Pojkflickan, fotbollsflatan och alla andra

Myt och verklighet i svensk damfotboll

Abstract

This article explores how female soccer players experience themselves and their bodies in relation to discourses of gender, sport and heterosexuality. Using interviews and observations the text focuses on a Swedish team that compete in a premier women's league. The findings of the article indicate that the understanding of women's experiences in sport is constructed and constituted predominantly within a hegemonic masculinity. The perspective presented approaches how the female athletes construct themselves as well as what they recon that others make of them, being both female and athletes. The article also addresses how the women negotiate with mythologies of women's sport in relation to their own experiences of being feminine.