Female Football Fans Research Articles

‘When I walk through the stadium’s gate, I have to be a man among the others’: doing gender by female Tunisian football fans

ABSTRACT Focusing on female fans of professional football teams in Tunisia, this article highlights the ways in which gender is performed within the specific context of football fandom. Based on a qualitative sociological study conducted through 23 semi-structured interviews with a group of women who identify as football team fans, this article analyses fandom's feminine performance. By examining the behaviours of women in the stands, a space dominated by male fans, the article explores the values, language, and gestures they adopt (and do not adopt) in reference to the characteristics valued in Tunisian society. The existing patterns of male dominance are reinforced by the various dimensions of the fans’ gender performance in this ‘male bastion’. Although women seem to accept male dominance and gender hierarchies in order to be recognized as authentic fans, the results show that women both construct and deconstruct their gender, highlighting the kaleidoscopic nature of gender.

Motivations and Participation of Female Football Supporters in Malaysia

Football has many spectators and fans around the world. Most of the spectators and fans are male rather than female. But nowadays e can see the increasing numbers of female fans attending to the stadium. Although Malaysia did not have a strong national football team and not in the best rank in the world, football is still Malaysian most favourite sport. Female fans also show their interested watching the game live in the stadium. They also buy tickets, spending their times to watch the team playing not only at the home but the away game. In fact, the management of the team also realizes that a female fan is increasing, and the management provides special counter tickets for female fans. Objectives of this article are to know what the female fans’ motivation are and how do they participate in their team. A total of 112 female football fans were chosen to be the respondents. The output from the survey showed 80.4% respondents said they started to support their team since last ten years, while 19.6% said they started to support the team over the past 10 years. The main motivation for them to go to the stadium are, to support their team (96.5%), meeting their friends (40.2%), release their stress (24.1%) and to watch and support their favourite players (25%). Numbers of 64.3% of respondents watching the game at home stadium, 32.1% watching and support their team in both home and away game.

Beyond stereotypes: Women and their engagement in football fandom

In common opinion, football fandom constitutes a male space as men are perceived to be more ‘authentic’ and engaged fans, more attached to the club. This article makes a contribution to the discussion on the differences between female and male fans and their modes of engagement. We aimed to answer the question of whether there are any differences between male and female supporters in: (1) self-stereotyping (agency, communion, independent self-construal, interdependent self-construal), (2) strength of the bond with the fandom and perceived personal gains from attachment to the club (identity fusion with other fans, collective action on behalf of the fan community, self-expansion) and (3) acceptance of aggressive behaviours. We applied a mixed-method approach and conducted both in-depth interviews with female football fans and quantitative analysis based on a survey among Polish football supporters. In contradiction to gender stereotypes, the results of a study conducted among 864 fans show that women saw themselves as more agentic than men did, had a stronger independent self-construal, and declared more self-development and stronger personal gains that can be achieved due to the participation in fandom culture. Moreover, gender differences in the strength of identity fusion and collective action tendency on behalf of the fandom were not significant.

‘We support football in our heart’: female football fandom in Iran

ABSTRACT Despite the growing research regarding sports fandom culture, the related knowledge concerning non-West female fans, specifically Muslim women, is next to absent. By drawing on gender theories alongside transnational feminism, this study critically investigates the experiences and practices of female football fans in Iran, a country with exclusive social features. Through semi-structured interviews, 25 women and 5 men talked about their lived experiences. Findings suggest that the female fandom stream is empowering, although female fans still have to overcome gender stereotypes to demonstrate the authenticity of their fandom. Also, the state still restricts female activities in different ways, such as stadium entrance ban and shortage of media coverage. However, women have followed their desires and applied strategies to remain fans and support their teams afar. In this way, alongside multiple practical opportunities, they have converted social media to a virtual stadium to demonstrate both their support and contest.

