Girls Allowed?
Girls Allowed?
The Marginalization of Female Sport Fans
Sport is historically a male cultural practice. It is (and it seems always has been) predominantly played and watched by men. However, in recent years there has been a significant increase in the number of female participants in, and fans of, sport. With women’s sport participation on the increase, coverage of sport in the mass media is rising, and with some changes in relation to gender roles and expectations, it is becoming more common to find women with an interest in, or even a passion for, sport. However, women continue to be marginalized both in fan communities and in academic research and literature on sport fans. What little has been written on female sport fans has been produced mostly in relation to changes in the nature of sport audiences, and more specifically, the rise in number of female fans has often been viewed as evidence of the embourgeoisification of certain sports (such as soccer in the UK) and the marketing of these to more middle-class, family-based audiences. In an earlier paper Crawford and Gosling (2004) suggest that there exists little consideration of women’s everyday experiences of being a sport fan, limiting our understanding of what being a sport fan means to many women. Building on this earlier paper, this chapter offers a critical consideration of the existing literature on female sport fan culture, and in doing so, offers a basis for future research into the everyday experiences and identities of female sport fans. This chapter, drawing on existing literature and our work on British ice hockey fans, therefore considers the case of female fans of sport and their continued marginalization from sport and supporter communities.
The Position of Women as Sport Fans
As Giulianotti (2005: 80) writes, “gender stratification within sport began early.” As far back as the ancient Greek Olympic games, women were barred from participating in, or attending, sporting events (Guttmann 1986). Up to the late nineteenth century, “sport” primarily (if not exclusively) consisted of masculine pastimes such as blood and combative sports (Gorn & Goldstein 1993). With the codification of many sports in the late nineteenth century, Victorian masculine ideologies such as the ideal of the muscular Christian gentleman became formally set within modern organized sports (Mangan 1986 cited in Giulianotti 2005). However, there is a long (though often marginal) history of women as sport fans. Even in ancient Greco-Roman times, there were frequently certain sporting events that allowed women to participate in the proceedings and attend as spectators—though these were certainly less common than the events of their male counterparts.
In more modern times, there are also numerous examples of women standing alongside their male contemporaries watching and avidly following sport. For example, Haywood (1996) suggests that female fans have always attended professional soccer (association football) matches in the UK, though not always in large numbers. In particular, between the two world wars the number of female spectators attending soccer in the UK grew. With more women taking an active role in the First World War, gender roles began to change and afterwards the increasing respectability of football, with improved grounds and behavioral standards, allowed more women to become involved as fans (Haywood 1996). Furthermore, with the more liberal social climate of the 1960s, the attendance of women at football matches increased. England’s World Cup win in 1966 allowed the game’s image to be reconstructed, and more female fans were actively targeted, with television coverage offering women instruction on football rules such as the offside rule. Such changes in attitudes and increased television coverage of football encouraged more women to follow the sport as fans and take it up as players, leading to the establishment of the Women’s Football Association in England in 1969 (Woodhouse & Williams 1991).
Being a sport fan can be very important for many women, just as it is for many men. Sport (for both men and women) can play an important role in defining individual identities: who we are, where we come from, and which social groups we belong to. Furthermore, Crawford and Gosling’s (2004) consideration of British ice hockey audiences highlights the important networking opportunities that this can provide for women. Ice hockey, as with other sports, can offer women an opportunity to “hang out” and be with other women (and men) in a public place, and for some women this provides an opportunity to develop new friendship networks and meet other female fans, as exemplified in comments made by “Leslie” (female, aged seventeen):
[W]e sit in one block, so we know most of the block and like, you see people around like, it’s good [….] And my friends go and we got to meet other people, and it just, it’s like a big group of us, we didn’t know each other before. We just know each other as the Storm gang …we, where we sit we call it the “barmy army,” [block] 109’s barmy army. (cited in Crawford & Gosling 2004:484)
Dell (1998: 105) also suggests that sport fandom can be empowering for women, helping them to challenge dominant gender roles: “Women successfully insisted on watching televised wrestling two or three times a week and then openly admired the parade of male bodies that filled the screen, transgressing the roles set out for them as wives and mothers.”
