Playing in traditional attire: ethnic minority women’s football, conditional empowerment, and cultural display in Northern Vietnam’s highlands

This research explores women’s grassroots football in Northern Vietnam’s highlands as a cultural and political arena where ethnic minority women negotiate gender norms, development agendas, and ethnic representation. Employing a cultural-anthropological lens, the study to analyze local training routines, community tournaments, and the representation of women playing in traditional attire. The findings show that football operates as a sporting ‘third shift’, a recurring commitment added after livelihood work and domestic or care work rather than replacing either, sustained largely through women’s self-organization, yet it seldom reduces caregiving burdens or reshapes household power relations. At the same time, state and NGO narratives of gender equality and tourism increasingly scripts women’s football as visible sign of modernity, disciplines, and ethnic identity. Women are positioned as both athletes and cultural performers, as traditional costumes and staged events translate sporting labour into marketable representations of place. This research argues that empowerment is conditional and relational, shaped by the complex interplay of self-organization, policy scripting, and the commodification of ethnic difference.