Women’s Soccer in the Republic of Ireland: Some Preliminary Sociological Comments

Abstract

This essay endeavours to present a more reality‐congruent understanding of aspects of the emergence and development of women’s soccer in Ireland since the 1970s. It draws on interview and survey data, and on the author’s elite level involvement in women’s soccer since the mid 1990s, to suggest that a present day phenomenon – in this case, females’ increasing involvement in a traditionally male‐associated sport like soccer – is more adequately understood as a specific point in a longer and wider developmental social phenomenon. In comparison to previous works in this general area (for example, Bourke and Williams), it is suggested that females’ increasing participation in soccer in Ireland is more adequately understood, in sociological terms, by looking at: (i) the position of soccer in the overall status hierarchy of sports; (ii) female and male athletes’ positions within soccer; (iii) the consequences of social relations for the self‐conceptions of males’ and females’ habituses: and, (iv) the ways in which changes in the self‐images and social make‐up of male and female athletes are inextricably bound up with changes in the social structure of gender relations generally. Finally, this chapter offers some ideas for future directions in research on women’s soccer, and women’s sports more generally.