As representações do futebol de mulheres: entre os jornais sergipanos e o Museu do Futebol (SP)

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between the construction and perpetuation of social imaginaries, memory, and identity in women’s football across two stages of analysis. First, it examines the narratives produced by newspapers from the state of Sergipe, understood as forms of communication; subsequently, it analyzes the processes of memory selection and re-elaboration carried out by the Football Museum, considering it as a space of social mediation and reconfiguration. These two objects were selected due to their communicational potential, understood as their capacity to construct and rewrite narratives surrounding sport. The aim is to explore the dialogues and intersections between the history of women’s football at local and national levels. To this end, the study analyzes the newspapers Gazeta de Sergipe, Jornal da Cidade, and Jornal de Sergipe between 1983 and 2000—a period spanning from the regulation of women’s football in Brazil to the historic participation of Brazilian women footballers in the Sydney Olympic Games. This analysis seeks to both quantify and qualify representations of women’s football, identifying social patterns and the construction of popular imaginaries regarding the relationship between gender and football. In this sense, the intersection between newspapers and the Football Museum reveals how the challenges and achievements of women in football are constructed and perpetuated within social memory. Finally, the analysis demonstrates that journalistic narratives and the exhibition strategies adopted by the Football Museum not only reflect the trajectory of women’s football but also expose the dynamics of women’s inclusion and exclusion within sporting social spaces, enabling a critical perspective on the intersectionalities that shape this history. The research shows that journalistic narratives recurrently engage in processes of sexualization and objectification of women, reinforcing patriarchal, racist, and lesbophobic ideals that contribute to women’s exclusion from football. At the same time, the Football Museum—understood as a vector of representation in the twenty-first century—appropriates these historical narratives, resignifying them within both physical and virtual exhibition contexts.