(Dis)Regarding Women’s Football: Marginalized Experiences of a Sport Phenomenon - Ileana Gabriela Szasz

The article examines how women in different socio-political contexts in Romania have engaged in football and how they negotiated their path in spite of the systematic and systemic disregard of their participation. For over five decades thousands of women have practiced organized football, however their place as athletes remains marginal not only in a male dominated sport but also in the collective imagination. The Romanian Football Federation has no official records of women’s football before 2014. Current initiatives of development are many times met with reluctance from the actors involved in the world of football and the public. Based on data collected over a period of one year through life stories interviews with former players and other actors involved in women’s football, archival media analysis and ethnographic research carried at a local  ...