However, women remain restricted from attending most mass spectator sports due to cultural expectations and gender discrimination. Women continue to be more restricted in their leisure choices and opportunities than men (Deem 1982, 1986; Shaw 1994; Wearing 1998). This is due to numerous social factors, such as women’s limited presence in many “public” places, economic constraints, limited leisure time, and social expectations of women’s location and roles within society, such as domestic and caring responsibilities. As Davies (1992: 173) suggests,
Although I now live ten minutes walk from the Dell in Southampton, I’ve not yet made it to a single League game. Even if the Dell were to install crèche facilities, the demands of four-year-old Scarlett and one-year old Harry, plus a part-time job, leave little spare time and energy to devote to the live game.
Women’s childcare responsibilities not only restrict their attendance at sport, but when children are taken along in family units to sport events, women continue to be marginalized by the expectation that they will perform the role of primary carer in these public settings (Day 1990).
It is also evident that the nature of many sports and sport venues has restricted women’s access as spectators. Increased concerns about football hooliganism in the 1970s in the UK saw a dramatic decline in women attending live soccer matches. Likewise, many sports and sport venues are the sites of overt sexism and aggressive masculine behavior. Though undoubtedly sexism and aggression are not solely encountered in sport, it does seem that sport provides a legitimate site for expressions of “hypermasculinity,” and Williams1 (cited in Coddington 1997: 81) argues that this is one of sport’s major appeals to many male fans:
Many [men] want to be overtly sexist and racist. They need to have this exaggerated sense of their sexuality to defend themselves from potential accusations that they are not real men. English men are very unsure of their sexual identities and, consequently, have to reaffirm themselves as real men by talking about women in a way that is derogatory.
It is also the case that in the past mass spectator sport venues lacked adequate facilities (such as women’s toilets), and most were dated and dangerous places and therefore uninviting for many women, especially those who wanted to bring young children along. As Davies (1992: 175) eloquently puts it, “Presumably, football wouldn’t be football without someone peeing on your head. Well, lads, if that’s what you want, you can keep it. And I’ll just stick to my TV.”
However, more importantly, sport has remained ideologically a male domain. As Dworkin and Messner (2002: 17) suggest, “organised sport was created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by and for White middle class men to bolster a sagging ideology of ‘natural superiority’ over women” and has continued to constitute a male-dominated domain both for participants and supporters. As Whelehan (2000) suggests, women’s progression into these male enclaves has been a very slow and difficult process.
Women therefore have traditionally constituted a minority at most mass spectator sports. However, it is evident that in recent decades there have been significant changes within the nature of many contemporary sports, most notably what Giulianotti (2002: 28) refers to as “hypercommodification.” In particular, there has been a shift towards refocusing many sports towards more affluent family-based audiences, rather than the traditionally masculine (often working-class) profiles of many mass spectator sports, such as soccer, rugby league, and baseball. As Crawford (2004: 97) writes,
[I]t is the contemporary nuclear family unit that has become the focus of both consumer society and social regulation. Increasingly, consumer goods, such as the “family-ticket,” “family-meal,” “family-pack,” are targeted towards this basic unit of consumer society. It is [at] the family-unit, both in the home and outside of it, that consumption is increasingly aimed, and likewise, it is towards this audience that many contemporary sports and sport venues (along with many other forms of entertainment) have increasingly marketed themselves.
As Fink, Trail, and Anderson (2002) suggest in their study of female and male fans of men’s and women’s intercollegiate basketball in the United States, female fans are more likely to consume sport-related merchandise and are more likely to stay loyal to their team. Similarly, Coddington (1997) asserts that many female soccer fans in the UK are extremely dedicated in their patterns of support, and as Woodhouse (1991) highlights in her survey of Football Supporter Association members, a larger proportion of female soccer fans were season ticket holders and were also strong attenders at away soccer matches, suggesting that women are a potentially lucrative and underexploited market for sport clubs.