Segregated femininities? Creating female fandom through social media in Sweden

ABSTRACT The study analyses female fandom in Sweden, focusing on female football supporters’ self-presentation on social media. We found social media to function as a forum for empowerment, where the female football fans construct and express solidarity between girls and women and challenge hegemonic notions of femininity. Female football supporters are actively involved in formulating and shaping their own agenda and self-presentation and are drawn to the supporter culture for many of the same reasons as their male peers: group community, thrill and excitement, and the love for their team. The contribution of the study is two-fold: it fills a knowledge gap regarding Swedish female fans, while also making a conceptual intervention in the study of female fandoms more broadly, demonstrating the usefulness of critical theorization on femininities and indicating how social media enables female football supporters to ‘play’ with different conceptions of femininity to create space within the supporter milieu.

Tensions between fan culture and the feminist identities of female football fans in Brazil

ABSTRACT Although, in Brazil, football is considered a national passion, women are rarely present in these narratives. In fan culture, in particular, from the 1990s, as the social problem of violence related to football grew, there was a weakening in the visibility and participation of female spectators. However, in recent years, women began a collective organization to guarantee visibility in fan culture, claiming for the right to equal participation in the stadia. Considering this specific scenario, we describe and analyse the way Brazilian women fans integrate into and relate to fan culture, as well as how their gender performances lead to tensions with traditional supporter identifications. To do so, we conducted interviews with 37 Brazilian female supporters. We argue that Brazilian female fans built a feminist solidarity among supporters of different clubs, promoting negotiations and critical thinking about fan culture, which implies performances that challenge and depart from traditional supporter identities.

‘Partners’, ‘mothers’, and ‘tomboys’. female football fans in the structural trap of assigned roles in Poland

ABSTRACT The number of studies on female fans has recently increased, reflecting the growing number of women in the stands. Studies pay special attention to women’s identification and engagement in football fandom and the ways women struggle for recognition. However, they tend to marginalize the role of other actors in the process of feminization of football. This paper intends to fill this gap by describing the roles imposed on female fans by male fans and other stakeholders. The study draws on interviews conducted with male fans as well as other stakeholders. It tries to show that football culture offers a fixed repertoire of available roles for women: ‘partners’, ‘tomboys’ and ‘mothers’. The research argues that the identified set of social roles tends to reproduce masculine hegemony in the football stands. It is due to the fact that in order to be a part of fandom culture women have to fit into traditional gender roles and meet expectations provided by men instead of developing a distinctive female fandom.

Female fans and social media: micro-communities and the formation of social capital

ABSTRACT Research question Using the theoretical lens of social capital, this study explores the challenges faced by female football fans in performing their fandom on social media, and how they respond to these challenges in the way they consume and express their fandom within these online spaces. In doing so, the study responds to calls for further, empirical research on both the experiences of female sports fans and the darker side of social media. Research methods An exploratory, qualitative research design is adopted, comprising in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 15 female fans of European professional football clubs. Interview data is analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Results and findings The study contributes novel evidence to the fields of social media, social capital and football fandom, revealing that the male hegemony of football fandom is reinforced through social media. This leads to modified online behaviour by female fans, whereby micro-communities are formed in which they discuss football. The splintering of the online fan community into these micro-communities represents a form of cyberbalkanization and has implications for female fans’ ability to build bridging social capital on social media. Implications This study responds to calls for a more theoretically informed approach to social media research in sport, drawing on theories of social capital and performative sport fandom to understand the strategies employed by female fans in performing their fandom on social media. The findings raise questions of how professional sports clubs can engage female audiences and champion inclusive cultures of fandom.

Gender as a module of identity construction in football fan scenes—female football fans as a deviation in a male space?

