‘The enemy was within:’ how young female football players challenged barriers in their sport practice through the activist approach

This study implements the Activist Approach to support the young players of a girls’ football team in analysing the challenges that condition their sports practice, with the aim of negotiating them and, if possible, overcoming them. In the field of sport, especially in traditionally male-dominated sports such as football, women still face sociocultural and personal barriers that perpetuate existing gender inequalities. Drawing on poststructuralist feminist theory, which highlights how women negotiate their identities by challenging gender norms, this study shows how sport can be a tool for female empowerment. In this context, the Activist Approach facilitated the creation of reflective spaces where girls questioned stereotypes and gendered expectations that limited their sports participation, in turn fostering their agency and emancipation as women. This study was carried out with a junior football team of 31 girls (aged 12–14) across 34 sessions. Data were collected through recordings and artefacts of the sessions, field notes, peer debriefings, focus groups with the girls, and interviews with their coaches. Through a reflective thematic analysis of the data, we identified contextual barriers that condition the girls’ sports practice and personal barriers related to the construction of their body identities. The results show that the girls developed their critical awareness, which allowed them to question the existing gender inequalities in their sporting context, as well as the dominant body ideals and gender stereotypes associated with women in football. However, the deeply rooted masculine sporting culture within their club exerted a strong influence that perpetuates these inequalities, despite the girls’ growing awareness and efforts to challenge them.