This targeting of women has proved particularly successful in North America, where Fink, Trail, & Anderson (2002: 9) outline that 46 percent of the Major League Baseball (MLB), 46 percent of National Football League (NFL), and 38 percent of the National Basketball Association (NBA) fan base is female. They argue that such growth may be the result of marketing strategies that have targeted female fans. For example, the NFL launched a series of seminars entitled “football 101” to teach women more about (American) football, and in 2000 over twelve thousand women attended. The NFL suggests that these seminars were a success, as they led to a 5 percent increase the following year in the number of women watching the Super Bowl on television, taking the viewers to forty million women (McCarthy cited in Fink, Trail, & Anderson 2002: 9).
However, this association of female sport fans with the increased commercialization of sport has often led to the neglect of issues of gender and sport fandom in favor of discussions of the “embourgeoisification” of sport. Jones and Lawrence (2000) suggest that many studies of sport fan culture have either considered fans as a homogenous mass or focused almost exclusively on issues of supporter violence. For instance, Free and Hughson (2003) criticize previous studies of soccer hooligans, such as those by Armstrong (1998), Giulianotti (1991, 1995), and King (1998) for paying little or no attention to issues of gender.
Furthermore, a large proportion of the literature on sport fans (such as Redhead 1997; Rinehart 1997) has often adopted a value-laden reading of fans who attend live sports events as more “authentic” and “participatory,” as opposed to “passive” “armchair” supporters who follow sport via mediated sources such as television. Hence, as women are often more likely to follow sport via the media, it is they who are most likely to be deemed “new consumer fans” (King 1998) or “passive” fans (Redhead 1997). Therefore, they are more likely to be labeled as “inauthentic” in their support. Here parallels can be drawn to Thornton’s (1995: 105) work on rave (sub)cultures, where the “commercial” (“mainstream” music) becomes feminized, while the “hip” and “authentic” is viewed as masculine and “the prerogative of boys.” As Davies (1992: 169) wrote of her experience of being a (female) soccer fan who primarily follows it on television,
I would argue that the “true supporter,” as defined by the footballing establishment—and also, sadly, by some of the alternative, fanzine culture—is by and large a man. The devoted lad who is rooted to the terraces, season after season; who may well cancel his wedding day, should it coincide with a Cup-tie; who could name a first-born after first team players; and who is capable of struggling with relegation over lager and curry. After years of struggling with institutionalised sexism, we women fans have learnt that as long as we adopt these norms of fan culture, we may make the grade. Those unable or unwilling to become “ladesses”—or, indeed, for us at home looking after the lads’ children and cooking the lads’ sausages—the only way we can participate in the game we love is to watch it on the telly. And make no mistake: we do love the game.
Though the increased marketing of sport towards women and the proliferation of sport-related merchandising and media have potentially eroded barriers to sport in the home, it remains the case that most live mass spectator sport audiences are male dominated (Sandvoss 2003). The Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research (SNCCFR) suggest that female attendance at soccer in England has increased from as low as 5 percent in the 1980s to around 15 percent in the late 1990s (Haywood & Williams 2002). If we accept this argument (though these findings have been contested by Malcolm, Jones, & Waddington 2000), it still signifies a vast underrepresentation of female spectators at soccer, and this pattern is replicated at most male mass spectator sports around the world.
As Goffman (1968) argues, visibly different minority groups often see their position and presence within a group both questioned and challenged. The stigmatization of these “others” leads to the challenging of their authenticity as “real” members of a group or community. Therefore female fans of male mass spectator sports often find that their authenticity as “real fans” is questioned by other (most often male) supporters and that they are labeled as “uncommitted” to their team (Woodhouse & Williams 1999). As Brimson and Brimson (1996) outline in their “lads” book on soccer,
women like football [soccer], they don’t love or worship it [….] For them, any game is just an event, but for men it’s a dream of what could, and damn it, should have been. (cited in Woodhouse & Williams 1999: 60)
Crawford (2004) suggests that sport supporters follow a moral career path as they are socialized and taught to adopt and conform to the social norms of the existing group. As Back, Crabbe, and Solomos (2001: 77) indicate in relation to ethnic minority supporters of English soccer, an “entry ticket” involves much more than a financial transaction, as fans must learn to “articulate and master the implicit cultural codes that police the boundaries of acceptance.” Back et al. apply the work of Bauman (1998a) and argue that boundaries of inclusion and exclusion within a given community are mediated through cultural terms and therefore supporters must gain the correct “cultural ticket” to be accepted. Therefore, more visible differences such as skin color or gender that deviate from the “norm” of the supporter group may lead to women and ethnic minorities being excluded from full membership or participation. As Rowlings (1992: 164) wrote of her experiences of growing up as a female soccer fan,
Whether I was really accepted, I am now not sure. I could argue a point of view and had therefore to be taken notice of [. …] But I knew I was considered an oddity—unlike any of the girls in my class and clearly something that the boys were unused to dealing with. As I grew older, I found that this uncertain position remained especially when first meeting people and sharing my love of the game.
