Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel. Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America.

Abstract

The 2022 victory of the US women’s national soccer (also known as football or association football) team players to achieve equal pay as male players is the culmination of many years of organizing to construct a thriving women’s soccer culture. Similar achievements have not been replicated in Latin America. In Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America, Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel explain why Latin American women have not enjoyed the success of their North American counterparts in consolidating national soccer cultures despite several attempts to do so. Futbolera fills a major gap in the historiography of Latin American sport by focusing on the trials and tribulations of women’s soccer in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico from the late nineteenth century to the present day. This process is no easy task, as historians of sport often rely on periodicals, which tend to celebrate the achievements of male athletes much more than female ones. Despite this challenge, Elsey and Nadel thoroughly document Latin American women’s soccer’s many starts, which often then dissipate from the public record. When the flame rekindles, there are often expressions of shock and amazement at this new phenomenon, despite evidence to the contrary. Aside from soccer, the authors also analyze discourses and developments in women’s physical education, which played a key role in steering women away from playing rough sports like soccer and boxing in favor of sports like volleyball and basketball. Elsey and Nadel argue that a variety of actors, such as government bureaucrats, feminists, and entrepreneurs, have promoted and in some cases hindered the development of women’s soccer in the region. This uneven support continues in the present day.