Doing and undoing gender on Brazilian football fields

On the one hand, football is one of the largest Brazilian cultural displays. However, on the other hand, it still represents the zenith of the country’s hegemonic masculinity. This chapter uses a complicated conceptual framework to investigate data collected via ethnographic research with Brazilian women’s footballers. The study reveals paradoxical acts of gender struggle and submission within the women’s football context in Brazil. While a few players use the sport as a tool to counteract the dominant footballing gender order, and will employ all their energies to achieve their right to play and improve their individual and collective playing conditions, other players claim that the only way to be accepted by the main stakeholders of the sport is to comply with the rules of a normative femininity. The use of combined multiple theoretical lenses to analyze the diverse realities of women who play futebol feminino in Brazil offers a deeper and original interpretation of women’s football players than previous scholarly discussions.