However, it is possible that increased levels of female participation in sport as well as the increased number of “new” and “imported” sports may provide more opportunities for women to attend live sport events.
Women, Sport Participation, and “New” Sports
It is evident that the number of women participating in organized sport has significantly increased in recent decades, and most notably in many traditionally “masculine” sports such as soccer. For instance, in England in 1989 there were only 263 women’s clubs and around seven thousand players, but by 1997–1998 this had increased to one thousand seven hundred women and girls teams with around thirty-four thousand registered players (Haywood & Williams 2002). In Britain in 2002, soccer overtook net-ball as the most popular sport for women, and the FA boasts that “football [soccer] is now the top female sport in England” (FA 2003). In “hockey nation,” Canada, 28 percent of girls now play soccer compared to only 6 percent who play ice hockey (Hong 2003). In China, soccer is also one of the fastest-growing female sports. In the United States, there are over 8.5 million known soccer participants; in Africa, there is the African Women’s Championship in Nigeria; and there has been a soccer revolution in North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Australasia—making soccer a sport that women play all over the world (Hong 2003).
Studies of attendance patterns at women’s sport events, such as Wood-house’s (2001) survey of those attending women’s international soccer matches in England, would seem to suggest that these are attended by a much higher proportion of female fans than most male mass spectator sports. However, though there are some success stories, such as the popularity of women’s soccer in the United States, women’s participation in traditionally masculine sports such as soccer still tends to attract significantly smaller audiences. Furthermore, Woodhouse’s (2001) survey indicates that 87.2 percent of those who attended these international soccer matches either had themselves, or were attending with someone who had, a friend or relative who was playing. This indicates that women’s soccer (certainly in England) is not yet attended in large numbers by a wider audience with a general interest in the sport. It is also apparent that women’s sport participation continues to receive significantly less media coverage than maledominated sports (Duncan & Messner 1998). Hence, fans (both male and female) of women’s sport are frequently provided with less access to information about these sports and fewer opportunities to feel part of, or participate in, sport fan communities.
However, the increased globalization of sport, and in particular the promotion of certain “new” or “imported” sports into countries that have no (or little) traditional (masculine) culture associated with these, such as soccer in North America and basketball and ice hockey in Europe, may provide more opportunities for women to attend these sports in more equal numbers. For instance, Hofacre (1994: 26) has suggested that the introduction of professional soccer into the United States has provided an opportunity for female fans to attend this sport on a more “equal footing” with men—as soccer in the United States lacks the tradition and male domination of other sports such as baseball and American football. Likewise, Crawford and Gosling (2004) indicate that the rise in popularity of ice hockey in the UK in the 1990s saw men and women attending this sport in relatively equal numbers.
