ABSTRACT

Why do women follow sports? How do they participate from the sidelines and what is the significance of this contribution? What can female fandom tell us about gender relations in sport? This book explores these and related questions by bringing together the varied strands of research being conducted internationally across the social sciences and humanities on this emerging and topical field.

While sports spectatorship is a popular and well-respected site of analysis, no book-length, scholarly contribution documents women’s experiences of sports fandom. For this reason, there is an obvious need for a book that offers researchers, students and non-professional readers an authoritative introduction to women’s modes of sport support. Sport and Its Female Fans will be a landmark contribution in the field of sport research and in studies of sports fandom, making an original contribution to the growing, yet under-researched, area of female sports spectators.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|15 pages

Stoic Observers or Fanatic Fans?

Women Ice Hockey Spectators in 1930s North America

chapter 2|18 pages

The Ladies Stand

chapter 3|15 pages

‘forever Ultras'

Female Football Support in Italy

chapter 4|20 pages

Women Fans of the Rodeo

Circuit Friends, Helpmates and Buckle Bunnies

chapter 6|16 pages

“oh Yes, He Is Hot”

Female Football Fans and the Sexual Objectification of Sportsmen's Bodies

chapter 8|17 pages

Reading the Commodified Female Sports Fan

Interrogating Strategic Dirt and Characterization in Commercial Narratives

chapter 9|17 pages

How Do Women Talk Sports?

Women Sports Fans in a Blog Community

chapter 10|24 pages

Empowerment Through Sport?

Female Fans, Women's Sport, and the Construction of Gendered Fandom