Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to analyze the trajectories of women who are soccer players in Brazil. I start the analysis articulating the categories of gender, sexuality and race. Thus can be showed how they mark the differences, delimit agency and elaborate distinct possibilities of living through the sports.

Paper long abstract:

This work is part of doctoral research in Anthropology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Aims to analyze the trajectories of women who are soccer players in São Paulo. I start the analysis articulating the categories of gender, sexuality and race. Thus can be showed how they mark the differences, delimit agency and elaborate distinct possibilities of living through the sports.

The outskirts of São Paulo city, where the female soccer team Associação Atlética Pró-Esporte (ASAPE) is based, is a region considered of extreme social vulnerability. The young athletes of ASAPE have between 14 and 25 years old; they identify themselves as black women; belonging to low income population and mostly lesbians. Some quit school without completing high school. They all work to supplement their family income. Most of them have a history of domestic violence. To these women, soccer is an opportunity to subvert this kind of situation because the sport can promote social improvements, especially if they are called to play in women's soccer national team. To be able to keep playing soccer, they have to struggle daily with several hindrances: lack of sponsorship, lack of sport equipment for training and competition, the lack of specific female soccer division and lack of games.

Even if in Brazil the soccer can be a non-inclusion space for women, owing to many sexist and homophobic prejudices a transformation is announced, even if in a slow pace.