Politics and gender in Argentine football clubs. An ethnographic approach to the gender department of Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata

HANG JULIA

New York

Simposio; Football Feminism ? Global Governance Perspectives; 2020

Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice -NYU School of Law

This paper will analyse the process of emergence of gender departments in Argentine football clubs that has been taking place during the last two years. In the context of the growth of the women?s movement in Argentina since 2015 with #NiUnaMenos and the debate in congress on the legalization of abortion in 2018 which took millions of women to the streets, football clubs have been questioned by the feminist agenda. Gender areas and women?s departments were created in professional football clubs by female fans and athletes who identify themselves as feminists, with the aim of eliminating the machismo and structural misogyny of Argentine football.I argue that the emergence of these spaces is possible because Argentine clubs are characterized as civil non-profit associations which allow for the political organization of their members.Focusing on the case of Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, a renowned professional football club of the city of La Plata, I will analyze how a group of young feminist football fans created a gender area that has become part of the institutional network. The women who formed this department have heterogeneous political and social trajectories that afford differential relationships with the club (as members and supporters). I inquire about the meanings that women attribute to their political participation in sports institutions in order to account for a double development: on the one hand, the way in which a group with gender concerns and sensitivities seeks to position itself and become recognized in a historically masculine institution and, on the other hand, the ways in which women exercise power outside the spaces of leadership.