ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the success of contemporary women performers through a discussion of media and self-representations of biography and experience. Different women have varying degrees of access to resources of power related to, for example, finance, enchufes, knowledge or experience. The gender role segregation model that dominates traditional bullfighting discourse, appears to have some practical implications for the way in which women bullfighters experience their careers. Whilst public representations and discourses on gender affect the opportunities available to aspiring women bullfighters, kinship and social networking, or enchufe's, also merit consideration. Most women bullfighters have a male ally in the bullfighting world. The socialising in exclusively male circles in bars, the masculine camaraderie, the exchanging of dirty jokes, and the like are all difficult for a woman to participate in. To a certain extent a woman's possibilities depend on the influence held by her male representative.
