Seven Faces of Women's Sport by Irene Reid Jane Dennehy

Author:Irene Reid, Jane Dennehy [Irene Reid, Jane Dennehy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787437111
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

The women’s game still largely belongs to the female players who are playing it, the coaches who are coaching it, the fans who are watching it. This community has been self-organising their own systems of governance based on principles of the commons and participating in the commoning-process. They have been developing an ethic of cooperation. They have been cultivating a more personal engagement with their resources and a longer-term perspective. They have been creating and defining social practices and norms together for managing their resource – their game.

So where does that leave us? We are at a critical juncture as market forces attempt a land-grab of the women’s football pitch and enclose the women’s game – and with it, the female footballer’s body.

The conclusion to my argument is simple. It is a call to action from scholars, athletes and activists to consider the current scenario in women’s football not just as another sector of society getting enclosed, but as a unique niche of commons. This niche can be powerfully contrasted to its enclosed elder sibling with possibilities for testing alternatives.

It also a call to consider this sport and its context as a powerful tool for reaching people with a new language of commoning. Simultaneously, I make a special call to female players to consider what we might be giving up or losing as we gain equality with the golden standard of football as it exists today.

To the broader public, I would urge a process of considering what routes, paths, lenses and tools we might find useful in seeing the world anew and acting on creating it. There is immense potential in football to create community, solidarity and collective action; to generate new ways of reintegrating with each other; to produce subversive and free bodies, and offer alternatives beyond our prevailing (failing) market/state order.

But we cannot let these remaining pieces slip from our sight or out of our grip to the place where collective amnesia erases any trace of how it was and possibilities for imagining how it could be vanish altogether. Women’s football is a summoning call.

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