Der Beitrag basiert auf der mehrjahrigen Bielefelder Fusballfan-Studie (BiFans). Er rekonstruiert Identitaten weiblicher Fusballfans im deutschen Profifusball. Anhand qualitativer Interviews mit weiblichen Fans werden funf Dimensionen der weiblichen Fanidentitat herausgearbeitet. Dabei kristallisiert sich eine androzentrische Struktur des Feldes heraus, in der das Geschlecht eine ordnende Funktion einnimmt. Zudem werden Verbindungen zwischen der Spezifik des Feldes und der gesellschaftlichen Struktur evident. Auf der Grundlage der hier erarbeiteten Dimensionalisierung konnen Fangruppen, aber auch andere jugendliche Gesellungsformen auf die Bedeutung der sozialen Kategorie des Geschlechts hin untersucht werden. Eine besondere Herausforderung bieten die Ergebnisse fur die geschlechtersensible Fansozialarbeit, die seit Jahrzehnten in diesem Handlungsfeld Sozialer Arbeit aktiv ist. Entsprechend werden Vorschlage fur die Tatigkeit der sozialpadagogischen Fanprojekte aufgezeigt.

Male fashionistas and female football fans: Gender stereotypes affect neurophysiological correlates of semantic processing during speech comprehension

Abstract Recent studies have shown that pre-existing contextual information, such as gender stereotypes, is incorporated online during comprehension (e.g., Van Berkum, van den Brink, Tesink, Kos, & Hagoort, 2008). Stereotypes, however, are not static entities, and social role theory suggests that they may be influenced by the behavior of members of the group (Eagly, 1987). Consequently, our study examines how gender stereotypes affect the semantic processing of statements from both a male and a female speaker, as well as investigating how the influence of stereotypes may change as listeners gain experience with individual speakers. Participants listened to male and female speakers produce sentences about stereotypically feminine (fashion) and stereotypically masculine (sports) topics. Half of the participants heard a stereotype congruent pattern of sentences (e.g., for the male speaker, semantic errors about fashion but no semantic errors on sports sentences) and the other half heard a stereotype incongruent pattern. We found that the N400 effect of semantic correctness is larger in stereotype incongruent conditions. Furthermore, in stereotype congruent conditions, only stimuli presented in the male voice show an N400 effect in the expected direction (larger N400s to semantic violations). Additionally, when we examined ERP changes over the course of the experiment, we found that the degree of change in amplitude was predicted by individual differences in ambivalent sexism. These results suggest that not only are speaker characteristics incorporated during online language processing, but also that social knowledge influences language processing in a manner congruent with social role theory.

The Footy Girls of Tumblr: How Women Found Their Niche in the Online Football Fandom

This study examines how female football (soccer) fans use the social media platform Tumblr to interact and talk about their fandom, what purposes Tumblr serves for them, and why they prefer it to other social media platforms. As women are often marginalised in offline and online sports discourse, Tumblr’s football fandom was chosen to investigate how women experience their fandom on a platform with a mostly female and young user population. The results of 14 in-depth qualitative interviews with heavily invested female Tumblr users show that the fandom’s communication culture allows fans to interact in a variety of creative ways that involve the use of a specialist vocabulary. This Tumblr fandom is overwhelmingly female, which makes the interviewees feel that they can talk freely about football. Thus, Tumblr has the potential to serve as a safe space for female fans. Yet, its highly opinionated discussions and rivalries mirror those in the traditional football fandom. This study contributes to the literature that explores how women express their sports fandom online and demonstrates how they have found a niche in which to discuss their favourite sport on their own terms.

Differences in Perceptions and Attitudes of Singaporean Female Football Fans Towards Football Marketing

Though global, it is known that female participation in football lags behind their male counterparts. Football marketers have highlighted this laggardness as a source of growth for the clubs. However, when it comes to female fans' perspectives towards marketing practices, little is understood. Therefore, this exploratory article has been conducted to analyse the differences in fans' perceptions and attitudes towards both traditional and social media marketing. The article shows that Singaporean female fans can be separated into ‘hot' (avid) and ‘cool' (casual) fans. These two groups exhibit both similarities and differences in perceptions and attitudes towards different parts of traditional and social media marketing. The findings reveal that social media is the preferred channel of football consumption even if its potential has not been tapped fully. For now, it is best to construe social media marketing as a platform which enhances traditional marketing.

