It's Women's Time in Soccer!

This book investigates the transformative relationship between soccer and women in the 21st century, a time when football has increasingly embraced femininity and women have gained unprecedented visibility and empowerment in the digital soccer landscape. Highlighting the growing presence of women in fan culture and digital spaces, the book explores how these arenas have become pivotal in shaping women's roles and participation in soccer. By examining global, transnational, national, and local contexts, it delves into the interplay between soccer and women, focusing on the dynamic intersections of fandom and digitality. Through documentary, discursive, analytical, and insider perspectives, the authors uncover the critical themes that define women's engagement with soccer in fan cultures and digital practices. These themes include gender, femininity, sexism, masculinity, misogyny, identity, platformization, digital and social media, e-commerce, and brand activism. The book sheds light on how these factors have influenced not only the women's game but also the broader societal roles of women as players, fans, and contributors to the sport's evolving narrative. Spanning subject areas such as gender studies, women's history, sports sociology, digital culture, and media studies, this book is designed for scholars, students, researchers, and readers passionate about exploring the intersection of soccer, gender, and digital innovation in contemporary society. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Soccer & Society and are now accompanied by a newly updated Introduction.

Kausik Bandyopadhyay is Professor of History at West Bengal State University, Kolkata, India. Formerly a Fellow of the International Olympic Museum, Lausanne, and of the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata, he is also Executive Academic Editor of Soccer and Society (Routledge).

Introduction: soccer, women, fandom and digitality 1. 'No Scotland, no party!': diversity, identity and fandom in Scottish women's football 2. Negotiating gender in antifascist football fan communities in Greece 3. Toward contesting the 'male preserve'? A study of women as spectators of men's football in West Bengal, India 4. Determinants of stadium attendance in the WE League, Japan: a comparative analysis of the pre- and post-2023 FIFA Women's World Cup seasons 5. FIFA Men's World Cup as a liminal space: women's football fandom and gender dynamics in Kerala, India 6. Platformization, cultural practices, and patterns of (dis)continuity: the case of the Women's World Cup 7. Exploring online sexism and misogyny in women's professional English football 8. Female fandom, social media, and men's football in 21st century Kolkata: an empirical and engagement-based analysis 9. Digitalisation of the playing field: a conceptual study of Chinese women's soccer players' live streaming e-commerce (daihuo) on social media 10. Contesting gender norms in women's soccer: digital engagement with an activist message 11. 'Girls show boys the way': insights into the growth of women's game