Free from the “baggage” of the masculine history and traditions of these sports, “newer” or “imported” sports can much more easily be targeted towards “family” (i.e. women and children and not just men) audiences. Sports such as ice hockey and basketball in the UK have been sold much more as a form of “family entertainment,” as indicated, for example, by Dave Biggar, the former director of marketing of the British ice hockey team the Sheffield Steelers and, later, the (British) Manchester Storm and (American) Hartford Wolfpack:
We pitched it [ice hockey] as “it’s great. It’s this, that and the other… and oh, by the way, it’s a hockey game.” And the nice thing is you’d get mom, dad and the kids would arrive, the kids had been bribed in the first place to come, ‘cause we’d given them a free ticket or they’d seen it, and we’d created this hype[. …] I mean, we just created hype out of nothing. (cited in Crawford 2002: 28)
Though women frequently attend sports such as ice hockey in the UK in almost equal proportions to men, this does not necessarily mean that women are accepted by other (most notably male) fans as “legitimate” (Crawford & Gosling 2004). In interviews with British ice hockey supporters, Crawford and Gosling reveal that the attitudes of many male supporters indicate that women continue to be seen as “inauthentic” in their patterns of support, most notably cast into age-specific roles as “mothers” who are there to look after the children, “girlfriends” who are there with partners, or “silly young girls” who are there to “lust after the players.” For instance, “John” (male, aged thirty) criticizes young female fans, stating,
They sit there talking all through the game, and when they score a goal they don’t even get up. We’ve sat there and the girls are in and out, in and out, and for me they are just there to look at the players, they’re not interested in the game are they? They just have a giggle, you know what I mean? You can’t concentrate with someone chatting away. It’s obvious what they’ve gone for. (cited in Crawford & Gosling 2004: 486)
Such comments, Crawford and Gosling (2004) argue, emphasize the belief (and unease) of male fans that women attend male mass spectator sports merely to “swoon” over the players. Women fans are therefore viewed as inauthentic and not dedicated enough in their support. Although it may be the case that some female supporters may have been attracted to sport, and in particular soccer, by the ways in which players such as David Beckham are packaged and sold today (Woodhouse & Williams 1999: 61), Hinerman (1992) suggests that most fan activities involve some level of fantasy, and this is not necessarily a sign of less dedication. As Van Zoonen (1994: 98) highlights, it is “the patriarchal will to maintain power” that dictates that it is wrong to look lustfully at the male body, and it is the male gaze that dominates sport presentation (see Rose & Friedman 1994). Therefore male mass spectator sports in both the mass media and the live event are primarily targeted towards a male audience (Cooper-Chen 1994). The presence of women fans therefore threatens the “male gaze,” as women become the observers and men the objects of the gaze, and men may find this incredibly unnerving (Whelehan 2000).
Significantly, Crawford and Gosling (2004) found no evidence to imply that female fans were any less dedicated in their support or less knowledgeable about the sport they followed. On the contrary, many were quite keen to assert their credentials and knowledge as “real fans.” As Coddington (1997: 79) highlights in relation to female soccer supporters, many women “tend to take their footballing [soccer] commitments very seriously, precisely because they have a nagging feeling that they are on trial.”
Conclusion
This chapter has offered an overview of existing literature on female sport fans and suggests that this is still a relatively underdeveloped area of research. In particular, it has argued that there is very little understanding of what it means to be a female sport fan and how this is located in women’s everyday lives and therefore offers a basis on which to conduct further research.
It has been, and continues to be, a slow and complex process, but the number of female sport fans is rising. However, drawing on research by Crawford and Gosling on British ice hockey fans, this chapter has argued that even when women do attend sports in equal numbers, they are still frequently excluded from supporter “communities.” Therefore, women continue to be restricted in their patterns of attendance at live sport events due to their socially ascribed roles as mothers and wives and due to the often masculine and aggressive nature of some male mass-spectator sports. Furthermore, those who follow sport via the media have often been deemed inauthentic in their patterns of support.
Women’s marginal position within sport fan cultures means that their legitimacy as sport fans is often questioned, even though there is some evidence to suggest that women may be more dedicated and loyal to the sports they follow. This questioning of authenticity and loyalty could simply be seen as an expression of men’s fears over women invading their traditionally masculine space; however, it plays an important role in marginalizing female fans.
Being a sport fan can play an important role in constructing women’s identities and in providing women and girls with access to social networks of other fans. In addition, it may be used to subvert dominant gender roles. Therefore, what remains missing from the research is the role that sport fan culture can play in women’s everyday lives, and in particular its significance in challenging gender roles and empowering women. Dell (1998) has highlighted the role that wrestling can have in challenging dominant gender roles, but debates on female sport fan culture need to engage more closely with questions of gender power relations, in a way similar to that which Bacon-Smith (1992), Jenkins (1992), McKinley (1997) and others have done in relation to media fan cultures. It is only then that we can gain a better understanding of the gendered power relations that envelop contemporary sport fan culture.
NOTE
1. No reference given.