Rachel Allison
‘They are doing it because they love it’: U.S. and English fan perceptions of women footballers as ‘role models’
Allison, Rachel; Culvin, Alex; Pope, Stacey
Abstract
We draw from 102 interviews with American and English adults who attended the 2019 Women’s World Cup to examine how fans perceive women footballers as ‘role models’, with attention to the operations of gender ideology. Despite the recent professionalization and commercialization of women’s football, there is a dearth of research on fan perspectives of players as role models. Our findings show that most fans perceive role modelling as women’s accessibility and authenticity in interaction. Fans naturalize women’s often uncompensated labor as role models through a supposed love for their sport and desire to see its future growth, endorsing a gender essentialist view of women as notably caring and giving in comparison to men. However, a minority of fans embrace a more critical view by identifying role modelling as an expectation placed disproportionately on women within an already unequal resource environment. We conclude that role modelling is a gendered expectation for elite women footballers and that fans can be a source of pressure towards its enactment.
Citation
Allison, R., Culvin, A., & Pope, S. (2024). ‘They are doing it because they love it’: U.S. and English fan perceptions of women footballers as ‘role models’. Sport in Society, 27(10), 1529-1548 . https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2024.2304230
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jan 5, 2024 |
Online Publication Date | Jan 13, 2024 |
Publication Date | Jan 13, 2024 |
Deposit Date | Jan 18, 2024 |
Publicly Available Date | Jan 18, 2024 |
Journal | Sport in Society |
Print ISSN | 1743-0437 |
Electronic ISSN | 1743-0445 |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis Group |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 27 |
Issue | 10 |
Pages | 1529-1548 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2024.2304230 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2150253 |
Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
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This accepted manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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