Geografia e gênero: desafios e desejos de mulheres jogadoras do futebol amador de Chapecó/SC

Abstract

With so many cultural, social and spatial aspects, football can be studied by different areas of Humanities and Social Sciences, including Geography. Considering that we are talking about a space that since its origin has been thought by and for men, there is a need to think about gender relations and the role of women within this space. The practice of soccer was banned for women in Brazil for a period of 38 years, being considered incompatible with “feminine nature”, the occupation of soccer spaces by women is synonymous of fighting and resistance, especially in a country whose national image construction is based on this sport. Feminist Geographies have been studying gender issues for at least three decades, reversing the logic of hegemonies in the production of space. Despite this, the relationship between gender and soccer is a field little explored by geographic science, and in view of this gap, the present work will address the presence of women in soccer, more specifically in amateur soccer in Chapecó/SC, a city that, historically, has a strong relationship with sport. The geographer Fernando Rossetto Gallego Campos, following a cultural approach, understands football as a space of representation, a concept of immense importance for the analysis of the sport within the field of geography. We will present it as a way of understanding football, but our analysis will follow the concepts of the Geography of Gender, linked to Feminist Feographies, that incorporates the gender as a social representation, having space as a fundamental part in its construction and deconstruction process. Starting from a qualitative methodology, with a theoretical-methodological basis of Feminist Geographies, with contributions from authors such as geographers Joseli Silva and Doreen Massey, historian Joan Scott and sociologist Judith Butler, in the accomplishment of seven semi-structured interviews and in the content analysis method, we analyzed the experiences of women who practice amateur soccer in Chapecó/SC, seeking to give voice to them as social subjects within this space, who also build it, transform it, are producers of socio-spatial relations and as a social representation, they continue in the fightinh to reaffirm their position of influence in the construction of everyday social practices. At the same time, thinking to what extent their performances are constituted and conditioned by this space so intrinsically linked to the so-called “masculine universe”.