On the dilemma of femininity and professionalism in football
“The future of football is feminine,” announced FIFA boss, Joseph Blatter, fervently in 1995. Is this a hope or a threat? When it comes to femininity, things are not always cut and dry. It can mean that more girls and women will be visible in football than has been the case before – that would equate to a female kick, a natural state of affairs that is long overdue. At the same time, however, the DFB’s slogan for advertising the FIFA Women’s World Cup on home soil is “The beautiful side of 20ELEVEN”; the Mattel company recently began marketing Barbie dolls of Silvia Neid, the head coach of the German women’s national team, and Birgit Prinz, the team’s captain, while Slovakian supermodel Adriana Karembeu, in her capacity as women’s football ambassador in France, heads a campaign promoting “Football in the Feminine”. The type of femininity on display in these examples is more in line with the statement uttered by Blatter. To understand how little such developments contribute towards establishing a female kick, all you need to do is take a quick peek at the short history of women’s football.
Brief excursion into the history of women’s football
A few decades after their British trailblazers, a group of female footballers organised themselves in 1930 and formed their very first football club, 1. Damen-Fußball-Club Frankfurt. Such “unfeminine” shenanigans were a thorn in the side of the DFB: on 30.7.1955, it issued a ban prohibiting clubs from forming departments for women’s football. The fact that the ban on women playing football was imposed shortly after the “Miracle of Berne”, which saw the men’s national team lift the World Cup in 1954, is no accident according to DFB Vice-President, Hannelore Ratzeburg. This was a time when men returning home at the end of the war were facing a collapse of their supposed natural male dominance in the light of the emergence of active, energetic women who had begun rebuilding Germany without them: further adding to their humiliation. Not least of all, the DFB and associations continued to be run by men who knew how to keep women at arm’s length – although that did not prevent women from playing the game. 1970 saw the end of the ban on women playing football, because the DFB feared that, with the impending threat of women forming their own football association, it would lose control over women. The price: women were forced to play with a smaller ball used by youth players and had to wear studless football boots; they were ordered to play shorter matches of just 30 minutes per half, with a six-month winter break imposed to allow them to rest. Internationals remained banned until 1982.
In the GDR, the first company sports teams for women were introduced in the 1960s; the first and only international was played in 1990. Women’s football was never banned in the GDR, but since it was not an Olympic sport at that time, no funding was made available for it and women’s football ranked behind youth football and youth development football on the prestige scale. The first championship was held in 1979, although the word ‘championship’ was not actually used, but ‘Bestenermittlung’, which equates to ‘a series to determine the best of the best’. Matches played during the playoffs in Potsdam in 1984 lasted a mere twenty minutes per half. Today, this may all seem rather crass, but it served to keep those trying to infiltrate the male domain at bay. What does this mean for the future of women’s football?
How is women’s football perceived today?
Siegfried Dietrich, manager and investor at 1.Frauen-Fußball-Club Frankfurt, openly champions the professionalisation of the sport, even though he does not believe it to be feasible given that the majority of the traditional clubs have amateur organisational structures. “The more professionally women’s football can be organised, the better the brand can be marketed.” (FR, 21.12.10) At the same time, he rates women’s football as more hands-on and more technical. There is less power and money in the women’s than the men’s game, he says, adding that the sport is clean and fair and inspires families to attend matches together. This specific marketing of women’s football as a family event and the commercialisation of hominess are moving it into the mainstream. It remains to be seen, however, whether or not such a strategy will end up branding the sport a conservative haven of family bliss and not giving it the enhanced status it seeks.
Media demands mean being professional and glamorous in one
Such conventional modernisation is now being joined by a trend which first became apparent at the last Women’s Football World Cup in 2007: the trend towards personalisation, as in the case of Fatmire Bajramaj, Birgit Prinz, Kim Kulig or Nadine Angerer. As personal brands, they are expected to reconcile a contradiction in terms that has been thoroughly etched into the public’s perception for decades: football skills and femininity. Whilst men are totally oblivious to any contradiction between football and masculinity, women footballers are asked to doll up and attend photoshoots to market their game, without compromising their claim to being athletes. Outside of football, the business world has been fraught with this dilemma for somewhat longer. Here, too, women are contending with similarly mixed messages: be professional, but for God’s sake don’t lose your femininity. In this respect, Blatter may not be alone in thinking of revealing bikini bottoms or sexy-fitting football shirts when talking about the future of women’s football being feminine; three-time world champion Birgit Prinz did exactly the same – though with a refreshingly different perspective: “We want to market our sport, not our bums.” (STERN, 14.2.2004) So, let them finally get on with it.
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Nina Degele
, born in 1963; since 2000 professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of Freiburg. Main areas of research: sociology of gender relations, modernisation, anatomy/physical education (Körper), sport, qualitative methods.
Literature:
Fechtig, Beate (1995) Frauen und Fußball. Interviews, Portraits, Reportagen (Women and Football. Interviews, Portraits, Reports.). Dortmund: Edition Ebersbach.
Hoffmann, Eduard/Jürgen Nendza (2006) Verlacht, verboten und gefeiert. Zur Geschichte des Frauenfußballs in Deutschland (Ridiculed, banned and acclaimed. The history of women’s football in Germany). Weilerswist: Verlag Landpresse.
Hennies, Daniel/Daniel Meuren (2009) Frauenfußball - der lange Weg zur Anerkennung (Women’s football – the long road to recognition). Göttingen: Verlag die Werkstatt.
GENDER KICKS 2011
- Overview: Gender Kicks 2011
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