Brazilian women’s soccer shouldn’t also have to fight misogyny

Brazil’s last international match before arriving in France for the 2019 World Cup was a 1–0 loss to Scotland that left Marta shaking her head, Formiga kicking at the ground, and goalkeeper Aline staring hard at the net. Afterward, the team took selfies with the few fans in the stands for the friendly in Spain, clearly faking every smile. It was the team’s ninth straight loss, this time to a team with far less experience and a substantially lower ranking. It’s hard to imagine a worse send-off for one of the world’s premier soccer nations.

Given that the Brazilian men’s national team has achieved unrivaled global success, influenced soccer governance, and defined the “beautiful game,” one might think that the women’s national team’s recent downturn would trouble the federation, but that’s far from the case. The program has largely been left to struggle without any help.

Despite fielding the most individually-decorated player in soccer history, Marta, and the likes of veteran stars Cristiane, Formiga, and Tamires, this brilliant generation of players has been frustrated at every turn. They’ve seen efforts to create a viable professional league in Brazil fail time and again, faced abject sexism within the federation, and been outmatched by teams with far less talent.

They’ve been insulted by their very own leadership. On May 16, weeks after the loss to Scotland, the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) held a press conference to announce the World Cup roster. Head coach Oswaldo Fumeiro Alvarez, more commonly known as Vadão, said little that hinted at a re-direction of the team. And when he discussed his players, he remarked that women are particularly difficult to calm down in the locker room.

The head of women’s soccer, Marco Aurélio Cunha, has publicly evaluated the team’s success on the basis of its physical attractiveness. During the 2015 World Cup, he responded to questions about the team’s progress by stating, “We used to dress the girls as boys. So the team lacked a spirit of elegance, femininity. Now, the shorts are a bit shorter, the hairstyles are more done up. It’s not a woman dressed as a man.”

Those comments were not surprising. Brazilian players are routinely pressured to prove their femininity and market themselves as sexual objects.

Questions about coaching decisions and preparation have plagued the team for years. Vadão took over the team in 2014, despite having never coached a women’s team and a resume of mixed success with his men’s squads. After the early World Cup knockout in 2015, the Brazilian soccer federation changed little before the 2016 Olympics in Rio, where the squad finished fourth. Insiders celebrated when, later that year, Emily Lima became the team’s first woman head coach. After seven wins, a draw, and five losses, she was fired, and Vadão was reinstated after he had been dismissed from his men’s team in the Brazilian league’s second division. The abrupt about-face reeked of Old Boy’s Club favoritism.

Protests began shortly after, in 2017. Former players, fans, and administrators of women’s soccer boiled in anger at Lima’s dismissal, arguing that she hadn’t had time to assemble her staff and overhaul the team. Cristiane, the team’s most capped player and prolific striker after Marta, announced her retirement via an emotional Instagram post. The women’s soccer community — including current and former players — released a letter to the CBF asking for Lima’s return, integration of women into its administrative ranks, and more resources for the national team. The CBF created a commission to prepare an extensive report, only to disband that commission two months later after it presented its findings.

Thus, Brazil’s women found themselves dejected and discombobulated against Scotland near the outset of their sport’s premiere competition, a product of annual mismanagement and neglect. They hope to repair their reputation in France, and perhaps set the program on a path towards redemption. Doing so would mean overcoming systemic problems within Brazilian soccer, however. Problems that stretch long, long past the reign of current leadership.

Since soccer arrived in South America in the late 19th century, Brazil has been saturated with talent. Combined with state support, cutting-edge sports medicine, and the passionate following of workers and elite alike, that talent made Brazil into the most revered soccer country of the 20th century. Not only has the men’s national team won five World Cups, it is largely credited with beautifying the sport through its style of play.

The nickname the “Beautiful Game” comes directly from Jogo Bonito. The powerful soccer director João Havelange served as president of the Brazilian federation from 1958 to 1973, and presided over FIFA from 1974 to 1998. During his reign, global soccer’s profits soared, its reach and popularity expanding exponentially (its corruption, too).

As soccer became part of Brazil’s fabric, so did the misogyny of the sport’s leadership. There is perhaps nowhere in the Americas that rivals Brazil in its draconian treatment of women’s soccer. The more closely soccer became aligned with national identity and masculine ideals, the more those ideals reinforced themselves.

