Nordcorp-seminar: The Nordic civil society model of sport in transition

Nordcorp-seminar: The Nordic civil society model of sport in transition: The case of women’s football, 14-15th of April, 2014, University of Iceland, Reykjavik

This is the third seminar for the Nordic collaborative research project using women’s football as a case for analysing crucial changes in the Nordic civil society model of sport.  Meeting together in this forum allows the project group as well as people from outside opportunities for identifying, presenting and discussing central research issues. 

Programme:

Classroom H 204

9.00 - 9.30: Welcome and introduction to sports sciences research and interventions studies at the University of Iceland, Professor, Erlingur Jóhannsson

 

9.30-10.00: Research and Icelandic women´s football, Associate professor, Vanda Sigurgeirsdóttir.

 

10.00-10.30: Coffee

10.30-11.15: Associate Professor, Torbjørn Andersson: The Early Female Game seen through Popular Culture

This presentation describes early women football through the eyes of different forms of popular cultural artifacts: magazines, postcards, advertisements etc. In so doing a certain commercial potential is identified for women’s football in countries like England and Sweden during the interwar years.

 

11.15-12.00: PhD-student, Anna Marie Hellborg: Players' economic compensation viewed through the Swedish Football Association's official body

The purpose of this study is to gain knowledge of how the Swedish Football Association discuss and view players’ economic compensation/salaries through their official body. I have looked at magazines from 1987 to today and searched for writings of players’ economic conditions. The study shows that when the magazine mentions the con-ditions for the female players it is often remarked upon how different their conditions are in comparison to the men and that the female players work alongside their football career. 

12.00 - 12.45: Lunch 

Skriða

 

12.45-13.30: PhD-student, Mattias Melkersson: Redefining or reinforcing organizational conditions for women´s soccer? The case of Linköpings FC

Discussions of developmental aspects within women´s soccer have in recent years changed from notions of devel-oping the game on the pitch to an extended focus on management, organization and strategic notions. To under-stand how contemporary development incentives and programs are established, designed and aimed it is important to understand the specific setting in which women´s soccer exists. This paper aims to illustrate developmental issues related to women´s participation in a local soccer context whilst examining strategic and organizational approaches adopted and implemented by the Swedish soccer club Linköpings FC. How are contextual factors affecting Linköpings FC´s conditions for attaining a prosperous agenda? The paper uses notions of Brand Management and Place Marketing to enquire the potential importance of a strong local setting and how this setting affects possibilities for a prosperous agenda. An overall conclusion indicates that the geographical setting is important for Linköpings FC and that the city´s innovative nature together with a strong sense of local pride might help foster a prosperous agenda. The local setting has in this way potentially nurtured the clubs innovative organizational structure which ultimately might give the club its strongest advantage.

13.30 -14.15: PhD-student, Mari Haugaa Engh: Transnational faith and mobility: cross-border religious life among Nigerian women football migrants in Scandinavia

In this presentation, I aim to contribute to understandings of the role religion has, and is assigned, in processes of transnational migration. By exploring how religious practice and belief is part and parcel of the migratory journeys and narratives of a group of highly skilled female labour migrants, we examine the ‘creative ways in which migrants use the institution of religion and its beliefs and practices to organise the entire migration process’ (Hagan and Ebaugh 2003: 1147). Drawing on interviews conducted with six former, or current, Nigerian female football migrants in Scandinavia we explore the ways in the religious beliefs and practices of migrants function as spiritual resources for obtaining and maintaining transnational mobilities. In this, migrants use their religious beliefs to articulate their aspirations and desires, to cope with uncertainties and the precariousness of labour migration, as well as to create networks of support and belonging.    

 

14.15-14.45: Coffee break

14.45 - 15.30: Professor, Kari Fasting: Collaborative research: challenges and pitfalls across culture

In this session I will present and discuss with you some of the theoretical and methodological challenges I have encountered in preparing and carrying out cross-national research. My examples will be primarily from two re-search projects. One from the 1990s that took place in Spain, Germany, England and Norway, and one more recently in Czech Republic, Greece and Norway.  These also illustrate two different modes of doing cross-national research; In the first one there were four researchers who planned the study together, in the second one the study was planned and carried out in Czech Republic by me as a foreigner in collaboration with a colleague from Czech Republic, and later translated and repeated in Norway then later in Greece.  Challenges related to common theoret-ical perspectives, sampling, language, data collection, and working and writing together, will be focused upon.  

15.30 - 16.00: Discussion led by associate professor, Bente O. Skogvang  

 

Tuesday 15th of April, 2014:

Bratti

8.15 - 9.00: Professor, Gertrud Pfister: Changing perceptions of women’s role in football? Women as football fans in the Nordic countries

Football is an invention by men for men and even today the majority of players and fans are men. There is an abun-dance of literature on football and fandom, however, gender is mostly not an issue in these publications. Research about female football supporters and fans is very limited. This is also true for the Nordic countries including Den-mark, the country, which is the focus of this presentation. Based on gender and socialization theories, this contribu-tion addresses women and their (lack of) interest in men’s football. The main questions refer to the numbers of female supporters and their patterns of football consumption. The sources of information are reader and user data of mass media, results of surveys about the habits of the Danish population and the results of an interview study with female fans. A specific focus of this article is on the minority of female supporters who attend football games in the stadium. How do they adapt to a “man’s world” and what are their roles in this “male environment”? Statements of female fans revealed that they have to cope with a measure of sexism, but that they can adopt the men’s perspectives in order to be accepted as “authentic fans”. Other women reacted on men’s domination in the football stadium by founding a women only fan group which allows them to find their own way to be women and fans.

9.00-9.15 Coffee

9.15-9.45 Associate professor, Sine Agergaard: The typology of athletic migration revisited. Transnational settlers, sojourners and mobiles

Revisiting the existing typology of sports labor migration this presentation outlines three types of athletic migrants: transnational settlers, transnational sojourners, and transnational mobiles. Analyzing the ways in which this typology proves relevant to understand the variety in women’s soccer migration the presentation also point to sub-types of minority athletes, new citizens and diaspora players. Further it is identified that the categories shift during a transnational athletic career. Finally, the presentation discusses whether these types adhere to a women’s soccer exceptionalism or whether the typology may serve to study groups of athletes migrating in other sports disciplines.