From clandestine to TV: how women’s football conquered space in Brazil

Coverage of the Women’s World Cup promises to be the greatest in the country’s history. All matches of the Brazilian national team will be shown on open TV. With broadcasts on cable TV and on the internet, it will be possible to follow the 64 matches of the competition. Created by FIFA in 1991, the Women’s World Cup reaches its ninth edition. But it will only be the third time that matches will be televised live in Brazil. Why only in the 21st century, in a sport that has existed for 160 years, has the women’s category managed to reach this level of visibility? Author of a doctoral thesis that sought to understand the erasure of football practice by women over the years, researcher at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), Nathália Pessanha, observes that – for almost four decades – they were legally prevented from practicing the sport in Brazil. The ban was included in the decree that created the National Sports Council, signed in 1941 by then-president Getúlio Vargas, and which was only revoked in 1979. Football played by women grew as a sport in the late 1930s, with the formation of teams with female workers, mainly in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. At the time, speeches appeared that aimed to prohibit its practice. In her thesis, Nathália argues that the objectives of the ban went beyond football itself. Vargas Decree Speeches from different areas came to strengthen the idea that women were not able to play football, also reflecting a trend in other countries such as Germany and England. Compromising a woman’s “femininity” was another concern, she says. The Vargas government decree established that women could not practice sports not associated with their nature. Even with the official ban and the consequent lack of investment, Brazilian women continued to find ways to practice the sport. Women’s football also flourished outside the country, with what Nathália called clandestine cups, which Brazil did not participate in, despite being invited. There were two editions, in Italy in 1970, and in Mexico, in 1971, that did not have the seal of FIFA. The efforts made over the years to prevent women from playing football have both symbolic and practical effects. The symbol is what left fixed in the minds of so many people that football is not a sport that should be practiced and enjoyed by women. On the practical side, Nathália mentions the also visible impacts that differentiate the development of football practiced by men and women. The marks of differences in treatment are also in memory spaces, such as the walls of the FIFA Museum, in Switzerland, which the researcher visited during her survey. While for the men’s Cups there are stands for each of the editions, for women, each stand has only two World Cups starring them.

Agência Brasil