Brazilian women have been playing soccer in an organized fashion for at least one hundred years. The first evidence of widespread women’s soccer is from 1920s traveling circuses, which performed plays and magic tricks, and also held women’s soccer matches. Teams formed rapidly in the 1930s, and by 1940, the Brazilian newspaper Correio Paulistano claimed there were 1,001 women’s matches a day. Enthusiasm for the sport resulted in the creation of a women’s league that toured the country for a season from 1940–1941.

That late-30s women’s soccer explosion had significant support from soccer fans and journalists, but also detractors among the government, medical community, and soccer clubs. In April of 1941, the authoritarian government of Getúlio Vargas passed Decree Law 3199, which banned women’s participation in soccer, boxing, rugby, polo, water polo, and various track and field events, describing these sports as “violent” and “not suitable to the female body.” To defend the ban, officials cited concerns over maternal health and “proper” sexuality.

They cited aesthetics, too. The flagship physical education journal, Revista Brasileira de Educação in 1944 warned that too many muscles and too much strength would ruin players’ attractiveness and “call into doubt … her sex and sexuality.” The fear that soccer masculinized women and perverted their sexual development was wrapped up in deep homophobia. The ban remained in effect until 1981, and while it was often unheeded, it prescribed animosity towards women’s claims on leisure, public space, and physical prowess.

Despite the legal ban, Brazilian women never stopped playing soccer. Women soccer players immediately protested the ban, writing letters to the press, and inviting opposition to see their matches. They called out the pseudo-science and criticized a ruling that, even then, felt regressive.

Sissi, legendary national team player and the Golden Boot winner of the 1999 Women’s World Cup, grew up in a small town in the state of Bahia. She recalled, “I heard about this law, and I said, ‘Who cares? I’m in the middle of nowhere, who’s going to pay attention to that?’”

Sissi dreamt of representing Brazil on a national team, which had never existed. She remembered that because of the social stigma against girls playing soccer, “It was a lot of me training on my own and playing with doll’s heads.” Without a ball, she would pull off the heads of dolls and kick them instead.

Sissi was 14 when the ban was lifted, and slowly she began to hear of teams, like Radar FC in Rio de Janeiro, that would become the nucleus of the first women’s national team in 1988. That year, she left home to play for a pioneering team in Feira de Santana, the second largest city in Bahia. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, leagues in Brazil strictly policed women athletes. Sissi recalled of the São Paulo tournaments, “They said girls with short hair could not participate.”

In pursuit of the best competition and a living wage, she left Brazil in 2000 for the United States, where she played out the rest of her career. Today, she coaches in California, and while her heart is with the Brazilian team, she is frustrated with how its progress has stagnated.

“We are still fighting to get positions, to get coaches licenses, to give opportunities to those women who sacrificed everything to represent their country, but the CBF just don’t think we are capable to hold those positions,” she says. When I ask if she thinks Brazil can go further in this year’s World Cup than 2015 in Canada, Sissi replies, “When we talk about talent, we have it, so much talent, but unfortunately, without the support, it’s not enough.”

Brazil’s new government is yet another threat to the team, and women athletes throughout the country. Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who assumed office earlier this year, has staunchly rejected gender, sexual, and racial equality. Among his troubling proclamations, he has described baby girls as disappointments, wished for his own son to die before coming out as gay, and told a female colleague that she was not deserving enough to rape.

Just days into his presidency, Bolsonaro eliminated the Ministries of Culture, Sport, and Social Policy, which was widely seen as an attack on grassroots sports and arts culture. Women athletes are dependent upon a government system of athletic subsidies because the women’s professional leagues rarely give contracts to players. When they do, the women make roughly $500 per month, at best. The future of these subsidies is uncertain under the new administration.

Silvana Goellner — a professor who researches gender and sport in Brazil, and a member of the CBF’s disbanded commission on women’s soccer — believes the new political order will create further inequity. “The Bolsonaro government has expressed enormous contempt for the efforts to address gender issues and diversity,” Goellner explains. “The dismantling of the Ministry of Sports limits the possibilities to formulate inclusive public policies that foster football as a space for the empowerment of girls and women.”

Brazil’s men’s stars are some of the most recognized and beloved public figures in the country, and could be the women’s best advocates as a result. They’d also understand what it takes — in terms of financial, physical, and emotional investment — to compete at a world-class level. That they’ve largely remained quiet shows how deep Brazil’s misogyny runs, and just how much the women have to fight for support.

