Women and soccer in Brazil: between shadows and visibilities

Abstract

Based on the theoretical methodological approach of cultural history and study of gender, this article discusses women and soccer in Brazil. It aims to show that for long women play important roles in Brazilian soccer, even though they have little visibility, on the media, on the everyday life of clubs and sport associations, on physical education schools or in the public leisure practices. To analyze the insertion of Brazilian women in soccer I used as primary sources of research documents from the beginning of the 20th century, such as periodicals, journalistic articles, sports and physical education books. In addition, I analyzed recent publications trying to point out the traces and the disruption existent in different times. It was possible through the analysis technique to understand that the association between sport and the masculinization of women goes through decades and, even though in many situations athletes had left the shadows, there are still recurrent some speech representations that praise the beauty and femininity as something to be preserved, specially on those sports considered violent or harmful to a presumed female nature.