Women's Participation in Tackle Football

Abstract

The number of female athletes undertaking male-dominated sports, including Tackle Football, continues to grow. This article uses a physical feminist perspective to explore the potential empowerment that women may experience playing football. Through face-to-face interviews with 31 players from two women's professional football teams in the Northern California area, we identified women's perceived benefits of participation, as well as the constraints they encounter. These women must overcome a variety of obstacles in their pursuit of playing, but gain benefits through football that they feel few other sports provide. Themes emerged related to the benefits of working as a team, and meeting diverse teammates. Also, consistent with a physical feminist perspective, women enjoy the opportunity to be physical, and to use their bodies and minds in a new way. The constraints that women encounter are similar to women's experiences in other traditionally male-dominated activities and include injuries, lack of time and money, pressures from family responsibilities, and negative reactions from people outside of the sport.