Hallowed former men’s players — including Ronaldinho, Rivaldo, and Zico — have voiced support for the new president, as have active players like Lucas Moura and Alisson. At first glance, the support from Afro-Brazilian and working-class players may seem like a case of false consciousness, given that Bolsonaro has described Afro-Brazilians as an economic drain, and suggested they should stop having children. But as Celso Castilho, a professor at Vanderbilt University specializing in politics and race in Brazil, explains, “Afro-Brazilian players supporting Bolsonaro clearly don’t recognize this as an issue of racial equality. Instead, like their elite counterparts, they seek to protect their wealth and security. The fact that much of their working lives are spent abroad probably also contributes to their support of Bolsonaro.”

The players don’t see themselves as Bolsonaro’s targets, as they might if they lived off the same wages as many of the people in their home regions. That sends a strong message to women players whose opportunities to play are so often thwarted by sexism, racism, homophobia, and economic inequality.

At the same time that elite women’s soccer is suffering in Brazil, grassroots organizations are trying to open pathways for girls through soccer. These groups have been supported by a vibrant feminist movement in Brazil. When I asked Goellner about any bright spots on the horizon, she explained that while the CBF had not resolved the demands of the 2017 protest, the actions “shook up” the women’s soccer landscape by mobilizing the public. Goellner is keeping her eye on newly-created championships for girls at the U13, U15, and U17 levels.

Without careful planning, however, expanding youth ranks may not help create the equitable conditions that players and fans are seeking. Girls are rarely scouted and boarded in the youth academy system. That means that girl’s soccer is open to those who can finance their daughters — which disproportionately affects working-class players, often of Afro-Brazilian descent.

At the club level, Brazilian players have praised CONMEBOL’s policy, effective this year, demanding that clubs participating in the South American championship, the Copa Libertadores, also field women’s teams.

“The CONMEBOL decision contributed to the growth of women’s club soccer, as did the CBF’s recent requirement that clubs participating in the national championship also include women’s teams,” Goellner says. “With these regulations, clubs are formulating strategies for the inclusion of women. This not only increased the number of teams, but also [contracted] more players, including attracting some that were playing abroad.”

The protests also grabbed media attention, spurred by the players’ direct communication to the public via social media. For the first time in history, an open access television station, Rede Globo, will broadcast the World Cup. Goellner worries, though, that any unsatisfactory performance could reinforce negative views of the sport and justify the federation’s neglect — especially because CONMEBOL, over vocal objections, scheduled the men’s Copa América to overlap the World Cup.

Women involved in the 2017 protest group knew their demands were aspirational. In the process, women have moved into the administration of Brazilian soccer for the first time. One of those leaders is Aline Pellegrino, a former national team captain who was recently appointed the Coordinator of Women’s Soccer of the Paulistana Football Federation, which oversees the state of São Paulo soccer. Pellegrino is working with grassroots organizations serving underprivileged girls. She considers the grassroots and provincial competitions a “major breakthrough.” Sharp, energetic, and affable, she is just the type of person that Sissi, Cristiane, and others hoped to see included in management.

It should be in Brazilian soccer’s best interests to empower women like Pellegrino. The corruption scandals of CBF, CONMEBOL, and FIFA have eroded any faith the public had left for transparent governance. In addition, women players and fans can offer renewed commitment to the domestic league, which has been gutted by rich clubs abroad who can poach top players. Women are seeking a different model than the one that has resulted in dangerous academies that throw away young players who don’t show the promise of someday transferring to a big club. Women fans, and their allies, also want to take back stadiums from violent fan groups.

Empowering women also means investing in them. The patriarchs of South American soccer drone on about creating markets for the women’s game and encouraging them to seek sponsors individually. Yet, the men’s World Cup in 2014 cost Brazil approximately $15 billion, and one can only imagine the benefits of such an investment in the women’s game. Commonplace justifications of unequal resources frequently cite the lack of “market value” of men’s and women’s soccer. However, those analyses usually leave out the massive government investment in men’s soccer, whether in stadium construction, security, or saving clubs from bankruptcy.

The brilliance of Brazilian women’s soccer, as much as the men’s, can drive the global game. There’s no team more creative, or breath-taking when they’re in top form, than the national team. And though fervor for the team is presently dormant, it has taken over the country in the past, and great players have risen regardless.

When Brazil’s anchoring midfielder, Formiga, takes the field for a record-setting seventh World Cup, it will mark her 24th year on the national team. While you can’t find her jersey in Brazil, and she doesn’t have multi-million dollar sponsorships, she is beloved by fans of the team worldwide.

Formiga is also the last active player born during the legal prohibition of women’s soccer, evidence of how Brazil’s women have persevered. When she steps on the pitch, the powers that be should finally give her their undivided attention. For her sake and theirs.