Women's football across the fjords: the context of a football training project for young girls in Norway

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the context of a football training project for girls in Sogndal, Norway. It then explores how football is accessed, experienced, and impacts girls' everyday lives. By adopting ethnographical methods, Brazilian researchers participated in training sessions and created material from diary records, observations, and informal conversations with participants. The findings reveal that as a geographical, social, and cultural environment, Sogndal plays a relevant role in sports practice. Specifically, it was highlighted that the main aspect of the activities in the investigated football project is the playful and integrative practice of physical exercise. For the girls playing football goes beyond pursuing performance, as they experience football practices as a fun, social and enriching setting. Still, despite the incentive for the recreational practice of football between girls and boys during childhood, gender asymmetries exist, and the incentive for women to play at high-performance needs attention.