Does women’s soccer have the potential to subvert existing gender norms and challenge dominant understandings of gender? While women’s soccer has seen some important areas of growth in Germany, there are reasons to remain sceptical about the subversive potential of women’s soccer. This article argues that the unholy trinity of the sports-media-business alliance is the root cause for the limitations women’s soccer faces in challenging hegemonic masculinity. This sports-media-business alliance has served as the structural framework that has shaped societal discourses about women’s soccer in Germany. This paper discusses three of those discourses: the evolution of the macro-historical discourse over the societal role of women’s soccer in post-World War II Germany; the discourse comparing men’s and women’s soccer and asserting the superiority of men’s soccer; and the discourse on the role of femininity in women’s soccer and the sexualization of the players.

Keywords:

• Women’s soccer
• Germany
• femininity
• masculinity

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to Nicole Detraz, Michelle Mattson, Rachel Kaelberer Mattson and Sharon Stanley for comments on earlier drafts of this paper and for thoughtful conversations on the subject of soccer and masculinity.

Notes

1. One of the original analyses of the sport-media-business alliance is: Schauerte (2004). See also: Schaaf and Nieland (2011).

2. See, for example: Pfister (2015, p. 641) and Botsch (2009, p. 102).

3. See: Botsch (2009).

4. During the 2015–16 season, first division men’s soccer clubs received 29 percent of the income from media fees, 24 percent from commercials and sponsorship, and only 16 percent from ticket sales and related game-day income. See: Leister (2016).

5. See Schaaf and Nieland (2011) for this and some of the following examples.

6. The use of legs in a kicking motion had particularly gendered and sexual connotations. Behind the distain for using legs in a kicking motion were male notions of women’s legs as objects with erotic significance that were not supposed to be soiled with mud and grass stains or bruised through physical contact.

7. For summaries of the ban see Hoffmann and Nendza (2011, pp. 46–48), and Hennies and Meuren (2011, pp. 31–36).

8. The key theoretical basis for this claim is the by now well-established notion that gender is not a biological fact but rather a social construction (Butler, 1990). Gender is performed daily in numerous social interactions and soccer is a sphere of life that is particularly strongly gendered.

9. For the time period before 1990, this paper concentrates on developments in West Germany. During the Cold War, East German women could play soccer as a leisure sport, but soccer did not receive any sport funding.

10. For the numbers reported in this paragraph, see DFB (2000, 2016).

11. For the numbers on World Cup attendance see: www.fifa.com.

12. For background see: Botsch (2009, pp. 106–107).

13. For the numbers reported here see: www.weltfussball.com

14. See Hoffmann and Nendza (2011, 167–170) for a number of stories along those lines.

15. The business and image calculations of the two main sponsors of the traditional men’s clubs with the most successful women’s subsidiaries –VW (Wolfsburg) and Allianz (Munich) – are interesting as well. Both companies believe that their support for women’s soccer allows them to demonstrate their openness to women’s issues and, therefore, to reach more women customers. For VW an additional motivation behind supporting women’s soccer is their improved ability to attract American engineers and managers, whose daughters want to play soccer.

16. For the notion of ‘hegemonic sports’ see Markovits and Rensmann (2010). Hegemonic sports refers to sports that reach the status of a genuine popular culture. These are the sports that people follow and discuss on a daily basis. Hegemonic sports are all team sports played by men. With a few exceptions, soccer is the only true hegemonic sport in most countries in the world. Within the United States, four team sports are ‘hegemonic’: baseball, American football, men’s basketball and men’s ice hockey.

17. See, for example, Westermeier (2013).

18. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA7sMomOg7A.

19. See for some examples: Schöndorfer (2014).