Main trends and patterns in Women’s Football Migration
Page  2 In the last twenty years, a phenomenon has emerged which is entirely new in the study of gender, migration, women and sport, namely the international migration of female football talent and labour. Just as boys all over the world, also a growing number of girls dream about becoming a professional footballer and pursue this dream at intensively investing into their skills over years. The number of registered players has in fact more than doubled since 2000, with now over 30 million female footballers; but until date, “making a living” as a female football player is only possible in 17 out of 168 FIFA-listed women’s football countries. This means for highly talented and skilled women in 90% of the countries that they actually have to leave their home in order to act as professionals. The percentage of top players who leave the “developing countries” of women’s football is at levels of up to 80%, while migrants constitute between 36 up to 50% of players in premier league clubs of the “core countries”. The paper will analyze main trends and patterns in women’s football migration at following these questions: a) Are the fluxes mainly from South to North and North to West? Do they expand beyond traditional geographical limits and assume globalized characteristics? b) What makes women leave (structural, super-structural, subjective reasons)? c) How far do motives, experiences and outcomes of migration projects differ between the developing and core countries of WF? The logics of this migratory process shall be approached by presenting quantitative data on fluxes and qualitative material on the women’s migration projects which derived from an ethnographic case study on Portuguese players and from interviews with Norwegian and Brazilian female football migrants. The paper concludes by approaching the open question, if and how migration is increasing substantially and which are the opportunities and challenges for players, key agents and -parties involved. Nina Clara Tiesler Main trends & patterns in women’s football migration Introduction: some numbers Page  3  40 countries, 800 national squad players: 190 abroad  Extreme case Ireland: 80% top level players abroad  2000-2010: hundreds of Scandinaviens in the USA  Among ca. 170 FIFA-countries only 17-20 can provide (semi-) professional contracts  Players from 90% of these countries have to leave home in order to become professionals  Clubs in the Swedish women’s premier league Damallsvenskan: up to 50% expatriates Nina Clara Tiesler International Migration of Women Footballers
Migration and Career Transitions in Professional Sports: Transnational Athletic Careers in a Psychological and Sociological Perspective
With rising globalization and professionalization within sports, athletes are increasingly migrating across national borders to take up work, and their athletic and nonathletic development is thereby shaped and lived in different countries. Through the analysis of interviews with female professional transnational athletes, this article contextualizes and discusses arguments for developing an interdisciplinary framework to account for lived experiences of the close intertwining between transnational migration and career development in professional sports. By combining our psychological and sociological perspectives, we identify three normative career transitions for transnational athletes. First of all, transnational recruitment that draws on social networks as well as individual agency. Secondly, establishment as a transnational athlete that is connected to cultural and psychological adaptation as well as development of transnational belonging, and thirdly, professional athletic career termination that for transnational athletes is connected to a (re)constitution of one’s transnational network and sense of belonging.
Women's sport, development, and cultural diversity: the south african experience
Abstract In July 1995, the Rugby World Cup was won by South Africa and Nelson Mandela appropriated the Springbok emblem in an effort to unite the nation. At around the same time, Ali Bacher secured an 8 million rand sponsorship deal for boys' cricket in Soweto, and development programmes for township football were evolving. These events are conspicuous symbols of the massive gender equalities in the sporting structures of the country and the strong association between sport and masculinity. In spite of the restructuring of sport in the new South Africa, there are no equivalent resources or efforts being put into female sports. In large part, this is because gender has tended to be treated as less important than race and ethnicity as a factor that effects equality, and because little attention is paid to the ways in which gender articulates with race and ethnicity. This paper will address the specific difficulties facing the development of women's sports in South Africa: it will look at the hidden history of women's sports during Apartheid; the effects of the legacy of apartheid; and the complexities affecting women will be considered. The particular relationship between gender and race is central to the analysis, but other factors, such as economics, politics, class, and religion interrelate in ways that illustrate that problems of sports participations are very different for different groups of women. Cultural diversity is therefore a key idea. Because very little has been written about women's sports in South Africa, the paper is heavily dependent on original material gathered during a 4-week trip to the country during June/July 1995. Observation methods were used, interviews carried out, and documentary evidence examined. Although most women that were interviewed lack direct power, their energy, enthusiasm, and determination confirms the idea that recognizing human agency is vital in understanding women's sport in South Africa, and that gender relations of power are unequal but shifting.