ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the global migratory flows of men and women athletes as well as the conditions for women soccer players in Brazil with particular focus on Santos Football Club, highlighting the apparent gender inequalities. The chapter explores a long history of symbolic violence being enacted towards women's soccer in Brazil; focusing on the significance of the law that, until recently, prohibited women from playing organized soccer; and relating this exclusion to the sense of nationhood. The gender equality gained at that time in Europe and North America was soon reversed and sport followed this general social movement, with specific differences in each country. As Bourdieu stressed when formulating the doxa paradox, what is surprising in the obedience given to orders is precisely how seldom they are transgressed. The circulation of Brazilian women soccer players broadens frontiers for Brazilian migration flows to countries never before reached by Brazilian migrants, such as Equatorial Guinea.
