‘Why can't girls play football?’ Gender dynamics and the playground

This article focuses on the involvement of boys and girls in playground football. It is based on research conducted with 10- to 11-year-old pupils at two state primary schools in London. Boys and girls were found to draw on gender constructs that impacted variously on their involvement in playground football. The performance of masculinity through football translated into heavy investments for many boys who took any opportunity to prove both their knowledge and expertise in the sport. This investment rested on the derision and exclusion both of non-footballing boys and of girls. Associations between humility, restraint, niceness and femininity also had a negative impact on girls’ involvement in the sport. Prohibitions around desire and determination proved especially damaging to girls’ attempts at ownership and assertiveness within the game. This was compounded by boys’ co-optation of football as ‘inherently masculine’. Girls’ resistance strategies to male domination of the football pitch tended to focus on disruption and rarely resulted in equal participation. This was due to opposition from powerful boys as well as entrenched gendered zones of play that granted boys automatic rights to football and girls only marginal tenancy.