Women's Soccer in the United States: Yet Another American ‘Exceptionalism'

It is noteworthy that the earliest and most consistent leading powers of women’s soccer – the United States and its two fiercest rivals, Norway and China – represent countries in which the men’s game has played a secondary role at best, with overall quality and success far inferior to that in established soccer powers such as Germany, England, Italy, Spain, France and Holland in Europe, and Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay and Mexico in Latin America, and – more recently – South Korea in Asia. Indeed, it has only been in recent years that the national women’s teams of Brazil and Germany have joined the United States, China and Norway at the pinnacle of women’s soccer. And the reason is obvious: women succeeded precisely in countries where soccer was not completely occupied by men, and thus did not fully constitute what we have termed (in our previously published studies on sport) ‘hegemonic sports culture’. 1 Put differently, the men’s game did not dominate in the United States, Norway and China at anywhere near the level it has in the countries where the men’s game constitutes the absolute core of hegemonic sports culture.