An Analysis of Brand Equity and its Influence on Customer Satisfaction of a Football Team among Female Fansin Public Universities in Kenya

The increasing competition in the business sector requires that teams that are involved in developing the brands come up with brands that consumers can easily differentiate from those of the competitors to make their brand stand out. Football teams rely on fans for their success, providing income through ticket sales, television viewing and purchasing team branded products. Yet this area remains unexplored in Kenya hence the researchers desire to assess the influence of brand equity on customer satisfaction of football team among universities female fans in Public Universities in Kenya. The specific objective to be undertaken for the research were; to examine the influence of brand image on customer satisfaction of a football team among female fans in public universities in Kenya. The Ministry of Sports will recognize how the female fans impact on sports and justify higher budgetary allocations for female league. The research study was anchored on the social identity theory propounded by Tajfel which states that society is made up of social groups that have power and status at their disposal. The study adopted explanatory research design to determine the influence of brand equity on customer satisfaction of a football team. A target population of 1846 respondent was investigated. A sample of 319 was then used for the study. Stratified and snowball sampling techniques were employed. Semi-structured questionnaire was used as instrument of data collection. Content validity was measured through expert judgment while reliability was measured by use of Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient method at p less tha 0.05. The data obtained was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics comprising of chi-statistic, multiple regression analysis and Anova. The first objective sought to examine the influence of brand image on customer satisfaction among female football fans in public university. The result shows that the value of chi-statistic is15.719 with a p-value of 0.015. Since the p-value is less that the chosen level of significance (0.05), we reject the null hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between brand image and customer satisfaction

A sentiment analysis of who participates, how and why, at social media sport websites

Purpose Due to an immense rise of social media in recent years, the purpose of this paper is to investigate who, how and why participates in creating content at football websites. Specifically, it provides a sentiment analysis of user comments from gender perspective, i.e. how differently men and women write about football. The analysis is based on user comments published on Facebook pages of the top five 2015-2016 Premier League football clubs during the 1st and the 19th week of the season. Design/methodology/approach This analysis uses a data collection via social media website and a sentiment analysis of the collected data. Findings Results show certain unexpected similarities in social media activities between male and female football fans. A comparison of the user comments from Facebook pages of the top five 2015-2016 Premier League football clubs revealed that men and women similarly express hard emotions such as anger or fear, while there is a significant difference in expressing soft emotions such as joy or sadness. Originality/value This paper provides an original insight into qualitative content analysis of male and female comments published at social media websites of the top five Premier League football clubs during the 1st and the 19th week of the 2015-2016 season.

Female fan experiences and interpretations of the 1958 Munich air disaster, the 1966 World Cup finals and the rise of footballers as sexualised national celebrities

The experiences of female sports fans have largely been neglected in academic research to date with socio-historical accounts focusing almost exclusively on male fans. Through an excavation of the sporting histories of female football fans this article aims to make one contribution towards changing this. Drawing on Glaser and Strauss’s ‘grounded theory’ approach, 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with female football fans in England, aged between 50 and 80 years old. My findings begin by examining female fans’ memories of the 1958 Munich air disaster. I move on to examine female experiences and interpretations of the 1966 World Cup finals, before finally discussing the rise of football players in England as sexualised national celebrities. To conclude, I call for further socio-historical research to explore female experiences of football in earlier decades.

The impact of the supporters’ trust movement on women’s feelings and practices of their football fandom

This article looks at the ways in which female football fans in England have responded to and become involved in the cooperative supporters’ trust movement. It examines the history and development of the movement, which offers a new, democratic and equitable way for supporters to become involved in the life of their club, and become part of a new, wider fan community, broader than simple club allegiance. The involvement of respondents in the supporters’ trust movement is explored, profiling the ways in which they have immersed or distanced themselves from the trust concept and community, and comparing their experiences as they have described them in interview. I argue that the trust movement offers the opportunity for supporters to help the game progress in a way that is advantageous to all fans, not just females; and this seems to be an element of the movement that has great appeal to women.

