No nos callamos más: A Turning Point in Women's Football and Women's Rights in Argentina

Abstract

Football in Argentina, as in most of South America, has traditionally been considered a male sport, built by and for men; however, in recent years, this space that is so central to the construction and reproduction of hegemonic masculinity has been challenged by the massive expansion of women’s football both on a national and global level. Nonetheless, women have always participated in the sport, mostly in marginal and unofficial spaces, ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, only in recent years has female participation in Argentina begun to receive greater visibility and wider support from media, fans, sporting institutions, the State and a growing feminist movement. This chapter proposes to analyse this momentous shift through an ethnographic approach. We focus on a period considered to be a turning point not only in the history of Argentine women’s football but also in the broader women’s rights movement in South America. Starting with the ‘Ni Una Menos’ (‘Not one woman less’) demonstrations in 2015, raising awareness regarding domestic violence against women throughout the Argentine National Women’s Football team, achieved qualification for the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup for the first time in 12 years. Using the Freirian notion of ‘conscientização’, we carry out an in-depth examination of the pathway to the first (semi-) professional women’s league in the country, an analysis of the relationship between wider social movements and female athletes’ struggle for recognition, visibility, and support.