ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates female athletes’ activism in favor of gender equality in sport. The topic has already received some scholarly attention, but mainly in the English-speaking countries (for instance, Cooky 2018; Tredway 2019). In contemporary Spain, professional female footballers have demanded the improvement of their sporting conditions and better pay. These female athletes have used a combination of nonconfrontational and confrontational tactics. Regarding nonconfrontational tactics, female footballers have emphatically defended that they were requesting an improvement of their status, and not a status equal to that of male footballers. As for confrontational tactics, in November 2019, female footballers went on strike during a weekend and did not participate in the major soccer tournaments. Thanks in part to female athletes’ activism, the situation of women’s soccer is improving very quickly in Spain. The first collective agreement regulating (improved) conditions of training and better pay in women’s soccer has just been signed. Moving beyond the Spanish case, this chapter specifies the ways in which female athletes’ activism contributes to the improvement of women’s status in sport and also identifies the limitations of these achievements. The sources for this chapter include bibliography, press clippings, and data and documents from sport and soccer management institutions and organizations.
