Inductor Masculinities

Abstract

One of the dimensions in which the sociological study of football can contribute to knowledge about Spanish society and its transformations has to do with gender identities. In Spain, for a long time football was considered a uniquely masculine space in which women could only be present as mere companions. But during the past 30 years, Spanish society has undergone an intense process of social change. Regarding the evolution of the relationships between the sexes in Spanish society, it has been pointed out that there is currently greater heterogeneity, both in the conception of the female gender (who has been emancipated from her submission to the patriarch to become more versatile), and of the masculine gender, which is now more plural and autonomous. It is more plural because it has become open to a new diversity of masculinities that are heterogeneous, divergent and contradictory among themselves; and it is more autonomous because these masculinities are increasingly defined by internal relationships of power, friendship or rivalry, instead of being defined, as in the past, by heterosexual relationships of dominance over women (Gil-Calvo, 2006, p. 49). This process was also influenced by the fragmentation of the social structure, produced by the post-industrial emergence of the risk society and the rupture of the lineal continuity of traditionally masculine biographies.