Gender constructions and negotiations of female football fans. A case study in Denmark

While both the media and the academic literature focus primarily on male fans, in particular on violence and the prevention of hooliganism, little is known about female football supporters. This is also true of Denmark, a country that is known for its high degree of gender equality. This article aims to give insight into gender constructions and negotiations of female football fans in the stands. Drawing on a social constructivist perspective to gender and Bourdieu’s (1984) approaches to field, capital and habitus, we explored the experiences and opinions of female fans. The methods employed were stadium observations as well as qualitative, guideline-based interviews with female supporters of three different clubs. The observations and interviews reveal that traditional gender norms, prejudices and sexism are widespread in the fan stands, and are often accepted and trivialised by the female fans themselves. Female fans have to comply with specific rules of conduct in the stadium, where “masculine” behaviour for both male and female supporters is regarded as ideal fan behaviour. However, there is also space for gender negotiations as long as female supporters display neither “hypermasculinity” nor “emphasised femininity” in their gender performances. Female fans do not only comply with and reproduce the rules of conduct in the stadium but also apply different forms of resistance against sexism and the domination of men in the stadium – both on the field and in the stands. The founding of a women’s fan group can be interpreted as means of opposition to the dominance of men.

A woman's place recurring: structuration, football fandom and sub-cultural subservience

This paper focuses on qualitative interviews with a sample of female football fans in order to explore and explain the spatial and temporal extension of gender subordination prevalent within football fandom cultures. To do so, it draws on structuration theory as presented by Anthony Giddens and concentrates attention on routine interactions and encounters as key factors that shape the constitution of football fandom cultures and the sub-cultural struggles encountered by females.

Female fans of men’s football – a case study in Denmark

Football is an invention by men for men, and today, the majority of players and fans are men. There is an abundance of literature on football and fandom; however, gender is mostly not an issue in these publications. Research about female football supporters and fans is very limited. This is also true for Denmark, the country, which is the focus of this article. Based on gender and socialization theories, this contribution addresses women and their (lack of) interest in men’s football. The main questions refer to the numbers of female supporters and their patterns of football consumption. The sources of information are reader and user data of mass media, results of surveys about the habits of the Danish population and the results of an interview study with female fans. A specific focus of this article is on the minority of female supporters who attend football games. How do they adapt to a ‘man’s world’ and what are their roles in this ‘male environment’? The statements of interviewees revealed that female fans have to cope with a measure of sexism, but that they can adopt the men’s perspectives in order to be accepted as ‘authentic fans’. Other women reacted on men’s domination in the football stadium by founding a women only fan group that allows them to find their own way to be women and fans.

‘There Are Some Daft People Out There!’: exploring female sport and media fandoms

Female sports fans have been largely marginalized in academic research, but this article makes one contribution towards changing this relative invisibility. Drawing on a ‘grounded theory’ approach, 85 semi-structured interviews were conducted with female football (soccer) and rugby union fans in the English city of Leicester. This article explores how these women position themselves in relation to stereotypes about female media/soap opera fans. Whilst some sports fans were keen to reaffirm hierarchies between sports and media fandoms, others emphasized the extant similarities between these different types of fandom, illustrating the heterogeneity of women's sporting experiences and the range of their interpretations of fandom. My findings concur with Schimmel et al.'s assertion (Schimmel et al. ‘Keep Your Fans to Yourself’, 593) that there is a need for greater ‘cross-fertilization’ between sports and media fandoms. This could help to prompt a move away from gendered hierarchies in research and move towards putting women's experiences as sports fans on the research agenda.