ABSTRACT
This chapter examines women's attachment to sport as fans. It discusses gender theory, including Ussher's typology of gender performance and Sisjord and Kristiansen's application of this to female wrestlers, to consider how female sports fans 'perform' gender. It describes the preliminary model of female fandom to examine the meaning of sports fandom for women. The chapter explores how women who follow the same sports club have different understandings of the meaning of the club in their lives and to examine the variations between football and rugby union fans. It also examines how female fans balance their gender and sporting identities and how some women shifted between the 'hot' and 'cool' nodes. The chapter also explores two different kinds of gender 'performance' that helped to connote the fan types for females: 'masculine' femininities and 'feminine' femininities.
